I've been catching up on some found footage films I missed. I'm not one of those people who hates the subgenre - when done well, it's responsible for some of the best horror there is - though admittedly a good 90% of it is lazy, irredeemable shite.
However, saw a couple recently I liked.
The Bay - directed by Barry Levinson, strangely enough. It's presented as more of an after-the-fact documentary about a strange outbreak which wiped out an entire seaside town, quite cleverly using found footage from many different sources (cell-phone videos, police dashcam footage, news reports etc.) to push the narrative. Mostly body-horror and the like, but there are a few well-executed scares and it's just about scientifically convincing enough to make you think twice about going in the water.
Leaving D.C. - a much more subdued, and seemingly zero-budget, film about a bloke who's left the city for a secluded house in the woods. Of course, no sooner has he done so, spooky things start. Told in the form of video blogs to his OCD support group in the city, which eventually becomes kind of eerie in and of itself as you start to wonder whether anyone's even watching. Well-performed and some nice creepy bits, doesn't stick the landing. Vastly improved by mentally replacing his OCD group with Cookd and Bombd. Bad Ben is a similarly zero-budget effort about one bloke in a house.
Savageland - another pseudo-documentary more than found footage, but worth a look. About a small border town in Arizona which falls victim to a mass killing spree. The suspect is caught, however his photographs tell a different story about what happened. A couple of decently creepy bits, and even though it really whacks you over the head with it, it does have a go at social commentary in a way which isn't too common in this subgenre.
So there's a few for you.
