It feels real – with shaky cameras, snotty noses and dodgy documentary footage – but you know it couldn't be ... DONALD CLARKEon why we're all falling for the found-footage movie
I N THE NEXT FEW weeks, two films will open that ask – or pretend to ask – the viewer to believe that he or she is watching rough documentary footage assembled after the film-makers disappeared in mysterious circumstances.
Apollo 18, supposedly shot on a hushed-up late spluttering of the US space programme, offers a grim explanation as to why humans never returned to the moon. The excellent Troll Hunter follows the titular professional as he seeks mythical beasts in Norway's icy northern regions.
The mock-documentary has long been a staple of film and TV. Blame Spinal Tap. In the 27 years since that great film rocked cinemas, audiences have been treated to such exercises in faux verité as The Office, A Mighty Wind, Bob Robertsand I'm Still Here. You might think that the found-footage subset is a fairly minor sub-genre within that set. But the form has, in fact, become something of an industry over the past decade. The Blair Witch Project, REC, Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, The Last Exorcism: found-footage films are now (quite genuinely) more common than westerns.
What’s going on? The well-read observer will surely remark that, in the early years of the British and Irish novel, the form experimented with very similar conceits.
The first edition of Gulliver's Travelsfeatured no mention of Jonathan Swift on the title page. Alongside a fake etching of the supposed "author", the introductory text read "Travels into Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver". Daniel Defoe did something similar with Robinson Crusoe.
Samuel Richardson's Pamela– again presented without the real writer's name on the cover – purported to be "a series of familiar letters from a beautiful young damsel". So fresh was the novel as a form that these writers suspected readers would be baffled by a fat wad of text purporting to tell a fictional story. Presented as a series of diaries, memoirs or letters, the book was granted a kind of bogus reality that allowed easier entry into this still experimental genre.
Though early film-makers took a while to devise the vocabulary of cinema – cutaways, close-ups, two-shots – they never felt any need to pretend that what was being shown was the work of recently murdered documentarists. Given the complications inherent in the developing technology, such a premise would, after all, be extremely hard to sustain. Cranking the camera at a steady pace while being eaten by aliens would have offered a mighty challenge even to those innovative pioneers.
Though isolated precursors can be found, the granddaddy of the genre did not arrive until as late as 1980. One of the original video nasties, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaustpurports to display footage from a missing documentary crew that had been shooting a film in the Amazon Basin.
In the course of their investigations, a cadre of hungry natives develops a taste for lightly broiled documentarist. The film ends with the now obligatory shot from a camera hurtling towards blood-stained destruction. Other durable conventions were already in place. Words on the screen offer some explanation as to how the footage was found and assembled. In this case, the movie executives ordered that the film be destroyed, but an eager projectionist smuggled the material from his booth and sold it to disreputable independent producers.
Following Cannibal Holocaust'snotorious release, the genre went into virtual hibernation for another 20 years. Resurrection came in 1998 with The Last Broadcast, a lost-in-the-woods horror, and (note the suspiciously similar plot) with the following year's implausibly successful The Blair Witch Project.
One can speculate about pre-millennial angst and the early spasms of reality television, but the true reason for the revival is more easily expressed. The arrival of small, high-quality video cameras opened up endless possibilities for the found-footage auteur. On the one hand, certain implausible situations now seemed just a little more easy to believe. It’s one thing to suggest that a film-maker might continue operating a tiny, phone-sized camera while fleeing a medieval witch. It’s quite another to ask us to believe that the hero would be able to control a bulky film camera – using expensive stock – while in a similar situation. Moreover, the film-makers now had an excuse for the relatively low quality of the images.
The supposed heroes are, remember, just kids shooting with equipment intended for the domestic market. It's supposed to look this crummy. With the notable exception of Cloverfield, virtually all the subsequent found-footage movies have been shot on a tiny budget. André Øvredal, Norwegian director of Troll Hunter, says the form allowed him a certain leeway with lighting and framing, but explains that faking reality remains a challenge in such pictures.
