Found Footage in Horror

Amy
Sep 15, 2020
10 min read

Updated: Oct 16, 2020

People discount found footage as a cheap and easy film-making method which has infested the horror genre. Forgive me if you're one of those people, but this is a repugnant view. It reeks of elitism and a disregard for new film makers. Found footage is a cheap and cheerful film making technique! It's one of the more accessible methods of making a horror film. But that doesn't mean it's lacking in creativity, or that it uses camera positioning in place of plot. Found footage is a breakthrough technique in horror. It pushes the boundaries, tackling multiple sub-genres. Can you tell I love it?

Found footage is prevalent in horror as it is a genre where people are actively seeking to insert themselves in exactly the kind of environment they don't want to be in in real life. People watch other genres for the story. People watch horror for the raw emotion and the adrenaline inducing terror. What better way to get that directly to your veins than placing yourself in a position behind the camera. You're the camera person. You're video taping the ghost, the zombies, your friends' demise.

In this post, I'd like to look at the history of found footage, it's practical uses in film, creative elements unique to it, and the different sub-genres of horror it has placed itself in. For the purposes of this post I will be treating found footage as a technique as opposed to a sub-genre. This is particularly for ease of discussing other popular sub-genres of horror in relation to found footage (though I do believe it to be a sub-genre of horror in it's own right). I will also be including mockumentary films as found footage here, as there is a significant overlap in the films i.e. The Tunnel, Hellhouse LLC, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, The Last Broadcast, The Poughkeepsie Tapes. And I love them, because mockumentary is one of my favourite plot devices of all time.

So what is found footage? It's interesting, as the name means very little now in terms of describing what a found footage film is or what is classified as found footage. At it's core, found footage is a technique used in film to portray the events of a story and to provide a reason for the plot. The phrase found footage suggests footage which was found. This is a commonly used trope in the found footage films, but is not necessarily always present. I enjoy when it is used. I love the oft used beginning segment of the media player flickering to life. Some static/interference. The revealing the government or police warning telling where this footage was found.

"EVIDENCE TAPE: The following footage is for use by "local police force" only. During the search for two missing hikers, a bloodied camcorder was found. The footage was retrieved. The following is the footage which was recovered."

I'm a total sucker for it. It feels more real than most 'based on a true story' screens do for me.

Am I showing my age with the camcorder? It's the most commonly used method of filming for a found footage flick. Amateur film makers, documentarians and families alike will cart their high end equipment around with them to record their lives and any weird encounters. But the thing about found footage is that it taps into a fear we might not even know we have; the omnipresence of technology in our lives and what our recording devices might be capturing while we're unaware. This is brought to us with the use of security cameras, phones, and webcams in more recent found footage horror films. It's a sub-genre that can continue to reinvent itself and insert itself into our lives consistently. I wonder if a film based on an Alexa would be considered found 'footage'...?

Found footage has been around for longer than you might expect, given that most people remember it's big boom and rise in popularity in the late 90s. Films such as The Last Broadcast and The Blair Witch Project can thank their horror forefathers for their success in using found footage. It's a technique which has existed in multiple formats for a surprisingly long time. The film The Connection from 1961 outright states that it is found footage at the beginning. And while the history of found footage in horror can most likely be traced back to Cannibal Holocaust from 1980, the use of 'found footage' elements have always been close to horror even as far back as early horror literature.

The epistolary novel (I only recently learned this term, very excited to use it!) is something I have always been very fond of. As a storytelling method, it works well in capturing key moments and character behaviour. An epistolary novel is one written in the form of date or undated correspondence or through diary entries. It reaches back to Dracula and Frankenstein in the horror world. And I can trace my love for this storytelling method back to the very first Resident Evil video game, where I encountered the keeper's diary.

