I sort of do. It all depends on the overall quality of the story and how interesting the characters are, but yeah. I hate when they break away from the format or if it's not necessary to the story. I really liked Blair Witch, though. I'm usually the only one.
It's usually bad because now we have people making these movies because they're cheap to make no because of an artistic or any other sensible reason.
Look at Paranormal Activity 4. It should be called Normal Activity 4.
Generally, no.
It's not the kind of storytelling I like, it ends up limiting what you can show and do with the story.
I think the only 'found footage' movie I've really liked was Trolljegeren.
You can do good things with it, but way too often you don't get any actual characters, I dislike the way the camera moves and you don't see anything, and if it's horror, I just find it silly we are supposed to 'believe' it really happened. I'd rather have a good story to get into, it's sort of easier for me to suspend my disbelief to accept that this fictional world and characters are real, rather than that the film was actually found somewhere.
I suppose my biggest issue is that they tend to be horror. They just aren't scary to me most of the time.
But something like Trolljegeren, that was a comedy, worked for me.
Would something like 'The Wedding Video' considered to be found footage? Isn't it shot like it's a video shot by one of the characters?
I actually do quite a bit. Even if most of the people in the movies are acting like idiots or something, I enjoy the genre very much. Blair Witch was fine and creepy, Cloverfield is my own personal favorite, Quarantine and REC are pretty good too I guess, but Apollo 18 was just horrible. The Paranormal Activity movies are OK, didn't especially care for 3 though.
I guess what I like most is that the footage is suppose to give a "this could really happen" sort of thing. Usually someone is looking back at the footage and we are seeing what has already happened. All very believable to me given the right circumstances I suppose. Family terrorized by a demon ghost thing? Large Alien attacking New York? Kids lost in the woods by a supposed Witch? All makes sense why those would be filmed. I really liked how Cloverfield did it though. The main characters are just simple people who were attending a party and then they get caught up in everything, but they don't exactly know what's going on. They speculate, and simply try to find another friend, but no answers are specifically given. It makes sense, because how WOULD they know? They are just normal people.
Apollo 18 was pretty bad in this regard though.
Here is this footage that has never been revealed until now. Then the movie starts off and is like, "you saw those moon rock aliens right? Well just think about this: There are hundreds of those rocks on Earth right now! Be careful out there!"
And that just broke the "believable" angle for me. I liked the isolation of the characters and the monsters I guess, but jeez.
I also really liked Quarantine's main actress. Near the end she is just basically screaming her lungs out, which I always thought was great because not a lot of people in these movies actually do that like she did(just completely lose it when crap hits the fan). There's a scene were the elevator lights go out (which she's in), and she's yelling for them to come back on. I didn't find it annoying, but somehow just...real I guess.
Diary of the Dead was also pretty good. A college film crew/club trying to shoot a monster movie when the dead start walking. Also, one of the actors I thought was Eliza Dushku, but it wasn't. Seemed like a really good look a like though.
My only major complaint is the endings to most of these movies.
I know they are found footage for a reason, but does everyone have to die? Can't they just...drop the camera and leave?
Haven't seen Chronicle yet, but I heard its good. Should probably rent it.
So I would really like to see more Found Footage movies. As long as they at least hold my interest, then I'll keep seeing them I guess.
I have no problem with the style itself but it tends to lead to, for me, poor storytelling and essentially boring narrative. Blair witch and paranormal activity im looking at you here.
Of course this isn't true for all films. I found Clover field to be OK despite the motion sickness lol.
Depends on the film itself. I really enjoyed the 2nd and 3rd Paranormal Activity movies, as well as online series such as Marble Hornets, TribeTwelve, and EverymanHYBRID. Like any other genre, an individual movie can be great or terrible.
I'm a sucker for them, to be honest; being someone who's VERY easy to please with movies, I tend to enjoy them regardless of how the camera steadiness ranges from "tripod" to "busting for a piss". The Last Exorcism was probably the weaker one, but Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield and Quarantine were epic.
Some of them I like. Most I hate with a burning passion. So many people think that the Blair Witch Project is great but I've never understood that. This pretty much sums up my opinion on it: I did like Chronicle though.
I thought Rec 1 and 2 were great movies and the found footage aspect worked really well. If I'm not mistaken, Quarantine was based on Rec 1. I haven't seen the 3rd one yet but I heard it was bad. Screw Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity though.
Blair Witch. The whole point of Blair Witch, like an above poster said, is that it pretends to be real. There had been nothing like it before in western mainstream cinemas so people (including myself) went into it unsure whether what we were seeing was actually real footage. It was a disturbing experience, and actually scary. It was incredibly effective, if you were there in the cinema at one of the first screenings and without any foreknowledge of the film.
Now, anyone who has heard all about the film beforehand and picked up the DVD or downloaded it and watched it in their home will probably laugh at this, but it's their loss. Cloverfield knows its viewers know it is faked 'real' footage, so the impact is lost. There's no reason for it to be a shaky handheld camera because there's no question that what we're seeing is a cinematic film.
Cloverfield was pretty boring. acting was OK but the whole concept was a little boring and the whole series of events suck. the whole movie is about a group of people running into danger on purpose for no reason what so ever.
Diary of the Dead, was disappointing but overall an OK film. had some good things to say but the acting and characters weren't impressive.
Apollo 18 looked so stupid i wouldn't even rent that movie.
Overall, i have no problem with "shaky cam" or "found footage". i think it all comes down to the usual elements: good directing, screenplay and acting. when done well, found footage movies can be incredibly powerful.
With something like "Blair Witch" we don't even know if there was a monster, if it was psycho towns people, a witch, a dead child molester, or a bunch of kids who all dropped their camera after playing "creepy ghost time" in the woods
Maybe you weren't paying close enough attention but the monster was in fact the Blair witch, IIRC. In one scene they were talking about how the witch supposedly makes her victims stand in the corner or something like that, and at the end the camera girl finds the guy in the shack standing in the corner.
Actually it was the MO of the child molester/murderer something or other Parr if I remember. Throughout the movie they drop hints that it could be a number of things, but never a definitive answer since all of their MOs are present in the movie in one place or another. It's intended to be ambigious.
The closest thing we have to an answer is that ALL the legends are true, but that goes into non-canon material outside of the movies, looking at the video games and tied in young adult novels and such released during the mania following the film. Many of which are also ambigious about what happened to the original group, and occasionally about the validity of anything they themselve present, in keeping with the "spirit" of the original work.
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