“The toughest part is getting the acting real,” he says. “With the Trolls, you can wave the camera and make it look real. The way I came up with was to improvise as much as possible. Give the actors freedom.” The film-makers in the genre have another problem: the movie must emerge from chaos, but also function as a lucid narrative.
"Yes. At the base, you want it to have a very simple three-act structure: incident, turning point and all that stuff. Just to keep momentum you need that. Adding the documentary element on top conceals that structure to an extent." The hugely influential, largely web-based promotional campaign for The Blair Witch Projectinvited viewers to believe that the footage might be genuine. It's not clear how many dopes fell for the ploy, but there certainly was the odd person who thought that the poor, snotty girl in that woolly hat really had perished in the woods.
Could anyone really believe Troll Hunterto be the real thing? The film's premise is very cannily assembled – incorporating a shot of the Norwegian prime minister uttering the word "troll" – but, when the comically huge, many headed beasts emerge, even the most gullible punter will, surely, see through the supposed deception.
“I have actually seen questions online: is it real is it not?” Øvredal says with a goodnatured laugh. “I’ve had hints. But, thank God, nobody has said they really believe it.” Let’s hope we haven’t spoilt anything for you.
10 best found-footage films
1. CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST(1980) The abusive parent of the whole unlovely genre, Ruggero Deodato's brilliantly horrible film – watch out for the impalement – was the subject of enthusiastic censorship on its release. But it has distinguished fans. The prescient Sergio Leone told Deodato: "The second part is a masterpiece of cinematographic realism, but everything seems so real that I think you will get in trouble with all the world."
2. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT(1999) A bunch of kids decide to research an ancient myth and end up snivelling in frozen terror. The picture was supposed to destroy Hollywood and give the industry back to kids in garages. It didn't quite work out that way. But the producer's web-based promotional techniques did change how the business functioned.
3. MAN BITES DOG(1992) The only film in the chart that – though notably brutal – does not qualify as a horror film, Rémy Belvaux's Belgian shocker concerns a film crew following a brutal serial killer as he goes about his sadistic business. Belvaux confirmed the sincere roots of his dark vision by killing himself in 2006.
4. TROLL HUNTER(2011) As ever in this genre, the film begins with a slab of text explaining how the succeeding footage was located amid a bloody heap of mysterious viscera. What follows is a highly amusing – and occasionally scary – take on Nordic Troll mythology. Yes, one of the many headed-beasts does emerge from beneath a bridge.
5. CLOVERFIELD(2008) A rare big budget entry to the genre, the picture – in which New Yorkers confront something huge – was not inaccurately described as a combination of
The Blair Witch Projectand
Godzilla. Promoted with a famously compulsive trailer.
6. THE LAST EXORCISM(2010) The horror elements were all handled with admirable subtlety in this tale of a child who may or may not be possessed by the devil. But the films stands out as a rare found-footage project that features impressively rounded characters.
7. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY(2007) By some calculations
Paranormal Activity, made for a staggeringly tiny $15,000, registers as the most profitable film ever released (passing out the comparatively profligate
Blair Witch Project). Depicting possession in a suburban home, it offers decent sIide-show thrills and top-notch plot reversals.
8. REC(2007) This time the ubiquitous film crew is investigating strange goings-on in a Barcelona apartment house. It transpires that the building is infected with a virus that turns citizens into blood-crazed vampires. Avoid the near shot-for-shot US remake
Quarantine.
9. DIARY OF THE DEAD(2007) Nobody is likely to confuse George Romero's 2007 reworking of his classic zombie franchise with earlier classics such as
Night of the Living Deador
Dawn of the Dead. But the satirical energy remains in place and the master finds interesting things to do with a near-subjective camera.
10. THE LAST BROADCAST(1998) Sometime after
The Blair Witch Projectwent ballistic, commentators began to remark on that film's similarity to this shocker concerning a (you've guessed it) documentary crew's investigation of a beast named the Jersey Devil. It stands up quite well against the more famous film.
Troll Hunter
opens on September 9.
Apollo 18
opens on September 2
