I love the found footage/mockumentary genre. From the originators like Ghostwatch and The Blair Witch Project, to the masterpieces of Rec and Noroi: The Curse, to the franchises of VHS and Paranormal Activity, if the movie features actors pretending to be real people I'll watch it. The only bad thing about the genre, in my opinion, is that 95 percent of the time these movies are horror flicks.
Now this makes sense; both horror and found footage lend themselves to low budget filmmaking. Still, in a world where we've beat zombies to death in every style under the sun, the fact that there are very few non-horror found footage movies is just kind of lame, especially when the best superhero origin film of all time happens to also be the modern found footage classic Chronicle.
Next month, Welcome to Yesterday hits theaters, and from the looks of it we may finally have a legit found footage time travel movie, or at least a found footage time travel movie with a budget. If nothing else it has a trailer that has me wanting to see more.
Now, it would be smart to temper expectations here. I would point out the fact here that as far as I can tell this movie doesn't even have a poster, and what's just weird. Not that posters have any affect on film quality, but the idea that you'd put together a trailer that gets put in front of real movies in real theaters but not come up with more than just the title on a white background with a graphic for a poster doesn't exactly fill moviegoers with hope for a good time.
But still, just the thought of a found footage time travel movie makes me somewhat giddy, even if I'm sure the end result will be more Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 (boo!) than Primer (yay!).
Still, that doesn't explain why more folks don't try and do more with the genre. It can't be that hard. Here are 5 simple ideas off the top of my head:
5. Found Footage Straight Forward Rom-Com
Two video bloggers fall in love, we watch the relationship develop through the course of their blog updates. How this isn't already a Reese Witherspoon flick opening in 2,500 theaters I don't know.
