Author: Dominic Duquiatan
“We are the children. It’s a pleasure to receive you.” Remember how we always question why alleged alien abductees live to tell the story but don’t have the evidence to support their claims? It’s a bummer to hear how desperate they sound, and yet we cannot sympathize with them. Some of the alien-centric found footage
The found footage film subgenre still has it. I never knew a FF film could be as profound as it is scary, given that its restricted legroom can only do so much. But going back years ago, this exact curtailment made The Blair Witch Project (1999) an exemple of how horror could thrive in the
The Internet Age has transformed us in so many ways, even down to the way we tell stories to keep pace with advancing technology. Our fledgling fixation on screens has spawned another branch in the found footage horror subgenre that explores the possibilities of conceit while reflecting on how the internet shrinks or expands our
Asian horror is both a treasure trove and a rabbit hole. When you find a gem that’s too good to not be seen, you can’t help but dig deep until you drown in a chock-full watchlist. That is how I felt when I first saw The Butcher (2008), a found-footage pseudo-snuff film from South Korea.
A mockumentary framing offers a nice spin to the found footage genre. While most found footage films are shot and arranged in an amateur fashion to preserve their realism and home video sense, mockumentary is its counterpart. Here, the believability of the horror comes from one’s flair in crafting conceivable documentation of something purely fictional.
Khavn De La Cruz, or simply Khavn, is a Filipino director best known for his 2010 crime comedy film Mondomanila. His works never cease to emanate with his knack for creating gritty and unsettling features that defy the Philippine cinema landscape. However, Mondomanila overshadows his earliest attempts to dare the conventions of filmmaking. His Three
The found-footage subgenre of horror is probably the most threadbare of its kind. The cinematic possibilities and the amount of legroom where a creative might pull a stunt out of it are unquestionably finite. That is because the “found footage” conceit itself is the “stunt” that is supposed to manifest only once in a while
Anthony Hickox seems to have fun recalling the past that he managed to come up with another story about anachronisms and horror film icons in Waxwork II: Lost in Time. But despite its promising vision of bringing horror icons back on the screen again, it only proved one thing: nostalgia is not enough to salvage
Braindead (1992) is an utterly quirky, thoroughly cringey, yet ultimately entertaining grotesque black comedy from esteemed director Peter Jackson. He sure has an extensive filmography, ranging from epic fantasies to science fiction madness that truly stamped his admired capacities as a visual storyteller. However, one can find his freakish inclinations in this genre melange. Significantly
Waxwork (1988), Anthony Hickox’s directorial debut, is a half-baked comedy horror film with a tedious build-up, unmemorable characters, confusing lore, and a long-overdue payoff. Although it already fell at the first hurdle and keeps falling flat, one can find amusement in some elements overshadowed by its poor directorial choices. The setup of Waxwork (1988) is