This insertion into someone's life feels very voyeuristic and makes them seem more vulnerable. Perfect emotional triggers for a horror film. Especially in a scenario where due to restrictions in budget, materials or plot there are limited ways to capture these emotions using other methods. This is also achieved through the tentatively related techniques of mockumentary and pseudo-documentary. While tenuously related to found footage, they seek to achieve the same effects and often overlap, as previously mentioned. It's an easy and effective plot-device that, when watched by the right people, adds a lot to the story, characters and overall enjoyment of a film. Mockumentary and found footage are different from other techniques in that they allow for a certain amount of exposition without being overbearing, and forgive a lot of other film making sins through use of forced suspension of disbelief.

That's why found footage is seen in the early forays into film for a lot of creators. Found footage finds itself as the first step into the world of film or into the horror genre for a lot of writers and directors. It's a budget friendly way to work. And it allows for ultimate creative control by fledgling creators who might struggle to find a budget for more than one camera and whose vision might suffer at the intrusive hands of investors or producers. And, as an added bonus, it allows creativity to flow. It's a vulnerable position to put yourself in as the one hand behind the camera, but it allows creators to rely on a lot more traditional effect techniques and gives the audience more chances for suspending their disbelief. I love it when I'm left to my own imagination for some aspects of a film which otherwise would be left dead by exposition or bad CGI. That's often the joy of horror, the practicality, the realism.

Horror has long been the underdog of the movie world. It is very rarely recognised as legitimate cinema. And there are plenty of reasons why. First and foremost, horror is polarising. Only certain people will watch horror films. I learned that the hard way growing up when I realised I was the only person in my group of friends who would watch something scary. We have to seek each other out! And I have to remind myself of this a lot, as I now have online communities and some real life friends who are into the genre. But when you step outside of that spooky space you realise that it's not actually all that popular.

Horror can also be polarising within the community of fans. Because of it's nature, and it's ultimate goal of frightening you, there is a lot of discourse between horror fans. It's subjective viewing. Comedy will land for most people, it targets the common denominator. A romance film will provide you with the exact scenarios you want. Drama can be created through music, movements and moments. But horror is particularly subjective. A film has to tap into your specific history, your experiences and your fears in order for it to achieve what it sets out to do. This often plays into the obsession that some people seem to have with proclaiming they didn't find a horror film scary. Good for you, here's your medal: engraved on the back with a note saying you have no empathy nor imagination. You have to be willing to place yourself in these situations to get scared. You have to suspend your disbelief.

And let's not forget that horror is rarely awarded outwith specific horror celebrations. Anything good produced within the genre is submitted to awards season as a thriller or a psychological drama. I'm not sure why that is? Maybe it's because horror seems to take the flack for gore and violence, when there are plenty of other action and thriller films which take it to the same extremes. Is it the fine line between horror and comedy? People seem to forget that horror is sometimes stupid and over the top on purpose. Is it because a lot of great horror films are "foreign" films, and Western audiences find it difficult to relate or won't tolerate subtitles (where people are able to watch with subtitles)? Is it the endless franchises or constant reboots? I don't see Marvel having an issue with that...

So is that why found footage is constantly being shat on? Because it is predominantly a 'horror' trope?

If you take a look at the comprehensive list on Wikipedia of all "found footage" films, you can see a trend in the data that shows horror utilises this method more than any other genre. And I did try not to 'David Paulides' my collection of data (I joke, I love his work...but data manipulation is a serious concern and confirmation bias is something I'm endeavouring to avoid). Looking at all of the genres mentioned (for the sake of this a comedy horror would count as both a comedy and a horror) you can see that horror far surpasses all other genres that have used found footage.

ree — Found Footage Films: Genres that titles fall under

Observing my beautiful graph above, you can see that horror far surpasses every other genre mentioned in the list. And a lot of these were crossovers where horror used another genre for the plot. So while it is evident that found footage is a universally useful technique, it's been mastered by horror creators. Adopted firmly into the horror milieu. And because found footage has managed to cover multiple horror sub-genres, regardless of what you're after, there's something for you!

