Stop calling every movie with a camera 'found footage'

I keep seeing people label films like Chronicle or Searching as found footage just because they use screens or phone recordings. That's not the same genre. If there's no premise of someone finding the tape or file after the fact, it's just a gimmick. Am I the only one bugged by this mix-up?

2 comments

2 Comments

markm271mo ago

Yeah but actually I gotta push back a little on the Unfriended thing. That movie pretty clearly sets up that the footage is a recording someone saved from the Skype session later on. The whole thing is literally a log of the chat that exists after everyone's dead. So I think that one actually fits the found footage label pretty well. Chronicle though I'm totally with you on that one. There's no lost tape, no one finds their phone footage later, it's just shot from their perspective in the moment. It's more like a first person movie than found footage. That's the kind of mix up that bugs me too because it waters down what the genre actually is.

grace_fox31mo ago

Totally agree with you here. I get annoyed when people call Unfriended found footage too - yeah it's all on a screen, but the whole point of found footage is that someone literally finds a recording or tape later, not just that the camera is part of the story. Chronicle especially bugs me because it's just a regular movie with phone shots thrown in, there's no lost footage concept at all. Nice to see someone else cares about this distinction.