Speak of the devil: Ann Thompson of Variety pens an interesting article on the new wave of first-person docu-horror, focusing on Cloverfield and the indie haunted-house film Paranormal Activity and emphasizing both the format and the “less is more” approach to the scares. The Blair Witch Project looms over it all. (Via Dread Central, which calls the films “voyeur horror,” an intriguing label. The next “torture porn”?)
Oh, no. MY LITTLE EYE is voyeur horror, almost in the literal sense. It’s the one that’s streaming cameras in a remote house with people inside, thinking they’re doing a reality TV show. BLAIR WITCH and the like are almost ARGs.
I agree that “voyeur” connotes a fetishistic element that’s not present in Blair Witch and doesn’t seem to be the case in these other movies either. (Ha, this from the big defender of “torture porn.”)
I might have missed out on this, since I slept through all of my film classes aside from Film and Postmodernism, but isn’t all film essentially voyeurstic? That’s the point, right? That we’re all watching stuff as it happens.
Granted things like shakycam and skipping on the artificiality of an imposed sound/music track are deliberate steps towards making the documentary out of the fictional, steps which have been taken more forcefully since BLAIR WITCH. But still, I’m thinking that the net isn’t being cast wide enough. Horror isn’t solely voyeuristic (though it certainly benefits from that sort of thing, see also PSYCHO and DAWN OF THE DEAD). Though for some reason, I’m having trouble envisioning first-person perspective romantic comedy…
True that, Matt. I would say that if we’re going to use a label like “voyeur horror,” we should apply it to movies that are ABOUT the horror of voyeurism — STRANGE DAYS, maybe. Or even BORAT.
Hmm. Let’s add a few to that.
LOOKER. BRAINSTORM. VIDEODROME. Maybe WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (though I might be misremembering the title on that one.)
Man, I really need to see BORAT. But then I was raised up on CANDID CAMERA, so I might be quite so charmed by that.