Tag: found footage

The Blair Witch Project A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Blair Witch Project (1999) – A Movie A Day 2021 #37

The Blair Witch Project poster

It was kind of a rough day, so I decided to pick a movie to watch that I knew I’d love. Something of a comfort movie. I have a lot of standbys that I go to depending on my mood, but I decided to pick an older favorite I hadn’t seen in a long time but had randomly been on my mind recently. Today’s movie of the day is The Blair Witch Project, a movie that I consider to be one of the best of its breed. 

Most of you reading this probably already know what The Blair Witch Project is about, but I’ll go ahead and recap it just in case. The movie is framed as actual film and video footage found deep in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. The footage was supposedly shot by three film students, Heather, Josh, and Mike, as they were gathering footage for a documentary about a local legend, the Blair Witch. The trio went missing during their trip into the woods and were never found, and the footage we see in the movie is supposed to show us their final days before becoming a part of the legend they were there to investigate.

One of the reasons The Blair Witch gives me such good feelings undoubtedly has to with with the fact that I experienced the amazing marketing buildup to the movie as it was happening. I discovered the existence of the movie not by seeing a traditional movie poster, but by coming across a “missing” flyer hanging up at a small independent theater. I was intrigued. There was also a web site created for the movie (which is still online!) that has images from the movie plus tons of “evidence” and extra videos portrayed as real-life interviews and news footage about the missing students. Even though I knew it was just a movie, the length the filmmakers went to allow viewers to suspend their disbelief is admirable. So before I even saw the movie, I was already invested in the characters and the story in a big way.

The other big reason The Blair Witch Project gives me such good feelings is because I remember what it felt like seeing it in a theater for the first time. It was such a unique experience in a lot of ways. For one thing, it had to be the first time I’d seen a movie in the 4:3 aspect ratio in a theater, and that helped add to the realness of the experience. Also, the quality of the footage was all over the place which, again, adds to the realness and the uniqueness of the theatrical experience. Shots were out of focus and fuzzy, big moments often happened off screen, and the ever-present “shaky cam” that I know so many people dislike all worked wonders on me. I was enthralled from beginning to end. I was so excited after leaving the theater because it was such a new and fun experience. 

I know a lot of people look down on found footage for various reasons, and I get it (mostly), but when its done right, it can be fantastic. For my tastes, The Blair Witch Project is done right, and that starts with how it was made. Now, I’m not trying to write an essay on The Blair Witch Project or found footage movies in general, but here’s a brief explanation of why the movie works so well for me. As I understand it, all of the footage was shot by the three main actors as they spent a few days and nights effectively isolated in the woods. They were given drop boxes with clues on where to go next and secret guidelines for how their characters should react in certain situations, but otherwise they were left on their own to shoot footage and improvise the scenes. Crew members were kept hidden from the actors during the day, and the crew would increasingly harass the actors at night as the Blair Witch got closer and closer. It sounds like an excruciating ordeal, but it made for a movie that feels more realistic than most other found footage films. 

One of my biggest pet peeves about found footage is when the action is too perfect on screen. Like when the camera pans over at just the right moment to perfectly frame some big action or line of dialogue. Or when it seems clear that scenes were done repeatedly because of cuts between shots that are supposed to be in the same moment, yet the footage feels disconnected within the space of where the characters are. I get why most movies do that, filmmakers want important moments to feel important, but it makes it feel less real to me. Important moments are missed all the time in real life, and people panicking are going to miss more than they see. Stuff is missed all the time in The Blair Witch Project, and not seeing what’s in the woods yet hearing the panic in the voices of the actors as they flail around with their cameras is far scarier in my opinion. That said, if you get motion sickness from shaky cam, maybe skip this movie. 

I could go on about why I love The Blair Witch Project so much, but in the end it really all comes down to the fact that I think it’s a well-made movie that does exactly what it sets out to do. It feels real for the most part, and I love the gradual buildup to the final few scenes. I’ve seen a bunch of found footage movies over the years, many I enjoyed and many not so much, but The Blair Witch Project will always be in the upper echelon of the format. 

