Theme: Found Footage Films

A Found Footage film is a film made in a way to give the appearance that it was video footage shot by people in the midst of dramatic action with video cameras (or sometimes film cameras). It comes with a distinctive look that mimics blurry and jagged handheld camerawork with actors often addressing the camera. (For films that pretend to be documentaries see Mockumentaries).

Most of these films have some type of rationale where the footage is made by documentary-makers, news reporters, investigative amateurs, camcorders, webcams, video chat programs or even from security cameras, sometimes a combination of more than one. The term Found Footage comes from the claims made that these were tapes found left behind by people that disappeared or is police footage or a documentary attempting to piece a mystery together.

It is debatable what was the first Found Footage film but Snuff (1971) is a contender. The genre was popularised by the massive success of The Blair Witch Project (1999), which many people believed to be a real film thanks to the publicity campaign. This saw a number of imitators but the phenomenon went stellar following the hit of Paranormal Activity (2007).

Since then almost every genre theme has had some Found Footage treatment from the ever popular haunting or ghost hunters investigating a haunted locale to the psycho film, the UFO film, the possession and exorcism film, the zombie film, the Bigfoot film, the superhero film, the monster movie, the alien invasion film, the vampire and Frankenstein films to even parodies of the genre.