Amidst the found-footage craze of late aughts and early 2010s, Canadian thriller Grave Encounters carved out a small niche for itself. Following the success of The Blair Witch Project, the Paranormal Activity series proved that the found-footage format was cheap to produce with a huge potential box office upside. For its part, Grave Encounters gain […]
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Somewhere in the mid-2010s, as found-footage was stalling a bit, Spanish found-footage thriller Hooked Up quietly debuted at a small film festival. Roughly two years passed before the iPhone-shot thriller made its way to VOD platforms. Unlike another Spanish found-footage movie, [REC] and its sequels, Hooked Up never found much of an audience. Based on […]
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Following the breakout success of Paranormal Activity in 2007, found-footage horror hit its stride in the late aughts. Cloverfield, Quarantine, Troll Hunter, and The Poughkeepsie Tapes followed over the next couple of years. Since the 2000s, found-footage continues to adapt and evolve, even if its big franchises gassed out years ago. Lost in the shuffle […]
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Two years ago indie filmmaker Dutch Marich releases his micro-budged found-footage horror movie, Horror in the High Desert. Though it didn’t see much of a release, this mix of found-footage and true crime documentary became something of a hidden gem. And Marich teased a sequel at the end of his faux-documentary that might tie loose […]
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Years from now, when a film historian looks back at what was scaring audiences in the horror genre in the 2020s, they’ll notice a lot of cultural tensions around social media. Over the last few years, the horror genre has taken some big swings at the ‘click like and subscribe’ mentality. Unfortunately, the track record […]
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Following closely on the viral sensation Skinamarink, The Outwaters is the latest indie horror movie to generate big buzz. To date, critics haven’t been shy about touting this found-footage thriller as the next Blair Witch Project. That’s high praise that comes with a bit of baggage. Though it’s considered a classic horror movie, The Blair […]
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For all of the success Hollywood has had creating hits out of fictional monsters, studios and filmmakers have struggled to bring urban legends to the screen. Has anyone made a good Loch Ness Monster movie? We all saw how the Slender Man turned out. Even the Urban Legend movie itself isn’t quite as good as […]
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Following V/H/S: Viral, the found-footage anthology series took an extended break until last Halloween season. Horror-streaming platform Shudder released V/H/S/94 to a strong critical response and record-setting viewership. Not surprisingly, Shudder promptly announced yet another sequel also set in the 1990s – V/H/S/99. And it makes sense – how could the horror anthology series miss […]
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