5 Of The Best And Worst Recent Found Footage Movies

Worst – Area 407

Area 407 is an inexcusably lazy horror movie, relying on nothing but your own imagination for entertainment. I might be wrong, but isn’t that the filmmaker’s job? To bring our dreams to life? To conjure up some fantastical world through the magic of cinema? Nope, not Area 407! Here’s the gist – a plane crashes in the middle of nowhere, there are survivors, one has a video camera, and the camera is left running while an escape (from wherever they are) is attempted. Here’s where a monster enters, and people start dying one by one. Don’t get excited – an almost entirely improvised production comes off as wooden, hammy, unfocused, chaotic, and most of all, unwatchable.

Again, glaring cinematic flubs aside, there’s a very specific reason why Area 407 is on the tail end of this list, and that’s because found footage filmmaking is used as a cheap ploy to mask their small budget. Don’t get me wrong, some indie films are able to mask low-budgets through creativity and pure talent, but all Area 407 does is turn the camera away from anything that would require special effects, taking the term “out of sight, out of mind” far too literal. Character deaths are reduced to nothing but disappearing acts, as anything worth value happens off screen – mostly involving the “monster” (inexplicably a dinosaur).

Proper found footage films display even the more gruesome, unbelievable moments on camera as to further the story and build a universe where people have superpowers, zombies run amok, dinosaurs chase people – etc.