Blair Witch (US 2016: Dir Adam Wingard)

It's twenty years after the depicted events in 1999's The Blair Witch Project, where a group of filmmakers in search of the legendary Blair Witch went missing in the woods around Burkittsville, Maryland, with the recovery of footage of their exploits the only record of their expedition. James, the brother of Heather, one of the original group, is convinced via some more recently internet uploaded film that his sister may still be in the strange house in the woods which was the final filmed location of the original party. He assembles a new team to go back to Burkittsville, including the owner of the recent footage who knows the filming location, to track down his sister and solve the mystery of the Blair Witch.

One of the main problems with Adam (2011's You're Next, 2014's The Guest) Wingard's irritating and unnecessary film is that it fails both as a sequel and as a movie in its own right. As a follow up to the The Blair Witch Project, it asks the audience to believe that a seemingly sane man is convinced his own sister could survive for twenty years in a house which presumably was subject to a full police investigation after the first events. It also asks that audience to accept that none of the new group of 'Witch hunters' seems to know anything about the legend (in fact they seem pretty clueless all round) despite the notoriety of the events surrounding the original disappearances. Nothing new is added narratively, apart from stressing that 'bad things only happen after dark', and worse, the actions of our new party merely mirror the mistakes of the 1999 group - presumably they didn't study the footage that closely.

Wingard's decision to make the film entirely his own at just past the hour mark (shorthand for bonkers) would be more palatable if he had spent any of the previous sixty minutes investing his two dimensional cast with personalities or motive. As it is they're all scarcely more than cannon fodder being subjected to the director's final reel penchant for noisy abstraction. As the movie revs up for its last scenes when, as in the original film, the remaining cast find themselves in the house in the woods, Blair Witch becomes a shaky (as opposed to steadi) cam rattle around rooms and corridors more effectively and coherently rendered by Sam Raimi in The Evil Dead thirty five years previously. I realise that the point of the last part of the movie was to capture a real sense of disorientation and terror - I just would have liked it to have had more of, well, a point.

Perhaps the best use of Blair Witch is to act as one bookend showing how far the found footage genre has come (or more precisely the cul de sac in which it now finds itself), with the original movie as the other; Wingard has clearly drawn from his own segments in the first two V/H/S films as a template, glitches and everything, for his particular take. One could argue that the sense of naivety present in the original film limited its dramatic value, but it's the subtlety on display in The Blair Witch Project that keeps me coming back to it, year on year. As actor and musician Matt Berry rightly pointed out concerning the 1999 movie in a recent interview, the bizarre sounds generated by the 'witch' in the middle of the night, including the sound of children playing and the breaking of branches, heard by a terrified Josh, Heather and Mike, is a triumph of creepiness. Blair Witch offers the same - sometimes scene-for-scene - but louder, crasser and with more shouting and running. Oh and yes you do see it (fleetingly), which is a decision no more stupid than those in the rest of the film. 

A footnote: although Blair Witch takes great pains to convince us that we're back in the same actual Maryland woods as the first film (similar State locations were also used in the unfairly ill-regarded sequel, 2000's Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2), Wingard's follow-up was in fact shot in British Colombia, Canada. Wow, they really were lost.

The Sacrament (US 2013: Dir Ti West)

Oh dear. After the slowburn delights of Ti West's earlier films, The Sacrament, with its bigger budget and more ambitious sweep, is, I must confess, a huge disappointment.

West deploys the done to death 'found footage' approach (although more accurately as a friend of mine calls it the 'first person' filmmaking style) to tell a story of a group of edgy TV documentary makers heading out to a remote jungle location to track down the missing sister of one of their party and (of course) document the whole thing. When they eventually find her she's living as part of a blissed out community called 'Eden Parish', presided over by 'The Father', an enigmatic figurehead who has gathered his flock to him to create a seemingly idlyllic life free of the constraints of capitalism and politics. Sound familiar?

People of a certain age may recognise this setup as sounding rather like the People's Temple which Jim Jones founded in Guyana back in the 1970s, before encouraging all 910 of the community's occupants to kill themselves by drinking cyanide laced Kool-Aid. And they'd be right. Without giving the plot away, The Sacrament pretty much re-tells this story - ok, I probably have. Sorry. 'The Father' even looks a lot like Jones and although the names have been changed, once the community's overweight leader hoves into view (complete with Jones-esque glasses) it's fairly obvious how this is going to turn out.

