Open Forum Friday: Are You Suffering from Found Footage Fatigue?

Posted by on April 27th, 2012   Filed under: Open Forum Friday

After generating a major hit with The Blair Witch Project back in 1999, found footage horror movies have returned with a vengeance over the past few years, thanks almost entirely to the success of Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity. What’s more, the handheld faux documentary aesthetic has permeated almost every single genre imaginable, from comedies and superhero movies to dramas and disaster movies. It has become the trademark of the YouTube generation and synonymous with “now” — which explains why upcoming remakes of The Ring, Carrie and Frankenstein are planning to use it to set themselves apart from the originals. But is the format becoming a cliche and are audiences already getting tired of it?

One of the main reasons why studios are so gung-ho on this style of filmmaking is that it is extremely cheap. However, at the same time, audiences are clearly connecting with it as well, and it works on a visceral level that big Hollywood blockbusters cannot reproduce. However, some viewers frequently complain that the extreme camera movement causes nausea and that unfortunate word “shaky cam” is also tends to enter the conversation as well. What do you think? Are you a fan of found footage films? Are they effective or just a gimmick? Are filmmakers still finding interesting ways to use it or are they running out of ideas? Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday.



  • Steve Kroodsma

    I just wish Hollywood would fully commit to the idea. Where’s my found footage courtroom drama? Or a found footage swords & sandals flick? Come on Hollywood. Step your game up.

  • Bob

    Yeah, I’m getting tired of found footage. I like a lot of it, but it’s not being used in creative ways as much as in the past. I see the appeal for the studios and I think the penchant for “reality TV” by viewers makes these films appealing for both sides. I don’t see the trend stopping anytime soon.

  • curtis talls

    I don’t mind it, if it’s done in a unique way. I liked Chronicle (which is the last found footage film I saw) a lot and I think there are still inventive ways in which the style could be used.

  • Eith Carrie the found footage at least makes sense given the structure of the original novel. The rest are wholly unnecessary.

  • MGM CEO Roger Birnbaum gave a talk this week at his alma mater, the University of Denver, and dropped a few bits of info about two remakes the studio is working on. One was Carrie, which Birnbaum suggested may have a found-footage angle.

  • I don’t think it’s a question of “found footage fatigue” or not. It’s just a stylistic expression, I guess, and it can include good movies and bad movies, like any genre or style of filmmaking. Seems to me these kind of movies work best when there’s a plausible narrative reason for the story to be shown as found footage. Even good movies like Chronicle stretch that part pretty thin. I haven’t seen tons of them, but one of the best examples for the correct use of the style is in Quarantine (haven’t seen REC, so…) which I thought was awesome and has a pretty ingenious plot reason for the continuous use of the camera, even when shit hits the fan and the last thing you would think somebody would do is run around pointing a camera.

    The downside for found footage is that it’s not very cinematic, meaning, there’s no framing involved. It’s more like things are happening randomly in the camera view. It mostly suits the horror genre, I think, because it has a visceral quality. But no, I wouldn’t want to sit through a found footage courtroom drama…

    One of he worst examples of recent found footage films I can think of is Project X. It’s loud, messy, crude and pointless. The core idea is interesting – filming a party going haywire – but unlike Chronicle, it does nothing with it, and the camera keeps filming even when it makes no sense, and the shake-cam is atrocious. What I loved about Chronicle was how the story gave the camera a reason to move more smoothly.

    So I think fatigue can be prevented if filmmakers can use the form to tell old stories in a new way, make use of the cultural aspect of it – that everybody owns a camera these days and everybody is filming stuff – but do it in a cinematic way, see it as a challenge and not as an excuse to make cheap films, like the studios apparently do.

    What about a science fiction film where an advanced video camera becomes self-conscious and starts filming its owners without their knowledge? It’s like Big Brother, only from the point of view of a sentient AI.

  • Jonny Ashley

    Just watched Paranormal Activity 3 last night and actually thought it was great. The only thing I’m sick of is bad movies (thx captain obvious), and we’re getting those in spades from every genre.

  • Matt McNeely

    Seeing as found footage movies mostly don’t appeal to me in the least, I don’t watch them and therefore am not experiencing fatigue over them. I’m hearing that this Chronicle movie is somehow good. I don’t need to see it to realize that it’s not. I’m not interested in mediocre experiences; only great or terrible ones.

  • Maopheus

    To me, “84 Charlie Mopic” was one of the best found footage movies ever, and a very early. The concept made sense, the idea of the footage being found was completely plausible, and the story was a good one. I thought it was a different and clever take on the raft of Vietnam war movies that came out during the late 1980’s. The writing, the character arcs, and the general plot was fairly cliched, and you didn’t a get a whole lot of time to really get to know the characters so they were kind of broadly written.
    It’s what we are fairly used to now, with embedded reporters and camera men following soldiers on patrol. But during the Vietnam era, that was a lot harder to do. The plot is that a newly-minted lieutenant and a cameraman (who is the MoPic in the title) follow an Army ranger long-range reconnaissance patrol in Vietnam. We watch them track the enemy, call in airstrikes, and in firefights, members of the team get killed off one by one. The tension, frustration and despair build as the remaining team try to make it back to their evacuation point.
    Found footage films work if there is a reason for the camera to be in the film and if you feel as if it’s a character actively participating in the action. When found footage films veer into The Office type territory where you no longer understand why a camera would be in the position it is, or why they would even be filming whatever they are filming, then the concept breaks down.

  • Maopheus

    I should have added that the character arcs, the writing and the plot are fairly cliched, but no more so than just about any war movie.

  • I think that “Sex and the City 2″ could have been a tremendous found-footage horror film. Think about it. A bunch of seriously over-confident middle-aged women think it’s a good idea to head over to the Middle East and encourage the local female population to whore themselves up and engage in behavior that might get them killed. If it would have been filmed in shaky handheld and we were teased that “they disappeared, but three months later, this footage was found”, I may have been somewhat interested.