Paranormal Diaries : Clophill (2013)

Director: Kevin Gates, Michael Bartlett
Starring: Kevin Gates, Michael Bartlett, Criselda Cabitac UK. 1h 28m

There’s been a big trend in making found footage movies, where the cast head out to investigate something unusual and paranormal, only to find themselves running around in the darkness screaming with terror, and if done well this chilling concept can really get under the skin of a lot of audience participants, however if done with the wrong pace and little care, then the unsettling can become uninteresting.

AOFA Found Footage Bingo

Do you like Found Footage movies as much as me? well check out this bingo sheet and see which movie will get you a full house, info below is for geeks only.. click on the image for a large version and to download.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

Director: Oren Peli
Starring: Micah Sloat, Katie Featherston . USA. 1h 26m

Sometimes it takes a great director to make a movie, other times it takes a great director to endorse a movie to make it a winner! Steven Speilberg couldn’t praise the movie enough, claiming that he had to stop watching as he was so afraid and had to continue the next day with the lights on! What on earth could freak him out that much?

The film was hyped up as the scariest movie you’ve ever seen, this instantly made it a target for criticism and doubt. The series of trailers were chock a block with clips of audiences reeling away and jumping with fright more than highlighting what the film is actually about. The most we know is there’s something going on in the pristine suburban home of two beautiful young hopefuls.

Bigfoot : The Lost Coast Tapes (2012)

Director: Corey Grant
Starring: Drew Rausch, Rich McDonald, Asheey Wood Garcia, Noah Weisberg, Frank Ashmore, Japheth Gordon .USA. 1h 30m

There has always been a lot to love and hate about this spirited movie. It attempts to open up new possibilities about the Bigfoot, looking at some of the newer theories and along the way it attempts to answer the popular questions, like why don’t we find more bigfoot bodies?. Despite bringing new ideas from conspiracy forums to the big screen, it fails to bring a lot of new ideas to this screen and falls into trope island with annoying characters and expresses some of the worst features of Found Footage. AND despite all of this it has to be seen and is often enjoyed.

Tokyo Horror Movies / Yami Douga (2012)

Director: Kazuto Kodama
Starring:?.Japan. 1h 4m

This collection of unrelated creepy tales seems to have been a for runner for the popular V/H/S series (despite them being released in the same year) This Japanese collection just feels like a raw pre runner to the more polished American effort, but as per usual the raw unabridged versions always have that curious edge to them, and like time and time before, Japan finds a new way to creep out the cinematic world.

A team has painstakingly recovered and viewed a number of home\hand made movies accidentally capturing spooky events, but they don’t leave it there, they track down the stories behind each video trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.

It has an incredibly Japanese approach, each movie has a text intro and a warning before each gory moment giving faint at heart viewer a chance to skip the worst moments, (imagine doing that for the Serbian Film (2010). it would twice as long) and the spooky events are typically Japanese also, floating screaming heads, cursed grave sites and the only country with a pass to have white clad long haired spirits aka yūrei, and uses them sparingly, instead the emphasis is on making this look like a genuine investigation and raw footage, with candid interviews, phone research and multiple lines of enquiry.

It’s never really detailed why they are producing the anthology,other than to show off their hard work. The film’s themselves look really on point, apart from a few really bad effects here and there, the authenticity of the video’s are a highlight, either they were filmed on vintage devices or the touch up is out of this world.

The stories range from a fishing trip with an extra ghostly passenger, and in more complex stories elaborate rituals are performed in the woods awakening screaming heads and after all of the night’s shenanigans there’s a nasty twist in the end of the story, but the kicker for most audiences is a particular gory story involving a pregnant woman who owes money to a violence sado sexiual yakusa boss, the opening story is an emotional kicker involving the ghost of a homeless girl seeks help from beyond the grave, it’s sad and moving as well as creepy and has a touch of Lake Mungo (2008) about it. Overall the Tokyo Videos of Horror is never really all that frighteningly scary, as it just feels so surreal, but you might want to check your playback during the day from now on.

Luckily there’s a series of films to watch now and much like the Yami Shibai series there are good and bad collections but all have that very unique Japanese strangeness about them. Probably something more attuned and welcomed by the found footage fans than the average horror collector but overall something that just has to be experienced to be fully understood.