The presence of Eli Roth in the production of course ensures that any scenes of death are as protracted and exploitative as possible (you want to see a mother slit the throat of her own daughter before being shot at point blank range? Step this way). The performances, as in all of West's films, are very good, particularly Gene Jones as 'The Father' and Amy Seimetz as Caroline, the missing sister (and who was one of the few good things about Upstream Colour). But as the film is set in the present day, why is it retelling a story of events that took place in 1978? Did West think that the majority of his audience wouldn't know about Jim Jones, leaving him free to rip the story off? And why did the (presumably culturally clued up) filmmakers, when they stumble across the community and its leader in the first place, not immediately make a comparison to Jonestown, or indeed other cults they would have been familiar with like the Branch Davidians lead by David Koresh?

One of the film's key limitations, and annoyances, is the first person camera work. West gets around the traditional shaky cam issues by having the footage filmed by a proper documentary crew, hence the cinematic quality of what we're looking at. But in the second half of the movie the audience is left to wonder why the crew haven't abandoned their cameras when they're forced to make a run for it - a standard problem for a film shot in this way, and one that I thought West might solve.

So The Sacrament, while well made, convincingly acted, and never boring, is just a bit pointless, and a massive let down from a film maker who has previously been consistently exciting in his output. Let's hope this is just a blip on his CV.

The Borderlands (UK 2013: Dir Elliot Goldner)

I love the idea of 'found footage' films. I have an almost unreasonably high expectation with each successive movie that this will be the one that really does it for me. When it starts, it's then usually just a matter of how long it will take me to get bored, start flicking through phone messages, menu planning etc. while keeping one eye on the inane 'action' unfolding in front of me. Well finally I can report some success in my hitherto largely fruitless viewing quest.

First time director Elliot Goldner places the audience for The Borderlands in very similar territory to the distinctly underwhelming Paranormal Diaries: Clophill (2013) - a haunted church in rural England - but whereas PD:C was a massive slog, The Borderlands rarely puts a foot wrong and also shows the full potential of the FF format placed in the right hands.

Two investigators have been summoned from the Vatican by the priest of a parish church - there is a suggestion that the church has been the site of a miracle, based on some rather baffling footage previously caught on camera. The investigators, both men of the cloth, are joined by a secular tecchie to handle the photographic equipment required to capture the potential activity. The team rig up the church and then camp out in a local farmhouse waiting for the action to happen. And it does.

So far so found footage then. But there's a lot that's different about The Borderlands. The acting and script are both spot on for a start. One of the real strengths of the film is the developing 'odd couple' relationship between lead investigator Deacon (played by Gordon Kennedy from TV's Absolutely and pretty much everything else) and Robin Hill as the non believing camera expert Gray. Hill is a regular in the films of Ben Wheatley, and there's a distinct Kill List flavour to the deadpan bickering conversation between the two men, which is occasionally very funny, and which like that film uses the banter to up the tension anticipating what is to come. This subtlety of performance is abandoned in the second part of the movie, but the establishment of characters at this stage makes you care a bit more about what happens to them when the horror takes hold.

The change of pace in The Borderlands is well handled. There's an early dramatic moment which cuts through the blokey chat in a very unsettling way, and signals the move to darker territory. The usual question - about whether the characters would drop their cameras when the going gets tough - is dealt with by the recording equipment being headset mounted, which actually cuts down on the traditional jerky trademark FF look.

The film doesn't try to be overly cinematic either. Goldner keeps his shots tight and controlled, and achieves an almost made for TV documentary feel. He has a real sense of mood - there's a nod to Ghostwatch in a couple of scenes, and the authentic church and catacomb settings, together with the odd and ambiguous ending, recall the mood of the classic 1970s BBC Christmas ghost stories. Strongly recommended.

Paranormal Diaries: Clophill (UK 2013: Dir Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates)

A surprise sellout at 2013 Frightfest, Paranormal Diaries: Clophill - which has to be the worst title of any film released last year and which if it's all right with you I'll precis to PD:C from here on in - is a significant departure from Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates's previous two films. The sellout was probably attributed to the quality of their last film, Zombie Diaries 2 (2011), which was such an improvement on their first outing The Zombie Diaries (2006) that it felt like the product of different filmmakers: possibly punters expected more of the same.