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Curse of Aurore A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Curse of Aurore (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #22

Curse of Aurore poster

I’ve been doing this A Movie A Day 2021 challenge for just over three weeks now, and you know what I haven’t watched yet? I haven’t watched any brand new horror movies. Part of the fun of this challenge is clearing out my backlog and discovering movies from the past that I’ve missed out on, but in case you didn’t know, I adore horror movies. I even have a web site about them (among other related things): The Last Theater. So yeah, I should be using part of my challenge to watch lots and lots of new scary movies so I can keep up better with modern times, and so I have something to write/talk about on my site (The Last Theater). With that in mind, I watched Curse of Aurore, a horror movie that was released on VOD on January 12, 2021. As the first horror movie released in 2021 that I’ve seen, I enjoyed it pretty well. 

Curse of Aurore is a found-footage horror movie. More specifically, it’s a haunted-house-style movie framed as real footage being shown to us by a YouTuber. I’ll get back the YouTube aspect in a bit, but the main film follows three independent, no-budget filmmakers who are in rural Quebec, Canada to figure out what they want their next movie to be about. Lena, the star of their productions, is staying in a house owned by her family, and she is joined by Aaron, the director, and Kevin, the guy that does everything else. Lena has learned about a local legend that she thinks would be great for a scary movie, and she excitedly pulls Aaron and Kevin along as she tries to dig up more information from the locals.

The legend Lena is chasing is that of Aurore Gagnon, a girl who was killed by her step-mother in 1920 after years of horrible abuse. The tale of Aurore Gagnon is a real-life story (with at least two movies being made about her life), and in the world of Curse of Aurore, supernatural occurrences have been happening for years in the town where young Aurore died. Things get creepier and creepier as Lena, Aaron, and Kevin continue to investigate, and after a while it seems as if their investigations have attracted some unwanted attention.

The story is told in a way that is not unexpected for a supernatural found-footage movie. There are minor scares here and there throughout the first hour or more, and the real action kicks off in the final few minutes. It’s a structure that feels natural in a movie that is supposed to be showing us real people actually filming extraordinary things. Like I said when I wrote about The Last Exorcism, if things got crazy right away, logically the camera would turn off and everyone would just go home. But the writing in Curse of Aurore is good enough to convince me that, for the most part, these people would continue to record even when things started to go poorly for them. 

In a movie like this where we’re stuck with essentially just three people for about an hour and a half, it’s important to create interesting characters and dialogue. Maybe it’s because Lena, Aaron, and Kevin are no-budget filmmakers with a passion for movies (which I can relate to), but I enjoyed getting to know these people who I was fairly certain would not be making it to the final credits. They have good banter, and I believed that they were friends even when their personalities began to clash. There’s also a scene towards the middle of the movie that I really enjoyed where Lena breaks down a bit and laments about pouring so much effort into making movies only to have no one see them. I think anyone who tries to do something creative can relate to that on some level, though I do wonder if that was somewhat of a cathartic scene for the people who were actually making Curse of Aurore. Well hey, I saw your movie, and I liked it. 

It did feel like there were some red herrings and dead ends plot-wise in the first part of the movie, but in found-footage, I think a lot of that can be attributed to giving the movie a more natural feeling. People say and do things for no good reason all the time. As long as that sort of thing isn’t overdone, I think it can add to the charm of the “real life” footage. And of course, some of the stuff that was said and done was for setting a tone, and some of it made more sense later on as character building. 

As for the supernatural aspects of the movie, I mostly enjoyed the way they were handled. If you’ve seen Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, you’ll know that it can turn into something of a game when you’re looking in the background of every scene for when you might see a ghost. Curse of Aurore has a similar approach to a lot of its earlier scares. The camera will catch things that the characters miss, and the first time I thought I saw something I went back to watch the scene again. Some of the ghostly images are pretty obvious if you’re paying attention, but some of them are very subtle and extremely quick. There’s a fair amount of replay value in Curse of Aurore just to go back and try to find more haunting images. 

The ghostly things we see are used sparingly which I very much appreciate. I’m sure the budget didn’t allow for elaborate effects to be added to a bunch of scenes, and I think that works in the movie’s favor. Some of the images do feel unnatural in a computer-like way, but they’re supposed to be unnatural anyway. Well, supernatural which is pretty close to unnatural. Overall, the added images were effective more than they weren’t, and they never brought me out of the movie. I liked them, and they were done very well. 

The plot did involve some amazing coincidences in order to keep things moving along, but once the movie is over, you could make an argument for the “coincidences” being orchestrated by someone or something. I can’t say anything more without major spoilers though, so I’ll leave it at that. And as for the resolution of the story, even though it wasn’t dissimilar to a number of similarly themed movies, I though it was well done. Again, there would be spoilers if I said more, so you’ll just have to watch the movie or send me a message or something if you want to know what I mean. 