And it's not just feature-length cinema that utilises found footage practices. It has made it's way onto our smaller screens too. Perhaps the earliest example of found footage being used in television is the brilliant, inimitable, imaginary, terrifying BBC mockumentary, Ghostwatch. Ghostwatch utilised well known faces, a poltergeist plot that exists in our collective unconscious, and a lack of admittance to it's less than true nature to trick a nation into believing they had watched on of their beloved celebrities die at the hands of a mysterious ghost. I urge you to watch it, and to delve further into it's techniques. Unique to the time, Ghostwatch used almost subliminal images of it's ghost which were impossible to verify as you couldn't rewind TV to go check. There weren't widely accessible forums to discuss what you may or may not have seen. You can buy Ghostwatch on Amazon I'm sure, and I believe it is on Shudder in some countries. But fuck the BBC, I found that it's also available to watch online for free!

And while we're talking about mockumentaries, it would be remiss of me to not mention What We Do In The Shadows, which was a wonderful film and an equally great television series. It's perfectly hilarious with a real dedication to supernatural lore. And at several points the folks behind the camera get to be involved in the horror on screen and I really love that little reminder that what we're seeing is, at it's core, found footage.

I'd also encourage you to watch The River also. It's a great TV show that played with a lot of typical urban legends and framed them in a brilliant way. The acting was great and I didn't root for any of the characters to die at any point. And it was created by Oren Peli! And a whole host of other familiar names are attached like Michael Green, Jason Blum and Steven Spielberg. Full disclosure though, while I want you to watch this I must warn you that you'll be left blue-balled because it got cancelled before an appropriate resolution and I still wonder about it to this day.

And if you want to continue your foray into found footage television, you can't go wrong with Jeopardy, a children's TV show which is available on YouTube and whose only flaw is that it doesn't feature Alex Trebek. And while on YouTube, I would suggest dipping your toe into the online series, Marble Hornets. Polarising amongst it's community of long-time fans, Roanoke, the sixth series of American Horror Story, is a great blend of found footage and mockumentary styles. And if you want to just dip your toe into a series, the 2018 Halloween Special of Inside No. 9 is a beautiful homage to Ghostwatch. Perfectly flipping from scripted horror to a found footage delight.

And further onto our small screens, found footage has implemented itself in video games. Which is just super!

As if putting you behind the camera wasn't enough to immerse you in the story, you can now literally control the man behind the camera. It's a wonderful way to highlight the fear and intensity of a story if you're only light source is a camera, your only way of viewing specific gameplay elements is through your nightvision mode, and your best chance of survival is making it out with the evidence in hand...for some reason. Turns out this is a sore subject for a lot of found footage fans. Why are you filming? And why do you keep filming? Please see the reviews on Found Footage Critic, where they list the reason for filming in the key information. Some reasons are more tenuous than others, but for the most part they seem to go with "recording for evidence". And this seems to be one of the more common tropes of the found footage video games.

Both Kill Screen and the wonderful Bloody Disgusting have articles discussing found footage video games. I would recommend giving them both a read, or a cursory glance to note down which games you want to play based on the screenshot they've included, which is what I usually do. Games that are true to found footage origins such as The Blair Witch Project and ones which are fresh forays for their franchise like Resident Evil7 bring you right into the horror by forcing you to document your environment. It's been interesting trying to consider whether these are scary because they've utilised the act of capturing found footage, or if it's because they're reminding us of a familiar horror trope.

There's a lot on offer within found footage, and I'd love to provide some recommendations! If you want to give found footage a chance, or a second chance, or a thirteenth chance... I've included here a list of 15 found footage horror films you should definitely try! The below films are just a short list of found footage horror films that I have seen and thoroughly enjoyed. It is by no means comprehensive, and I've probably forgotten quite a few that I've seen, and some wonderful indie gems that have escaped my memory. But these should keep you going! And if you want some more film recommendations, check out my list of horror films that I would recommend to others here!