Tokyo Videos of Horror (2012) Japanese found footage anthology featuring movies that have accidently captured creepy paranormal events frightening and deeply affecting several people. Quirky J-Horror much like VHS is a great start to the series of freaky scares. pic.twitter.com/CkQwcZFPTY

— Admit 1 Film Addict (@admitonefilmadd) March 6, 2021

 

Rating: 5/10

Related: V/H/S (2012), Lake Mungo (2008),McPherson Tapes (1989)
Lists: Found Footage Anthologies

 

 

The Tunnel (2011)

Director: Carlo Ledesma
Starring: Bel Delia, Luike Arnold, Andy Rodoreda, Goran D Kleut . Australia. 1h 34m

One of the popular and more believable sub genres within the found footage style is the bold and daring mockumentary, a no brainer really as there’s a perfect set up for a found footage project, but one which can really push the boundaries of faking scary adventures, after all there’s a dedicated team of professionals filming, usually with a decent budget and scope for a story and their drive to tell the truth is pretty powerful, almost forcing them to push beyond normal boundaries, but what makes The Tunnel such a winner is it’s connection with real life concerns, ie tackling homeless people driven into underground networks, and how it keeps its feet firmly on the ground without going into the extreme bizarre in order to scare the audience.

Filmed after the event, the movie cuts between timelines before, during and after the underground expedition, and the recordings quite seamlessly blend with each other, various CCTV footage and one chilling phone call.

Willow Creek (2013)

Director: Bobcat Goldthwaite
Starring: Alexie Gilmore, Bryce Johnson .USA. 1h 17m

Set in Humboldt County, California, and filmed over 5 days, a film now commonly known as the Blairquatch Project emerges from the forest to (not) wow it’s audience with the adventures of a Bigfoot enthusiast who drags his girlfriend into the wild to hunt bigfoot for his birthday treat.

Devils Familiar (2020)

Director: Kieran Edwards
Starring: David Clarke, Uriel Davies, Kieran Edwards .UK. 1h

This creepy found footage movie is more homemade than handmade, but delivers an interesting investigation but does it bring anything new to the genre?

Opening with a Birdemic grade intro after a camera lands on the doormat of the local police station the film is put together and replayed for the officers.

A couple of Uni hopefuls, Elliott Mooney (student number 06852105) and Jake Mcintyre (student number 05437921) to be precise, are making a documentary about a terrible crime that happened near their university, back in 2006, a man was found brutally murdered, another man “disappeared” in a case known as the Ribbesford Woods Murders. Sally Edwards was sent down for the murder but over the years a local legend has sprung up about wild beast stalking the forest. With a feverish interest and tons of energy the duo rush to start filming footage for their final degree piece.

Death of a Vlogger (2019)

Director: Graham Hughes
Starring: Graham Hughes, Annabel Logan, Paddy Kondracki, Patrick O’Brien, Joma West.UK. 1h 28m

Found footage movies are generally the cheapest and “easiest” to make however a lot fail when they try to hard, overthinking the details and missing the obvious, a lot of film makers would have jumped into this movie as a teen drama, however, Graham Hughes uses himself and his own flat to make a really personal and cerebrally challenging film that turns out the be one of the best in the genre despite the one terrible cliché it falls into occasionally.

Graham stars as himself, in his own home, as a wannabe YouTube star, attempting all the trends that we remember from planking, the ice bucket challenge to bottle throwing he seems desperate to find fame online, but he’s more than just a wannabe he is a cultured soul and tells some really great sensitive story about world war II parachuters who had issues with perception, after jumping out of a plane, many would land of roofs and simply jump down, after falling hundreds of feet without injury, a few feet just doesn’t seem to much however that’s when they would gain their biggest injuries… and perception is what Graham is about to rick roll his audience with in many sinister ways.

8213: Gacy House (2010)

Director: Anthony Fankhauser
Starring: Jim Lewis, Matthew Temple, Michael Gaglio, Brett A. Newton, Diana Terranova, Sylvia Panacione, Rachel Riley .USA. 1h 32m

You have to love a bad setup for a found footage movie?! Not only has John Wayne Gacy’s house been demolished and rebuilt but as he was executed in a prison, shouldn’t his ghost be residing there and it would be the victims ghosts still in the house or the land where they were killed?

Without much fanfare the movie begins with the team arriving at the house to set their equipment up, a mass of cameras are placed in every room, and once they are pointing to where no action will be caught clearly the investigation really starts. It has a slightly different setup up to a lot of the other paranormal researcher inspired movies, most teams usually have quite a lot of enthusiasm but this one is is filled with scathing skeptics and some crazed hippy wiccan woman who believes some rhyming spells will be able to protect them from some kind of evil entity or poltergeist. In all my years of armchair occultist I’ve never known of anyone asking the goddess to help in some kind of seance before I’m sure there’s some eyebrows raised to offering a t shirt of a friends young son (what? why?) to the spirit of a serial killer!!?