Image via Complex Original
When a formula works, the film industry is notorious for stubbornly stamping its foot down on the gas and staying firmly in that lane until the wheels fall off. Ever since 1999's The Blair Witch Project turned an estimated $60,000 budget into more than $240 million in worldwide sales, using the "found footage" conceit pioneered in 1980's Cannibal Holocaust, the shaky, handheld style has been a constant in horror movies, and even other genres.
Clever filmmakers have come up with rock-solid explanations for why the footage in their movies exists. Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza's 2007 Spanish surprise [REC] unfolds through the camera of a documentary news crew as it captures a viral outbreak turning quarantined apartment residents into bloodthirsty savages. In Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity (2007), a haunted couple sets up cameras around their home to record evidence of the disturbing presence. That setup worked so well that PA, made for an estimated $15K(!!!), raked in over $180 million and spawned two equally successful sequels. This week, Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost's entertaining (though not mythology-expanding) Paranormal Activity 4 introduces teenagers' video chats to the series seamlessly.
For every intelligent director-producer team concerned with details, there are several lazy imitators who force the concept of found footage into their flicks when it makes absolutely no sense for the characters to be filming. In the hope that genre films try a bit harder, Complex scrutinizes The 7 Worst Justifications for Found Footage in Movies.
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Written by Frazier Tharpe (@The_SummerMan)
7. Security cameras help prevent burglaries.
As seen in: Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)
Director: Tod Williams
The footage that comprises Paranormal Activity and PA3 is solid, because the respective leads are depicted as camera nuts who would totally rig a recording to catch what they wrongly assumed was only low-grade spooky occurrences. Paranormal Activity 2, however, is disgustingly lazy in its conceit.
Following a "burglary," Daniel Rey (Brian Boland) installs security cameras outside—and in every room in the house?! Sorry, but no family—especially one that includes a teenage girl—would be down for such a total loss of privacy. If it comes to that, you plant the "for sale" sign on the lawn and hit the Comfort Inn for a few weeks.
6. Working on a project for filmmaking class.
As seen as: End of Watch (2012)
Director: David Ayer
In End of Watch, the ridiculously cliché Latino gangbangers aren't the only ones counterintuitively filming themselves when they shouldn't. LAPD officer Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) uses clip-on cameras and a camcorder to record as he and his partner, Mike Zavala (Michael Peña), police the streets—not entirely by the book, mind you. Shooting suspects and agreeing to box a gangster before arresting him is the kind of peanut-butter-and-jelly bullshit that gets you demoted to traffic duty. Fellow officers and higher-ups don't approve, and why should they?
According to Taylor, the reason he needs to film everything is because he's taking a filmmaking class. Oh, well, in that case, by all means, Mr. Spielberg.
5. People "need" to watch a monster attack NYC.
As seen in:Cloverfield (2008)
Director: Matt Reeves
Cloverfield is a fun flick, and one of a few, extremely rare instances where a movie lived up to its mystery and hype. In terms of executing the hand-held, found-footage style, Matt Reeves pulled off some very impressive shots.
With that said, there is absolutely no believable instance where this would go down. No, we're not talking about the thousand-year-old extraterrestrial beast that savages New York. The existence of such a creature is, in fact, more believable than a super-dedicated, ordinary young American (Hud, played by T.J. Miller) who at no point considers putting his camera down while a monster flattens skyscrapers around him and even knocks his helicopter out of the sky.
Before Hud's inevitable demise, his more sensible friend, Rob (Michael Stahl-David), asks why he's still filming, especially when he could just describe the terror. "People need to see this," says Hud, who's clearly huffed away the part of the brain that controls the self-preservation instinct.
4. Young people are self-absorbed and obsessed with social media.
As seen in: Diary of the Dead (2008)
Directed by: George A. Romero
Romero, who blessed the world with Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985), is the master of zombie horror, but his trademark social commentary fell off in this 2008 misfire. Wagging his old man finger at a younger, supposedly more self-absorbed, generation that records its every thought and move with camera phones and social media, Romero tells the story of would-be horror filmmakers who instead wind up documenting a zombie apocalypse as though being behind a camera lens protects them from getting bitten.
This is the Cloverfield "nobody would ever do this" scenario turned up to the max. Just look at the still pictured above. No one—we repeat, no one—is this self-important (or dedicated to filmmaking). Not even "kids these days."
3. Recording gang crimes for posterity/entertainment value.
As seen in: End of Watch (2012)
Director: David Ayer
Like O-Dog (Larenz Tate) in Menace II Society, Demon (Richard Cabral), one of the exceedingly stereotypical and cliché Latino gangbangers in End of Watch, seems to have no concept of how video recordings of crimes can be used against you in a court of law. When his gang pulls a drive-by shooting on black gangsters, he films it, as if he's making a video for America's Funniest Home Videos and not cinematically snitching on himself and everyone else.
When no-nonsense gang leader Big Evil (Maurice Compte, above) later tells him repeatedly to turn the camera off, Demon instead captures his gang plotting the murder of two LAPD officers for a Mexican cartel. If ever there were a reason to get jumped out of a gang....
2. Fifteen minutes of serial killer fame.
As seen in: 15 Minutes (2001)
Director: John Herzfeld
In one of the worst cop movies ever made, Robert De Niro plays a celebrity detective on the trail of two ex-cons who film the murders they commit (one of them fancies himself the next Frank Capra). Jealous of the their pursuer's fame, the lead villain (Karel Roden) hatches one of the most ludicrous plans ever: to kill the beloved officer on camera, sell the snuff film to a true crime TV show, plead insanity when charged with murder, declare his sanity once in an asylum, skate free because you can't be tried twice for the same crime, and cash in on book and movie rights. Get all that?
They do indeed snuff out De Niro's character, and when they do, viewers inevitably feel pangs of jealousy that the lucky bastard got to exit the ill-conceived picture before they did.
1. Parents of slain children agree to show film of their murders.
As seen in: The Tapes (2011)
Directors: Lee Alliston and Scott Bates
The Tapes follows a group of annoying students who think they're about to score a win for pervs everywhere by secretly filming a clandestine swingers party but instead have a fatal encounter with Satanic cultists. What's absolutely baffling is that the film opens with the parents of the victims granting viewers consent to watch this video of their kids getting brutally murdered. Sure, because it's every mom and dad's dream for their child to star in a snuff film.
