Horror films built around found footage are nothing new – look at Cannibal Holocaust, for instance, and look back at 19th century/early 20th century horror short fiction, which sometimes took the form of letters or discovered diary entries – but it wasn’t until now that I felt like it was its own genre. But with Paranormal Activity and The Fourth Kind both in theaters, with Rec 2 getting ready to hit theaters and with a brand new found footage film gearing up, I’d say that these films constitute their own category.
The new film is The Vatican Tapes, and it seems to take its cue from a scene cut out of the film festival version of Paranormal Activity. The Vatican Tapes will purport to be the leaked video of an exorcism gone wrong, so expect vomiting, swearing and head spinning – all the good shit Linda Blair pioneered decades ago.
What makes The Vatican Tapes more interesting than most is the fact that it’s being directed by James Marsh, who directed the amazing documentary Man on Wire, about Phillipe Petite’s wirewalk between the Twin Towers back in the 1970s. Marsh is no stranger to fiction films, having directed The King, a weird ass movie starring Gael Garcia Bernal, and Red Riding 1980, the best of the trilogy (my review coming soon!). And with his doc background he’ll probably have a better handle on how to make the footage look ‘found.’
How long will this trend continue? Audiences are shockingly gullible – so many people thought that The Fourth Kind was based on a true story despite Universal really doing the bare minimum amount of work selling that aspect – and they continue to love thinking obviously faked stuff on YouTube is real, so it could go on for a while.
Here’s an Islamic exorcism… caught on tape!