Found Footage
And remembering a moment when horror felt real.
It was late. I’d been channel-hopping, finally old enough to be left the night without a sitter, when I landed on what looked like a home movie taken on a budget camera.
Though I didn’t know it at the time, I’d stumbled on The McPherson Tape (also known as UFO Abduction), a short film from 1989 that sees someone videotaping his niece’s birthday celebration before aliens show up and things get weird.
I remember sitting on my own, torn between turning it off (because I knew I wouldn’t sleep) or continue watching (because I wanted to know what happened). Ultimately, curiosity won.
I have no idea if the film still holds up or if it would capture my imagination as it did back then but I can confidently say that The McPherson Tape terrified me. Not because it was violent or gory or because of an expected twist, but because I came away convinced that what I’d just seen was real.
Since then, I’ve grown to love the found footage genre. When it’s done well, there’s not much that brings you into a story in the same way. The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, The Last Exorcism, Creep; all films that fall into the category and all good examples of the style done right.
Synonymous with low-budget camerawork, it’s easy to think of found footage as something restricted to film. In breaking those boundaries and expectations, it becomes even more compelling.
Video games present some of my favourite takes on the genre. While the main narrative isn’t always told through found footage, the audio files, letters, and classified documents left for the player to discover can strengthen the lore, add backstory to a place, or introduce entirely new narratives.
Set in a derelict house in Louisiana, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard features a series of VHS tapes that offer flashbacks and extra plot points about the family that lives there. Returnal, a game where you play as Selene, stuck in a time loop on a planet called Atropos in search of a ‘White Shadow’, sees you encounter well-written, atmospheric voice logs players can use to put the pieces together.
Control, a supernatural game that has you uncover the mystery of an ever-shifting building of a secretive government agency has some of the best collectibles I’ve ever encountered. I wanted to consume every document, audio log, image, and video to learn more about the ‘Oldest House’ and its research on ‘paranatural phenomena’.
Found footage works in books too. Classic epistolary novels like Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are some of the earliest examples of found footage in horror, telling stories through letters and diary entries.
I’m also coming to the end of FOUND, an anthology of found footage horror stories edited by Andrew Cull and Gabino Iglesias from a host of talented writers about everything from forgotten tapes to instant messages.
But what exactly makes found footage so scary? Perhaps it’s the claustrophobia of the camera angles, the realism of having something sinister filmed on the devices you use every day, or maybe it’s the fact it all feels a little raw and unpolished.
For me, found footage has a unique ability of emphasizing what’s left unsaid. It’s what I’m not faced with – lying out of shot or away from the page – that gets the uncertainty moving. Thinking back to The McPherson Tape, it wasn’t the inevitable reveal of the aliens that was scary, but the frantic movements, off-screen noises, and reactions of the family that took place before.
More than that, found footage makes horror feel real.
Whether it’s the VHS lying at a yard sale, the pile of misplaced documents, or the collection of text messages left after someone’s death, it makes the ordinary extraordinary. It puts malice in the mundane. It makes you believe that what you’re experiencing could have actually happened.
Before you go
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/ JJW