Review: Found Footage 3D

(imdb.com)

Found-footage filming gives new filmmakers a chance to make big movies on a low budget. For years, the increasingly saturated subgenre has inundated the horror industry with an onslaught of flack, recently dying down to complacency and general acceptance. The fact is, found-footage films are easy to consume and can actually be scary. But for some, the filming method will always be unworthy. These critics would argue that found-footage has been done to death. Jumping onto that trend is Found Footage 3D; a film that is ironically found-footage and only sometimes as aware as it wants to be.


Written and directed by Steven DeGennaro, Found Footage 3D follows a group of friends destined for a cabin to film a cheap horror film. Once there, they find out that the cabin is haunted and what was originally supposed to be just a movie, is something far scarier. It stars Carter Roy (Refuge) as the lead actor and creator, Derek, Alena von Stroheim (Hacker's Game) as Derek's ex and costar, Amy, Chris O'Brien (Tenured) as the videographer, Mark, Jessica Perrin (A Song for Danny) as a production assistant, and Tom Saporito (Best Day Ever) as the film's director.


For a movie that presents itself as such a transcendent art piece, there's plenty to critique. Outside of it's innovative, yet gimmicky 3D production, Found Footage 3D borrows a lot from other horror films. Reminiscent of superior movies like Sinister and Hell House, LLC, the awareness in this film is often exchanged for jump scares and borrowed sequences. Attempting to build some satirical approach to found-footage films, Found Footage 3D is a send up of tropes and conventions that succeeds only to lukewarm degrees. Embedded into the film is a deep disdain for the very kind of movie that's being made, and while the attempt might be made to ensure that it's the fictional characters within the movie who hate the subgenre and not the filmmakers, there's an air of self-loathing and condescension.

The biggest problem is that Found Footage 3D takes a lot of shots at other movies but never really does much to exceed expectations. Calling out a mere pair of found-footage films as adequate, the filmmakers ignore plenty of other progressive and scary products in the subgenre. Movies like Unfriended may not appeal to everyone, but at least they're inventive in their storytelling and camera work, and others like As Above, So Below may be flawed, but at least at their core they're scary. The fact is that for something so aggressively conscious, viewers would think the resulting plot and ploys would be terrifying and accomplished, not bland and only occasionally scary.

Found Footage 3D comes across as an excuse for the filmmakers to bemoan a successful subgenre while seeming perceptive. But, the resulting film isn't much more than a glass house occupant throwing a lot of stones. There's some good scares and the characters have a lovable potential, but the constant struggle to identify itself as a superior film all leave Found Footage 3D  feeling quite pompous. 4 out of 10.