I hate "found footage" films

I have seen very few of them that I like and at least for me, it all began with a packed theater for the very well publicized film The Blair Witch Project which for me and every one of the people I went to the film with agree, was terrible. Two of my friends had to sit on the stairs because they oversold the theater which was probably a fire code violation but whatever, that wasn't the main factor.

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Main characters are missing from most of the film

For one thing, the main character of almost all of these films isn't even visible during the film because they are the one that is holding the camera. I'm not sure exactly why I hate this so much but it just disturbs me. Is the person narrating that part of the film actually even holding the camera? Does it matter? I don't know but it just seems so annoying to me.

Awful and sometimes nauseating camera work

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I realize that this is the very basis of the genre and while I understand it is a core mechanism, that doesn't mean it is good. Cloverfield which I consider to be the best of the worst, is still so damn shaky from all the running around that it is very rare that you can even tell what the hell is going on. To me this kind of reminds me of all these people that run around the streets during political protests or just about any sort of public event and how their cameras are not designed to be used in such a capacity.

I get it: It ads authenticity to the fact that this is actual "found footage" but there have been multiple people that see these things in films that have thrown up in the theaters or had to leave because of motion sickness. For me, after seeing Blair Witch, I simply never went to see any more of them and avoid them for the most part unless I turn them on not realizing that they actually are in the found footage category.

The improbability of the recording even happening

I realize that this is me being nit picky and also the idea that someone would continue filming rather than actually help someone is probably a fairly accurate description of what humanity is like these days but that doesn't change the fact that if your very good friend - which is what most of these people in these films are actually meant to be, was facing eminent harm if you don't help them, do you focus on filming or do you put down the damn camera and help your friend? I know which one I would do but then again I have never sought to be an influencer on Instagram.

Terrible actors / actresses

With rare exceptions such as Mark Duplass' work in Creep the actors in these films are probably accountants or baristas as their main profession and were just helping out a friend do a project for their art school project. These people are awful actors and even though that might be the point (that they are not supposed to appear to be actors) that doesn't help the films be any good.

I was involved in a few plays and home-made films on a VHS camcorder when I was a kid and we had better actors employed than a vast majority of the found footage films that have made their way to Netflix.

No musical score

The music and sound effects that appear in films are a big part of the reason why we end up feeling a certain way during certain segments of the film. Tension, fear, and even sorrow is induced through musical scores or sound effects and since found footage films are meant to be amateur work that someone just happened to be filming at the time, there is no place for this in the movie.

Many of my favorite films of all time are in that category at least in part because of the sound, and the only sound that most found footage films have are the often times really low quality microphones that extend from the front of said camera. It sucks!

You know the main character is going to die

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The footage has to be "found" in order for it to become a found footage film so right from the onset we are well aware of the fact that captain "I'm holding the camera" guy is going to get offed at the end of the movie. There are exceptions of course, but for the most part this is the entire story of every single found footage film. The only thing that happens in-between is simply the filler that leads to their eventual demise.

I hate predictibility in films and if there was ever a type of film that you can definitely determine the outcome of, it is found footage films.

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There are many other reasons to dislike this type of movie and I think the genre needs to die (just like the main character of nearly every one of them) or at the minimum be relegated to film school projects. They are not artistic anymore and nobody with a fully-functioning brain actually believes that this footage is actually real.

For me, whenever I find out that a film falls into this category I will almost always avoid them, even if a friend of mine tells me that I "absolutely have to see this new movie they discovered."

The genre sucks. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it! Anyone who wants me to go see a found footage film either in a cinema or at their house is going to see me RSVP "no."