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I find that found footage movies almost always psychologically and emotionally distance me from the stories being told – like reading one of John Barth’s short tales in which he uses “ ” marks in multiple repeats to make everything a quote of a quote of a quote ad infinitum. They seem weirdly less immediate to me – deliberately skewed with an artifice of digression and multiplicity. An effort to lure a viewing into feeling that formal technique has been relegated to the background in favor of raw emotions – but these films, of course, rely on technique and a rigorous style much more that Hitchcock ever did. That said, I like many of them – starting with some films from many years ago like “The Anderson Tapes” which is certainly a bit within a genre. “Man Bites Dog” is also good. “The Blair Witch Project” simply didn’t scare me – and I did see it in a theater. “Cloverfield” played for me like a snuff film – let’s watch the monster kill everyone. Meh. The advertising campaign was a certifiable hoot, though. I’ve yet to see any of the “Paranormal” films – or “Troll” which is, I see, available via Netflix streaming. V/H/S was a gigantic bore to me – it was just a carbon copy of a carbon copy put through a grinder of the old Amicus anthology films like “Asylum” “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors” “Torture Garden” “The House That Dripped Blood” etc. It was kind of fun seeing what the New Kids In Town group of directors did with all of those old stories – but the film was, by design, fairly unwatchable – in keeping with the spirit of the film I kept fast forwarding through the deadly dull bits (of which there were many to pad the film out to 2 freaking hours) to get to the scares and gore. None of the tales in V/H/S ended up having any surprises for me – a few minutes into each and the outcomes seemed extraordinarily obvious. I did enjoy some of the gore – but the splatter, for me at least, also fell victim to the distancing technique of the degraded video style and didn’t have much of a punch. The wraparound tale also just seemed a desperate ploy – a film-school lurch toward coherence – that the film didn’t need. It added nothing interesting or scary – but again these are all just my own personal opinions.
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Posted: |
Feb 10, 2013 - 11:10 PM
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By: |
Mr Greg
(Member)
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It's really no more fake than any other way of telling a story....I know what you mean, but to me it's no less distracting, or removed, than - for example - the suggestion of cameras capturing Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, or a point-of-view shot of a shark swimming...it's not the technique, it's how it done....well, for me anyway. There are plenty of bad examples, just as there are with any genre, but I think there are good ones too... Of course, like any other kind of film, it will always have its fans and will always have its detractors, and rightly so. I didn't know about S-VHS - bring it on!
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