Do you like "found footage" films?

[Zombiefish]

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.

 

[DarthSka]

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.

 

[bossfight1]

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.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

Not my thing, but I'm kind of an aesthetics whore. I also don't like a lot of realism in my entertainment.

 

[Compatriot Block]

Blair Witch was the best of them all. Cloverfield was a largely forgettable, glorified remake, along with most of the others.

Glorified remake of what? I didn't think it was similar to Godzilla, if that's what you mean.

 

[Terminate421]

I liked Chronicle and Cloverfield so the genre is decent though at times it does feel "low budget"

 

[RedDeadFred]

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.

 

[Kennetic]

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.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Blair Witch was the best of them all. Cloverfield was a largely forgettable, glorified remake, along with most of the others.

Glorified remake of what? I didn't think it was similar to Godzilla, if that's what you mean.

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.

 

[Murmillos]

I like them as long as the camera isn't overly realistic shaky..

 

[deathzero021]

REC and Paranormal Activity i liked.

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.

 

[Therumancer]

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.

 

[pffh]

The only two I've liked were Chronicle and Troll hunter and even then I think they would have been better if they used a more traditional style.

 

[Zeraki]

Normally no I don't. I did however enjoy Chronicle though, and thought it was one of the better movies of the year.

 

[Tsaba]

It's just like any other film genre, they can be good.... or very very bad.

 

[Wolf In A Bear Suit]

Paranormal Activity has spat in the face of the genre, The new one look's well...stupid. I havn't seen the movie yet but spoiler I'm guessing EVERYONE dies bar maybe one person. Also they're making another. It just annoys me that they still make enough money for a huge money bath out of these things.

 

[NoeL]

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.

Thanks, I'll have to watch it again. Haven't seen it since I was kid so I'm sure there was a lot I missed.

 

[Rimmelsp]

I'm not a huge fan of most, but if done correctly the style alone can keep me interested. The self-documentary style of Zero Day is what makes it one of my favorite movies.

 

[darthmj94]

It is an interesting concept, But to me, it always falls flat with the premise itself, I never understood why the character holding the camera could never be a professorial camera person, I always thought that if they wanted to make this format, why not just make the guy holding the camera in the movie play a news person who probably could hold a good quality camera still for more then 5 min. They get there gimmick, and we can tell what is going on in the movie.

 

[Frybird]

I generally like them.

It at least used to be a fresh approach and when done right, it gives you a kind of immersion and believability that's different from other movies.

If [REC] would've been made in a traditional style, it would've been a fairly by-the-numbers horror movie with a limited setting. But thanks to the first-person-perspective of the camera, it's one of the scariest movies i know.

Paranormal Activity was very enjoyable because it was unpredictable and goes against the usual horror film pacing, adding more uneasiness with each scene because you know it's gonna get worse, but you don't know how.
Unfortunately, it became the new "Once-a-Year-Horror-Franchise".

Strangely, i never liked Blair Witch Project. I found the characters horrible and overly hysterical. Last few minutes were fun, but the rest was just annoying.

There's a lot of crap with found footage movies, but it's the same with every other genre and subgenre, especially Horror.

That said, soon there will be a time when Found Footage cannot really offer something new unless it does something dramatic and very different (i'd like to see a live action, contemporary version of FLAG, aka a First-Person-Film about a War Reporter)