Fifty Horror Clichés That Need to Die in a Fire

#23: Found Footage

  The found footage trope is a more recent addition to the horror genre, all thanks to the creation of a video camera's ability to play back already filmed content.  Extremely popular horror franchises such as The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity use the imperfections of regularly filmed content to dish out more relatable scary movies, making the audience feel as if they are watching a video tape created by a friend or relative.  The characters in the films feel a lot more realistic to the audience, with shown imperfections we can more easily relate to.  Through the imperfections of the video camera, the horror in the background gains a more mysterious vibe to it, making it much more scary as compared to a regular jump scare.  Plus, these movies are very inexpensive to film, saving the studios producing these movies buckets full of money and creates a safety net in case the movie fails in the box office, thus not giving the filmmakers not too massive of a money loss.  There are a lot of positive perks to using the found footage trope for the horror genre, giving the average person even the potential to create scary content using the cameras they have at home.

  So if there are so many positives to using the found footage trope for horror content, why am I talking about it here?  Don't the positives and creative freedom outweigh the potential negatives that could be created by accident?  While with the right filmmakers and writers found footage movies can be great, the vast majority of them are plagued with a huge problem; filler. 
 
  For any potential writer out there, the word "filler" is equivalent to the f-bomb, and is a complete no-no when it comes to crafting any story.  Action has to constantly take place in the story in order for the audience's engagement to stay strong.  Adding any unnecessary scenes or plot lines into the story is a guaranteed recipe to completely bore the audience you are trying to engage.  Just ask anime fans who have watched long running series such as Fairy Tale or One Piece, who use filler as a way to dish out episodes when the manga they are based off of are lacking new content for them to use.

  In found footage movies, filler dominates most of the plot due to the director's desire to make the film seem as realistic as possible.  While this can craft strong characterization, using more realism most of the time leads to adding in random content that might be spliced in-between the footage supposedly being shown.  For most found footage movies, this equals pointless scenes filled with conversations and interactions that the characters would probably go through in their everyday lives.  This really snuffs out the building tension you are trying to create for the film, making the final scare a lot less worth the wait once the audience finishes going through thirty scenes of filler.  By this time, the audience is really bored and just wants to finish the movie so they can move on to something else.  They are not going to be filled with the fear you are trying to achieve.

  Paranormal Activity particularly suffers from an overuse of filler, with almost all the scenes outside the nighttime filming sessions being overstuffed with it.  While the film does make up for this a little bit by using some of these scenes to give the audience a better sense of the characters, this does not fix the lost tension created by displaying these everyday moments.  There is a reason that after the first film a lot of people found all the other installments of the franchise to be completely dull.  The films were repeating their issues with filler, snuffing out any new types of scares the sequels may have tried to introduce.  The Paranormal Activity films are a strong example as to why filler is such a strong problem in found footage movies.

  The only reasonable way to combat filler in these films is to crunch together the important parts of the footage, which can be both a blessing and a curse.  While putting together the plot important details of the film preserves the scary tension being built up throughout the movie, it additionally takes away many elements of the realism.  The characters unfortunately will not feel as realistic as before, losing some of their relatable aspects by scenes depicting everyday events no longer being available.  To some, this could reduce the characters to those from any other horror movie.  This can be combated if you could somehow depict these relatable scenes with signs of the tension you want to build up, but doing so is easier said than done.  If you plan on attempting to go this route, Cloverfield is a strong example of doing just that.  There is a reason so many people find the film haunting with the found footage elements only helping to preserve the fear being built up.

  Found footage films in all seriousness are a trope of horror that is a mixed bag.  While it presents many with creative freedom and the potential to make the scares seem more real, found footage also has the problem of being overwhelmed most of the time with filler.