“Why don’t you just drop the damn camera and run?!”

Since the early days of found footage, back in the age of Blair Witch Project, the question has remained the same: in almost all of these films, there comes a point where the audience is asking “Why?” When you’re being chased through the woods, or stalked in a darkened house, or trapped in a closet, why do you keep shooting. Why not drop the equipment and fight or screen or run or something that doesn’t involve carefully framing key elements of the action?

A precious few films have come up with decent  solutions. In Quarantine (and [REC] before it) the camera and its infrared filter was the only source of light in a pitch-black house. In Chronicle, one of the three twisted superheroes becomes obsessed with filming, and then the viewpoint smoothly segues to “assembled” footage of cell phones, traffic cams and security cameras. But for most of the rest of the apparently endless stream of FoFoos? Come on: The Last Exorcism? Drop the camera. Paranormal Activiy: The Marked Ones? After a promising start: no excuse.  All sequels it [REC]? Give it up. (Actually, in the mostly awful [REC3], they actually do give it up and go to straight narrative after the first reel. And on and on and on.

It looks as if Infliction, the new FoFoo from Jack Thomas Smith, which is going the full Blair Witch route, claiming to be legitimate, no-shit, swear to go footage from the killing spree of two friends, who seem as intent on filming every second of their home invasion and slash-party as they are in doing the murdering itself. That could work. It’s not floating cameras or anything but it could work.  Get some more unsettling information at the Infliction website here. Meanwhile, here’s the trailer…

Any other good/bad found footage films? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!