The cinematic experience remains unparalleled and the communal act of attending the theater is sometimes just as important as the movie itself. There's a healthy appetite for stylistic experiments that challenge both the medium and its audience. Found footage movies have had their ups and downs through the years, but they're still a type of movie that filmmakers turn to and can occasionally yield huge results
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It's thrilling to witness a new filmmaking technique and it's not unusual for one successful movie to kickstart a wealth of stylistic imitators. It can be much more challenging to find ways to excel through the limitations of found footage cinema, but those that do can become evergreen hits.
The found footage genre wouldn't be where it is today without The Blair Witch Project, one of the greatest exercises in minimalism that used these lo-fi assets to become one of the most profitable movies of all time. A group of students journey to find answers over a local cryptid puts them directly in harm's way.
There are plenty of modern found footage movies that are exceptional in quality and do fresh things with the genre, but on some level, none will ever resonate as strongly as The Blair Witch Project, which actually convinced some audiences that they were watching real footage and that actual students went missing.
Matt Reeves is perhaps best known for revitalizing The Planet of the Apes as well as his moody reinvention of DC's Dark Knight, The Batman. However, none of these mainstream genre milestones would be possible without him first subverting found footage and kaiju cinema with Cloverfield.
J.J. Abrams' mystery box stamp was all over the marketing for Cloverfield, but Reeves' film finds strength in how it takes something as universally cataclysmic as a Godzilla-esque attack on the city, but then presents it through the personalized filter of a video camera. Cloverfield uses the medium to bring out the heart in this disaster epic.
The most successful found footage movies are the ones that do a lot with a simple idea and never feel the need to get lost in the artifice. Paranormal Activity begins with a relatable scenario where a couple begins to experience strange events in their home, which prompts them to document their domestic life.
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Paranormal Activity helped popularize the voyeuristic urban approach to found footage where anything from an Xbox Kinect can be a filming tool. The Paranormal Activity movies begin in such a humble, personal place that it's quite impressive that the franchise evolves into a complicated time travel narrative with witches, yet one that feels oddly appropriate.
Creep and Creep 2 are technically categorized as horror movies, but they are just as much psychological dramas that put a fascinating figure under the microscope for two diverse, yet complementary experiences. Mark Duplass portrays a serial killer who's lost his luster in life and reached a mid-life crisis over where he stands with his trade.
Duplass' killer character, as well as the targets who document him, engage in endlessly interesting cat-and-mouse sessions where it's never clear who has the upper hand or where the truth lies. They're disturbing proof of the darkness that's out there in the world.
Norwegian filmmaker Andre Ovredal has become a more mainstream voice in horror through movies like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, but all of his projects display excellence when it comes to creatures and practical effects. Suspension of disbelief is vital in most found footage movies and Ovredal blurs the lines between fantasy and reality with 2010's Trollhunter, a found footage mockumentary that sets out to capture real trolls on film.
Trollhunter works as well as it does because of its loving, patient perspective. It truly feels like a calming nature documentary that just so happens to focus on gigantic Norwegian beasts.
District 9 is a bit of a cheat when it comes to found footage cinema, but it left such an important mark on the science fiction genre that it feels important to touch upon its accomplishments. District 9 is a highly original take on the alien genre that functions as a thought-provoking commentary on xenophobia and freedom.
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Much of this transformative journey plays out with no found footage artifice, but there's also an abundance of talking head interviews, surveillance footage, and news reports that effectively blur lines and add a cinéma vérité touch to this sci-fi story.
It's always exciting when someone is able to do something new with the zombie genre. One Cut of the Dead is a recent comedy-horror hybrid from Japan that turns into an endlessly self-aware affair. A group of independent filmmakers find themselves facing an actual zombie apocalypse right when they're trying to film their own rag-tag B-movie.
These opportunistic filmmakers attempt to capture this chaos and turn it into cinematic gold. On top of the meta concept, the entire movie is captured under the auspice of being a single, unbroken shot. It might not be found footage in the truest sense, but it tells a story through 'live" moviemaking.
2013's The Dirties marks the feature film directorial debut of Canadian filmmaker Matt Johnson, who also stars in the pitch black comedy turned psychological drama. The film shines a light on bullying only to gradually turn into a terrifying case of an unreliable narrator who might be the most dangerous character of the lot.
The Dirties seamlessly blends raw, real footage with carefully constructed improvised sequences that leave the audience feeling uncomfortably complicit on some level. The darkness of The Dirties is absolutely not for everyone, but its ability to provoke speaks to the power of its message.
The film and television industries are filled with mockumentaries that playfully lampoon the constructed reality of documentaries. In this sense, none of these films are technically found footage movies since there's the implication that they've still been heavily edited together and gone through a post-production phase that's less "raw" than the standard found footage affair.
At the same time, movies like What We Do in the Shadows present mockumentaries with intense production values, but still capture moments that feel natural and secret. It's a lot more than just telling a story with a shaky filmmaking style.
Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza's [REC] is a Spanish horror film that helped rejuvenate the found footage genre during the late 2000s. The retrained movie is set within the confines of a humble apartment complex, which soon becomes ground zero for a ferocious infection. [REC] never stops thinking about the use of its camera and how it's truly the protagonist of the film.
There are admittedly diminishing returns on the third and fourth [REC] movies, but the first two films work together as a connected narrative that pushes found footage and zombie cinema to daring places.
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