Found footage movies are hard to do well. Having seen the success of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity – both of which were made on shoestring budgets and making profits significantly larger than their production cost – I get the feeling that filmmakers take it for granted that they’re something anyone can do. […]
While I don’t necessarily think Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is as great a movie as many of it’s advocates seem to think it is – it’s colder and more calculated than the winter the bulk of the story takes place in – it is effective. Sean King O’Grady’s We Need To Do Something works on […]
Found footage is a genre that every since The Blair Witch Project–though that was not the first. That honor likely belongs to The McPherson Tape–many have attempted, but few have done particularly well. Paranormal Activity was fine though prior entries in that series quickly wore out their welcome, which is one reason you should see […]
If you happen to be a fan of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s 1999 found-footage horror The Blair Witch Project, then Adam Wingard’s sequel/reboot Blair Witch will feel very familiar. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Blair Witch follows the same beats as its predecessor, as James (the brother of Heather Donahue from The Blair Witch […]
Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s 1999 movie The Blair Witch Project was an aberration–a successful one, but an aberration nonetheless–that has DNA that leads not only to low-budget horror features like the Paranormal Activity movies but an entire studio, Blumhouse Pictures, built on the model. And a very successful model it is. The last movie in Blumhouse’s Purge trilogy […]
original Cloverfield trailer Can we just accept that found footage movies, as a sub-genre, are for the most part indescribably lame (The Blair Witch Project gets a pass because it was the first, and who doesn’t like shiny new toys)? Most movies, especially genre-favorites like science fiction and horror (and increasingly dramas) require a suspension of belief […]
The Houses October Built Is A Great Title In Search Of A Deserving Movie.” Can we stop with the found-footage movies already? Every since The Blair Witch Project started the trend in 1999–16 years ago–studios have been churning them out left and right. And there’s a logic, the most crucial point being that they’re relatively cheap to produce. […]
“”Devil’s Due” is slightly more ambitious that most found-footage movies, though suffers from problems built into the format.” Having seen Matt Bettinelli-Olpin‘s and Tyler Gillett‘s “Devil’s Due,” about a newly married couple destined to give birth to the Antichrist, it’s obvious that the found-footage trend, ushered in by the 1999 film “The Blair Witch Project” and made mainstream with the […]
It looks like another movie is looking to capitalize on the formula made popular – and profitable – by “The Blair Witch Project” and the ‘Paranormal Activity’ films. This time a woman has somehow been impregnated by Satan (I know how babies are traditionally made, though when you’re talking about the Prince of Darkness you […]
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