In the horror mainstream, found footage is still a relatively new phenomenon. The Blair Witch Project (my beloved) kicked things off in a big way in 1999, and, since then, the genre has been finding it’s feet (and franchises), to varying degrees of success.
And, a couple of decades after found footage broke the mainstream, filmmakers are starting to have little fun with it. Any genre, but especially anything in the world of horror, is going to be subject to a cheerful little meta-roasting, and found footage is no exception – with the genre becoming something of a shorthand for filmmakers who want to knock out something for cheap and turn a profit (however unfairly), it’s only natural that the meta-commentary on the found footage horror became a sub-genre until itself. Usually, a sub-genre that’s pretty limited to lazy jokes about cheap filmmakers with no ideas.
Which brings me to Found Footage 3D, the 2016 debut of writer/director Steven DeGennaro. The clue is very much in the title here: in an attempt to capture a new audience, an indie film crew decides to throw in a 3D twist to their standard-issue found footage movie. Travelling to a cabin that was the location of a real-life murder, the set-up seems pretty obvious: in making a movie, they’re going to summon the spirits that live there in real life, right?
And, yeah, that aspect is part of the story. But what really makes Found Footage 3D stand out for me (aside from that fond sense of humour towards the horror world that’s wound through the whole thing – Scott Weinberg guest-stars as himself, for goodness sake, it’s so much fun) is how it draws horror from the actual process of filmmaking, and the strained interpersonal relationships that boil over in the midst of a tense creative standoff.
The movie within this movie, after all, was written by a couple, Derek and Amy, in the midst of an acrimonious divorce, their marital troubles reflected in the movie they’re making – Derek’s brother Mark, stepping in on crew duties to keep costs low, has complex feelings for his one-time sister-in-law, and their uneasy, unacknowledged triangle serves as the tense centrepiece for Found Footage 3D. Found footage as a genre is intensely personal by design, and using those storytelling techniques to pull this relationship drama to the surface works perfectly. The tiny crew and budget restraints only intensify the tension between the cast, the meta-narrative of the stress of filmmaking itself where most of the unsettling stuff is drawn from.
It’s a really cool way to approach meta-found-footage-filmmaking, and I was pleasantly surprised by how effective it was – so many movies that try and do that wry take on found footage end up lazily skewering the low budget and low effort without trying to explore the people behind it other than their function as a bodycount, but Found Footage 3D bucks that trend. For the found footage connoissuers amongst us, it’s a step up to the meta-movies about the genre.
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via IMDB)
No But Listen 