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Elisabeth Rappe

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Elisabeth Rappe is a regular contributor to Film.com, CHUD, and The Spectator's arts blog. She spends her off-time with comic books, her pug, Elliot, video games, and Clint Eastwood movies.

The Most Overplayed Genre In Recent Years

Elisabeth Rappe January 12, 2012

The Blair Witch Project

Oh, my stars and garters. How does one pick just one overdone genre in a Hollywood that grows increasingly stale?  In the age of the remake, can you really call anything with a shred of originality overexposed? Well, sure. But it’s still awfully hard to pick one.

Some might favor the superhero flick, which it’s popular to groan about loudly and theatrically about as soon as someone mentions The Avengers. (Watch them edge closer to the computer to watch the trailer, though.) While there’s been a lot of them in recent years, I’m going to give them a pass, because comic book fans have been waiting ages to see these stories on the big screen.  They’ve also inspired many people to seek out comic conventions and comic stores, and as I have friends in that industry, I see that as a positive.  (Besides, I still want my one really good Wolverine movie.)

Another choice might be the insipid romantic comedy ensemble, à la Valentine’s Day or New Year’s Day. But I think that’s already burned itself out. There’s only so many holidays love can flourish, and only so many actors who will share billing without clawing one another’s eyes out.

No, I think the most overdone genre has to be the “found footage” or “mockumentary” movie that’s done the rounds of horror and thriller so often that it’s exhausting.  (Frankly, it’s ripe for a really vicious satire and I can’t believe one hasn’t been done.) Just looking at Wikipedia’s list – a list I suspect may be incomplete – makes my eyeballs ache from all the shaky-cam that’s on it. And just look at how many of them there were in 2010 and 2011 alone!

It’s easy to understand why there’s so many of them. They’re easy to conceive, cheap to shoot, and they draw in audiences with a massive question mark of whether or not it actually happened. Paranormal Activity worked because it appeared to be genuine, a Ghost Hunters Live special released into theaters.

But here’s the rub – that hook doesn’t work anymore. I’m amazed it worked for Paranormal Activity, since The Blair Witch Project gave the game away back in 1999. The film worked primarily because the Internet was still in its infancy, and until the film really exploded, you didn’t know whether or not such things happened in Burkittsville. (In fact, I was more unsettled by the television documentary The Curse of the Blair Witch than I was by the movie.  I was very convinced by those woodcuts and artistic interpretations of the witch. In retrospect, it’s painfully fake.) With Google, it’s painfully obvious to discover The Last Exorcism or The Devil Inside is pure hoax, no matter how studios and marketing try to convince the gullible otherwise.    Claiming your mockumentary is real makes your product simultaneously stupid and pretentious.

Because the “found footage” genre is so cheap and attention grabbing, I suspect we’re condemned to suffer a few more years of it before it finally suckers its last viewer. Oh, how I long for that day. Don’t you? Do you think it can possibly come sooner than 2013? (Glancing at the YouTube comments for The Curse of the Blair Witch, it may never come. Blair Witch is still hooking people more than a decade later!)

And once it does, what do you think will replace it?  My pick for the next overexposed genre is the 300 ripoff.  Immortals may have come and gone with a whimper, but Spartacus: Blood and Sand appears to still be going strong, and 300: The Battle for Artemisia looms on the horizon.  Sword-and-sandal-and-green-screen is probably too expensive to be as used and abused as often as mockumentary, but I think it’s well on its way, and we’re destined to be buried in fairy tales, historical bloodbaths, and comic book adaptations that spray the digital blood, bronze everyone in the same shade of sepia, and blast our ears with wordless choirs and electric guitars. Remember, Blair Witch was in 1999, and it took a decade for that phony genre to reach its zenith. We’ve still got time for the Zack Snyder stylings to truly seep in.


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comments
  • http://daysofdocs.com/ Dan Schindel

    You’ll know it’s reached the apotheosis when some smart filmmaker comes along and makes some kind of deconstruction of the genre (like it makes fun of our obsession with capturing everything in life or something. I dunno, I’m not a smart filmmaker). Then we can look forward to a decade or so of obsolescence, until it gets revived. And on and on the cycle will go.