I’ve already said a few times now that Curse of Aurore feels like other movies of its type in many ways, but I don’t mean that as a bad thing. I’ve said it before that if a movie is well made, then it’s a good movie even if I’ve basically seen it before. I mean, genre movies are called genre movies for a reason. They follow a familiar pattern and deliver generally expected plot progressions and stories. That’s how a movie fits into a genre. I think that point is lost on like half the people that reviewed Curse of Aurore on IMDB. Anyway, I won’t get into a rant about genre or random people reviewing movies online. I’ll save that for another time. I guess my point here is, don’t believe pretty much any of the written reviews on IMDB. Just believe me. Or don’t. But I do try to be fair.

Anyway.

I enjoyed Curse of Aurore. The one thing I didn’t care for as much was the framing device they used. It’s similar to what I wrote about An American Haunting, if you’re going to frame your movie with something to the extent where the final shots of the movie aren’t going to involve any of your main characters, there needs to be a good reason for it. The framing here focuses on a YouTuber (Casey Nolan of Mind Seed TV) with a horror channel opening a blind box he bought on the dark web. He shows us some of the items in the box, and at first I thought it was kind of clever. He pulls out this red beanie with a hole in it, and when we go to the found-footage, we see one of the characters wearing the beanie in the first scene. Will we see how the beanie got a hole in it? Spoiler, we don’t. Another thing the YouTuber found in the box is a doll with a thumb drive attached to it. The footage we’re watching for the main part of the movie is supposed to be the video found on the drive. 

So, I do like the idea of trying to frame the footage in a way that might explain why we are seeing what is essentially an edited down version of what was “really” filmed. Many found-footage movies leave me with the nagging question of, if this is supposed to be real, then who found all the cameras or tapes or discs or whatever, took the time to edit it, and then sent it out for the world to see? Having the YouTuber show it to us answers half of the question (he’s showing it to us), but the half of the question about who put the footage on the drive and sold it on the dark web is left unanswered. I don’t need an answer for that really (ambiguity can be good), but the way the footage ends really seems like anyone who might’ve had access to it wouldn’t want it to get out. That’s a small complaint though.

I also didn’t necessarily care for how the YouTuber reacted at the end of the movie. After watching the footage with us, he says he’s done and just walks away. That’s fine, but clearly he still did multiple takes with different camera setups, he edited the footage, and he still released “real” crimes for the world to see. It felt weird to me, and I didn’t care for that being the thing the movie left me with. I would’ve rather ended the movie with Lena, Aaron, and Kevin. But now that I think about it, if the whole YouTuber thing is supposed to be a comment on the irresponsibility of some YouTubers putting out stuff that they shouldn’t, then I take back everything I just wrote. It’s a brilliant ending (though I’d still rather be left with Lena, Aaron, and Kevin).

If you’re looking for a pretty good horror movie to start 2021 with and enjoy some supernatural found-footage, I’d recommend Curse of Aurore. It’s a fun movie with some creepy moments and satisfying finish. You can find it for rent on all sorts of streaming services including, yes, YouTube. I watched it on Amazon, but it’s cheap anywhere, so give the trailer a watch and go from there. 

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The Last Exorcism A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Last Exorcism (2010) – A Movie A Day 2021 #19

The Last Exorcism poster

Found footage movies have a bad reputation. Ever since the subgenre’s popularization with The Blair Witch Project back in 1999, general audiences have tended to look down on found footage movies. Granted, the proliferation of hastily made found footage horror movies in the ensuing decades has set the bar pretty low, but the when the style is done well, the resulting movies can be great. In my opinion, The Last Exorcism is one of those great found footage movies. 

The Last Exorcism follows Reverend Cotton Marcus, a charismatic preacher with a flair for showmanship. Marcus believes that by preaching he can perform a valuable mental service for those who find comfort in religion, but events in his life have caused him to no longer believe in the spiritual side of what he does. Marcus has lost his faith in God, and that lack of faith has caused him to re-think his stance on some of the more archaic practices in his religion. Specifically, stories of children being harmed and killed by modern-day exorcisms have led to Marcus feeling the need to expose exorcisms as fraudulent and unnecessarily dangerous. So with that in mind, Marcus invites a two-person documentary crew to follow him as he performs one final exorcism with the goal of showing that there are no gods or demons involved, just people with serious mental problems. 