But Bartlett and Gates have chosen to take a bit of a left turn with PD:C. They have retained the 'found footage' approach but have structured their latest as a mockumentary, combining elements of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and the Most Haunted TV show (minus annoying camp psychic). Bartlett and Gates play themselves, and Clophill, an actual village in Bedfordshire, is used as the real life location for the filming. The setup has a team of ghost hunters and filmmakers exploring a ruined church in Clophill, which has a history of strange occurrences, ghostly visitations and black magic rituals, and hoping to capture some of the supernatural activity on camera.

The film builds interestingly at the start with different 'experts' telling the story of the ruined church and reported goings on. However, once on site, PD:C becomes extremely ploddy with endless footage of walking round and round the church, and using night vision shots that build up no suspense, and give no real feel of anything being properly investigated. At 88 or so minutes this film is just way too long for the subject matter. The lack of tension is also partly to do with the location - while the church itself retains an element of dilapidated spookiness, it's in a not particularly deserted part of Bedfordshire and it's not beyond the realms of possibility that the imperilled ghost hunters could hot foot it 500 yards or so to the A6 if they felt a bit lost. There's a silly sub story involving a family with a small child, which is presumably an attempt to give some variety to the documentary scenes, but just feels tacked on.

Where PD:C does differ from the TV programmes from which it takes its inspiration is in actually delivering a ghostly 'money shot' as well as some more corporeal sightings. But by then I didn't care one iota. Bartlett and Gates do know how to put a film together, but PD: C is a complete misfire - they'll have to try much harder next time.

In Memorium (US 2005: Dir Amanda Gusack)

Now that the 'Found Footage' genre has pretty much disappeared up its own aperture, one almost looks back fondly to the days before FF became shorthand for tiresome people running around an empty building screaming their heads off, and when some of the early exemplars - The Blair Witch Project (1999), the rich-kid-trying-not-to-be a-moneybags Cloverfield (2008) and the first couple of Paranormal Activity outings - showed true innovation. One addition to the canon that deserves to be included in the 'pioneers' list is In Memorium, a film hampered by such a limited distribution that very few people have seen it. Which is a great shame as it's a terrific movie.

In Memorium focuses on Dennis and Lily, a likeable couple who have rented a house in Los Angeles. Dennis has been diagnosed with an inoperable cancer and has, in a slightly far fetched plot device, decided to rig up the house with security cameras and microphones to record his imminent decline for possible future use as a documentary. Once set up, the rather mundane existence of the couple begins to be underscored by glimpses of shapes caught on camera, and unidentifable sounds on the audio. Dennis and Lily become increasingly convinced that they are not alone in their new home, and that the presence which has joined them may be destructive and malevolent.

There are very few other characters in the film apart from Dennis's slacker brother Frank and a woman who rents the house to the couple, which focuses things tightly over In Memorium's brief 70 minutes. The claustrophobic surroundings (actually filmed in the Director's own house) are emphasised by the static underlit look of the film, most of the shots being generated from the closed circuit cameras.  Although I felt Lily's rather passive acceptance of her boyfriend's condition a little bewildering, the partnership between the two leads is otherwise convincing and their increasing fear very persuasive.

What makes In Memorium stand out is that, firstly, both the explanation for the visitation and the haunting itself are genuinely scary, something which is very rare in the FF movement. The tension towards the end puts the film up there with some of the great haunted house films, and makes you realise just how powerful this type of movie can be. Seondly, the film never loses sight of the essential plight of Dennis's illness which, when it becomes more pronounced, only deepens the mood.

Amanda Gusack's first full length film as a Director really is an overlooked gem. Made a couple of years before (and clearly influencing) the much more successful Paranormal Activity (2007) and perhaps taking its inspiration from the CCTV nightmare of My Little Eye (2002) In Memorium still packs a punch despite the FF saturation which has now all but extinguished the dramatic potential of this type of film making.

There's a Facebook page for the film here which is worth liking - maybe people power can trigger a DVD release of the movie.