  • http://rockets-and-robots.blogspot.com TheRocketRobot

    Would you also consider the comedy mockumentaries within this genre of “found footage/mockumentaries”? From Christopher Guest to “The Office” to “Parks & Rec” – is it because these are actually good we don’t mind them so much? And in the “actually pretty decent found footage film” category (admittedly, very, very slim) “Troll Hunter” was a wonderful addition. And “Chronicle” looks interesting too. 

    I guess with the sub-genre of “found footage horror” there’s not really a lot of mileage past the “is it real?” question (hint: the answer is always “no”). The superhero film, for example, offers a greater chance to deconstruct and reconstruct the trappings of the genre and keep things relatively fresh. Oh, hey! “Chronicle” – a found footage superhero film. 

    Anyway, this is just me blathering now. While I think the found footage genre is done to gruesome bloody death in horror, it really comes down to what filmmakers do with it. Perhaps the time is right for a found footage rom-com?

  • Matt

    Overplayed, but still amazingly profitable. Like reality TV, they’re so cheap to make (poor film quaklity?-check, unrecognizable talent-check, potential for myriad sequels/spin-offs?- time to cash the check (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun).

    Funny you mention the teli-doc for Blair Witch, I remember that scaring me as a kid/teen and thinking I shouldn’t be so creeped out by it…

  • http://twitter.com/ElisabethRappe Elisabeth Rappe

    I would argue Christopher Guest’s stuff is very, very much above the “found footage” genre. He delves so deeply into the subcultures he’s lampooning that it just becomes something else altogether.  I don’t think very many “found footage” movies involve that kind of world building, for lack of a better word. (Not that he had to invent ANY of his worlds — but he does create an entire history of the people he puts in those places, so it’s still pretty incredible!) 

    As for tv shows, I think Community’s spoof of it was pretty much spot on. :P Though Parks & Rec is still working. The Office almost uses it more as an obligation because of its origin. As much as I enjoyed those first seasons, it never felt like a real and painful documentary the way the UK one did.

    A found footage rom-com might be very interesting indeed!

  • http://twitter.com/PunchBretsFace Bret Dorman

    I think the Found Footage genre is a great gimmick. Of course, with something like APOLLO 18, you have to actually have something happen.. but I’m looking forward to seeing what people can do with the genre. And I don’t think many people really believe it’s real, but if you’re making a found footage movie you can’t say “THIS IS FAKE! LOOK EVERYONE! THIS MOVIE IS FAKE!”. It’s part of the fun. 

  • James Vorel

    Are you seriously saying that you believe the majority of the moviegoing public who is going to movies like Paranormal Activity or The Last Exorcism is not aware that the film is not “real”?

    You think they’re saying to each other, “Hey gang, let’s go see that latest possession snuff film that Paramount is releasing in 3,000 theaters nationwide this weekend! I hear you get to witness the actual deaths of a whole family!”

    I don’t think so. You can call the found footage horror genre stupid if you want, and plenty of the entries into it are, but to even make some kind of discussion of people perceiving it as “real” is even more stupid.

    Trust me. The people who went to see Apollo 18 went to see the movie because they’re horror fans—not because they believed they were going to see the lost tapes of astronaut deaths during a moon alien attack.

    People are stupid, but they’re not THAT stupid.

  • http://twitter.com/ElisabethRappe Elisabeth Rappe

    I urge you to read the comments on YouTube on any given clip of The Blair Witch Project. 10+ years later, people just now stumbling on it appear to believe it’s real … or that it was a fictional cover-up of a real event. No joke. And I don’t believe that many YouTube commenters joking. Not on that hotbed of awful commentary.

    And many Americans thought the first Paranormal Activity was real when it was still a word-of-mouth thing, and not an enormous franchise. (One of my otherwise very intelligent friends remarked he had started to buy into it until he recognized the girl from an acting class. Or a teacher. I can’t remember.)

    Just type “Is Paranormal Activity” into Google and Google will supply you with the most searched result, which is “Is Paranormal Activity real?” and a number of Yahoo and Wiki groups of people feverishly demanding an answer. Yes, these people are dumb. 

    I don’t think every American believes this of every found footage film, but a little Googling indicates a number of them have bought into (and continue to buy into) the premise they are watching something real, or at least a true story remade into something fictional.

    But yes, I’m always stupid enough to make assertions without anything to go on.  I’m even more stupid than the stupidest film genre.