The setup for the exorcism itself is pretty standard as far as these things go. The person possessed is a young girl who has been living an isolated life in rural Louisiana with her extremely overprotective father. The girl, Nell, is sweet and naïve about the ways of the world, and it becomes apparent that her father, Louis, has been raising her with a strict and fundamental understanding of Christianity. Nell also has a brother, Caleb, who is protective of his sister in a different way than their father. Caleb sees the danger in his father’s way of thinking, and he blames Louis for Nell’s problems. That anger is evident right away when Marcus and his crew arrive at Louis’s house, and it sets up some great tension between Caleb and Marcus very early in the movie. From there, Marcus gets to know the family and goes about his fake exorcism. Things begin to get out of control though, and there may be more to Nell’s problems than Marcus was prepared for. 

So yeah, the setup isn’t super original, but the difference between The Last Exorcism and a bunch of other exorcism movies in in the stylistic approach and in the characters. First of all, I think found footage is a great format for a movie like this. I’ve seen some actual documentaries on exorcisms (there’s even one on Netflix right now called The Devil and Father Amorth made by William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist), and the pseudo-documentary style of the early portion of The Last Exorcism feel very similar to a lot of those. Of course with something like this I always end up questioning the logic of having the footage edited so nicely if it were footage that had actually been found somewhere, but that aside, the filmmakers used the format extremely effectively. 

As I said, the first part of the movie feels very much like a documentary. We get to know Reverend Marcus and his motivations, and he comes across as likable and sympathetic. The actor playing Marcus, Patrick Fabian, does a fantastic job. He infuses a certain degree of smarm and sarcasm into Marcus, but never so much that you start to dislike him. There are enough funny moments that you start to smile with him, and there are enough quiet moments that you begin to understand that he’s taking a huge personal risk by doing what he’s doing. Turning his back on the church could have dire consequences for his family, but he’s doing what he believes is right. All of that comes across very effectively through Patrick Fabian’s performance. 

After Marcus and his crew get to the farmhouse, the tension begins to rise. Part of that is thanks to Caleb, played by the great Caleb Landry Jones, and part of the tension increases naturally as Nell’s situation starts to unravel before our eyes. The found footage style really works to add an immediacy to that tension. Not only are you right there with everyone in the house with the chance that some very dark forces will be looking right at the camera/at you, but as the tension and action ramp up, the cameraman becomes less careful with his shooting style. Yes, there is a decent amount of shaky cam in the later stages of the movie, but that’s never really bothered me. To me, the shaky cam is part of the effectiveness of the style. We’re not supposed to see everything clearly, and that adds to the terror. 

In the later stages of the movie you might start to question why the camera is still recording, but the movie does an admirable job of setting up everyone’s motivations enough so that most questions of that type have more or less been addressed. Well, maybe not at the very end of the movie, but I think a little suspension of disbelief is warranted given the strong setups earlier in the movie. 

I’ve already talked about how good Reverend Marcus is, but the rest of the cast is great as well. Nell is played by Ashley Bell, and she really gets into her role. Nell is rather childlike when we first meet her, which makes sense given her background, but she is also very convincing when she goes to some of her darker places. Caleb Landry Jones plays Nell’s brother Caleb like a bomb about to go off. He seems dangerous right from the start, but once the family drama begins to come to light, you might be more on his side that you previously thought. And the father, Louis, is played very well by Louis Herthum. Louis is strong and stubborn, but there’s also a deep sadness driving him forward. He seems like he’s about to go over the edge, but what that means for everyone in the house remains unclear at first. 

So yeah, I love The Last Exorcism. I’ve seen it a few times now, and I enjoy it every time. Like many found footage movies, the action and terror are built up to, so the most exciting bits are towards the end of the movie, but that feels more realistic to me. If you have scary, life-threatening stuff going on early in a found footage movie, then I have a harder time believing that the people involved wouldn’t just leave. In The Last Exorcism, I understand why the characters do what they do even if I don’t agree with all of their decisions. The writing and the acting make me believe that they believe they are doing the right thing pretty much all the time. But yeah, if you’re not into a slower buildup for a series of payoffs later on, then this movie might not be for you. But if you’re looking for a good found footage movie with some memorable characters and scenes, then The Last Exorcism should be on your list. I’ve read reviews where people say they don’t like the ending (I’m phrasing that way more politely than they usually do), but I think the ending, bonkers as it is, was well done and was foreshadowed in a rather sensible fashion. That’s all I’ll say about it though. Check it out, then we can talk about that ending. By the way, don’t watch this trailer if you don’t want spoilers…

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