Written by David San Miguel and Max Tzannes
Directed by Max Tzannes
Starring Brennan Keel Cook, Chen Tang and Erika Vetter
USA, 2025
FOUND FOOTAGE is a little indie comedy/horror gem I never would have heard of without word of mouth from my friend Andrew. Boy am I glad he thought to mention it to me because not only was it good, it was right up my alley.
FOUND FOOTAGE is a mockumentary about a group of amateur/indie filmmakers setting out to make their own found footage horror flick about bigfoot, THE PATTERSON PROJECT. This stuff is played for laughs, but also could be 100% true, as evidenced by how closely it resembles the REAL documentary about an amateur horror filmmaker, AMERICAN MOVIE. If you’ve never seen AMERICAN MOVIE, please do.
As it unfolded, I also thought it resembled a movie my friends and I made in high school, a mockumentary about a group of teenagers trying to make an indie flick. On one hand you might say there’s only so much you can mock about this kind of stuff, so of course these things are similar. On the other, it was so well observed and on the nose that it did that thing where it doesn’t come off as too on the nose. You know, like SPINAL TAP or BEST IN SHOW, only even more realistic.
I won’t be giving anything away to say things start to shape up into a real horror movie, and even that is a little more inventive than you might be imagining. This flick isn’t content to just ape THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, which is to its credit, since it’s making fun of people who ARE trying to ape THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. It finds some new and creative ways to inject horror into the mockumentary setting, and it’s fun to watch the filmmakers try (and fail) to figure things out.
There’s also a funny subplot about the group backing themselves into having to have someone poorly impersonate Alan Rickman that’s worth the price of admission, which is nothing, if you have Prime.
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