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Sunday, February 19, 2012

Found footage films can go get lost again.



When it was released The Blair Witch project came out in 1999 it was a big thing. I remember people thinking the damn thing was actually real and that by some super natural force those kids fell to some horrible fate and magically their footage ended up , to be recovered from virgin soil. It was a hot topic , a cutting edge thing that not many people knew what to think of in the sense if it was real or fake. It was FAKE. I'm sure some people will still argue that but they were on stage to accept their damn awards.

It wasn't the first though in a line of these styled movies. There are found footage films that predate this one. I just honestly believe this is the one that landed this style movie where it is today. In 1980 Cannibal Holocaust was released. It's a very graphic film , that has depictions of rape and cannibalism through it. For it's shock reasons it landed some fame . It landed it's maker in a hot seat on obscenity charges , and accusations flew around that the actors were actually killed. He was being charged with a snuff film. When the actors were presented in good spirit and very much alive things slacked off and someone else tried to capitalize on the Cannibal name with a more actual film based on what went on it Holocaust.

1998 brought on the Alien Abduction : Incident in Lake County that was shown on the UPN network , of a family that had a run in with some interstellar life forms.



It was more or less about on par with Blair Witch.

There are a lot of others between then and now , some are zombie related , some are false political , and some are made in the image of Cannibal Holocaust to come of as an actual snuff film. Fred Vogul has a series of these called August Underground that are just brutal and hard to watch.

What I'm getting at now though is the modern day run of these films. Your Quarantines are so so but Paranormal Activity is just horrible . People love them though and I can't figure out why!

I've talked to other people who feel the same way far as not liking the films but they produce different reasons far as why. the most common one I'm giving on is that they never see the monster / ghost. I don't put that as my reason , cause I actually enjoyed Blair Witch and is another case you never see the antagonist.

The kids in Blair Witch never saw the monster themselves. So to me it made sense that I didn't see it. We saw what they saw. We also felt what they felt. The location , the goddamn woods gives off an unsettling feeling. The chaos when they would have to run , and the panic. We saw that through the cameras. That fast paced photography , its intrusive , and your visual aspect takes that in , in a bad way. Like the fast paced shots from the Evil Dead films. It was chaotic and it hit you as such.

This hasn't been the case with the Paranormal Activity movies. There really isn't any activity. The idea of stationary cameras set up around a house to catch the unseen is a good idea , but just for the person trying to catch whatever it is they are looking for. Closed Circuit videos of similar things are littered on YouTube , and for the minute they run I find what they provide to be entertaining . Sitting through an entire movie made up of similar footage however is not.

I gave this series two honest attempts. I watched the first one and just simply didn't get anything of value from it. Same with the second film , it was a tad better but still so far down on the lame scale it still wasn't any good to me.



The previews for this movie made it out like they had some of the most terrifying footage ever being crammed down peoples throats. There were all kinds of people jumping , screaming and kids crying in green screen night vision , like we were seeing actual footage in the theater of these people being frightened.



See what I mean? THERE IS NOTHING IN THAT MOVIE THAT INDUCES ANY OF THOSE EMOTIONS! They are either payed to act that way , brought in from a hospital for people who are not fully mentally developed or the one I'm going to go with acting out in a manner so one might realizing they payed 10 bucks to watch that crap.

This series went on with a third , I never saw it and from what I understand has received a green light for a fourth. They have one hell of a PR team is all I can assume.

This isn't the only fecal footage from the lost tape movies. Quarantine failed horribly. It was taken from a foreign version of the film titled REC. REC delivered even though they were basically the same movie , but REC had a gritty edge to it. Maybe that the fact it was in another language sold me more as well than it's state side counterpart.

Here's REC


And here's the American version


I've never made a movie. At least nothing I would show to anyone , or that was any good. So I'm not hating on these film makers and directors. Just the product that they are distributing.

I think we've seen a growing collection of these films because the majority of our television is made up of what people call reality TV. There is a slew of paranormal investigation shows which I'm sure is where these people drew from to make they're movie. However they didn't do it right.

Someone did. It was one of those Tribeca films. It's called Grave Encounters.



Ever seen Ghost Adventures on Travel Channel? This is it if it were a movie and they actually came across the things that make you shit your pants. It was genuinely good. It was filmed in the same exact fashion as Ghost Adventures. The characters personalities , the filming style , the on sight interviews. It felt genuine , real-ish. They took the approach to show the antagonist in the film as well. So kudos to this one out of the bunch.

There's another of this style film I'm wanting to see called Chronicle. It's super hero based , with an original story as opposed to a license material from a comic publisher so it shouldn't be hard to like. There is also talk of a Friday the 13th being done up in this fashion which I'm not to sure on how I feel about.

All these film's of this style aren't bad , bud there has been a blow up of them late. Netflix is riddled with them ( along with a lot of other garbage ).Apollo 18 was bad too , and could have had a lot of promise. The Devil Inside was promoted a lot like Paranormal Activity was , and seemed very similar to it but it was literally booed of screens .

These styled films can be good in moderation but there is a lot o them coming out as of late and hardly any of them feel worth the time I put into watching them.

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