Found footage films you liked/found enjoyable.

[FAST6191]

As ever I tried for a descriptive title. Still found footage is (was?) a popular concept for reasons I have never quite been able to figure out, though most likely because it can be quite cheap to do. For some reason the ratio good to bad compared to other styles of film is not good though.

I am looking for good ones then, also some discussion would be good. I will just go three for now.

Frankenstein's Army
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1925435/
Great monster design and a plot with some fair twists and turns.

Quarantine/REC
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1082868/ / http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1038988/
I have yet to see the Non English sequels but the originals did well.

Troll Hunter.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/
It seems several of my selections at least did not start out in English (give or take Frankenstein's Army opting to do quite a bit in it). However that does stop this from being great, supposedly it is even more funny if you have seen several of the characters in more comedic roles that they usually do but it is great otherwise.

 

[Clydefrosch]

i still dont get what found footage means. do you mean low budget? or movies that are often filmed by shaky camcorders?

 

[FAST6191]

There are often elements of that. Usually though it is supposed to be where one of the characters (or several) have cameras and are shooting handheld/shoulder mounted, sometimes also some security camera footage is an option. This then leaves a record of events for someone else to "find" after the main characters have the events of the film happen to them (quite often everybody dies/goes insane).

 

[dario14]

Chronicle (2012) was awesome. I felt like it was an interesting use of found footage and really compelling. Also why is Dane DeHaan so good at being creepy?

 

[FAST6191]

Being almost a shot for shot remake I can not count Quarantine, however yeah for US driven films it was mainly Chronicle and End of Watch that stopped me from writing the US off completely. That said it was coming off watching some of the later Romero zombie films in fairly short order.

 

[Hyro-Sama]

Chronicle. Best found footage film I've watched to date.

 

[Foxi4]

Found Footage films are a guilty pleasure - whether we like to admit that or not, they're never actually "good" - they're all bad by design.

 

[Gahars]

I'm not a big fan of these, honestly. I can appreciate how the makers are often working under tight budgets, but a lot of the time it's just an excuse for shitty cinematography and a lack of serious scares. "We've got nothing to show, Johnny, so just pretend you've got epilepsy!"

Chronicle is a great movie, definitely, but I'd say it's great in spite of the found footage aspect, not because of it.

 

[FAST6191]

Chronicle is a great movie, definitely, but I'd say it's great in spite of the found footage aspect, not because of it.

Of the films I mentioned in a positive I think that applies to all of them.

 

[tbgtbg]

Diary of the Dead is actually not bad. It's no Dawn or Night, but I'd say it's up there with Day, better than Land. Survival, Diary's direct sequel, that's the one that's utter garbage. But Diary's the only one that's "found footage" style, and I enjoyed it well enough.

 

[Thirty3Three]

What the Bleep: Down the Rabbit Hole.

 

[nando]

Found film is a shitty concept and simply unenjoyable to. Even ones with good stories are still grating to watch.

 

[Gahars]

Diary of the Dead is actually not bad. It's no Dawn or Night, but I'd say it's up there with Day, better than Land. Survival, Diary's direct sequel, that's the one that's utter garbage. But Diary's the only one that's "found footage" style, and I enjoyed it well enough.

Excuse me, but Day of the Dead is the high point of the franchise and I will fight you for sullying its good name.

The only good thing about Diary of the Dead was the Amish guy. It's a shame that the whole movie couldn't have just revolved around his various adventures and exploits.

 

[Ozito]

Didn't read the whole thread, so it might already have been named.

I really loved Cloverfield, very intriguing movie!
I recommend it wholeheartedly!

 

[FAST6191]

Diary of the Dead is actually not bad. It's no Dawn or Night, but I'd say it's up there with Day, better than Land. Survival, Diary's direct sequel, that's the one that's utter garbage. But Diary's the only one that's "found footage" style, and I enjoyed it well enough.

Normally I am inclined to let people enjoy what they wish to enjoy but I am afraid I am going to have to point at the door here. If you had positive things to say about Survival it would be working on banned from the site right now.

Now the real question is where you put the dawn remake.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Cloverfield was goddamn awful.

Now that I think about it, although I haven't seen a lot of found footage movies, I don't think I liked any of them. I saw REC a while ago and it was... okay I guess? The ending was fucking awful though.

 

[cracker]

Afflicted was pretty good. Sxtape was soso but the lead female was damn hot! I liked Cloverfield a lot. At times it almost felt like an FMV game. Every FF title is going to have a lot of disagreement of how good it is. This is partially due to nearly all of them being horrors so they are inherently heavily scrutinized.

 

[Haymose]

Found footage is my guilty pleasure genre. I would recommend any of these:

V/H/S 1&2
The Sacrament
Apollo 18
Grave Encounters
The Banshee Chapter
The Last Exorcist

Silent House is not found footage but filmed as one continuos shot. It's a Spanish film but also has an English remake.

 

[Ozito]

Cloverfield was goddamn awful.

Now that I think about it, although I haven't seen a lot of found footage movies, I don't think I liked any of them. I saw REC a while ago and it was... okay I guess? The ending was fucking awful though.

It seems like this genre is not your cup of anything, REC (the original spanish one) had me screaming like a girl of excitement/frustration!
REC2 was ok and the third had me like .. "wtf did I just watch?". The director (Paco Plaza) just turned the third one into crap.

Apparently there's a fourth one coming too, I can't say I'm as excited as I was with the coming of the second movie.

-EDIT-
Haven't seen the remakes though, not planing to do it either since remakes never tend to be any good.

 

[DinohScene]

Trolljegeren AKA Trollhunter is a real good film.
At the end it was a bit obvious CGI but in the beginning it really felt like trolls where actually real.
That is till the point they got larger and larger.

Well that and I like foreign films over English ones.