Found footage is dead? Who said that… was it you? Well, I’m going to urge you to re-think that previous statement. Sure, we’ve seen every mental institution, haunted house, or exorcism ever in the found footage format and they can get a little… repetitive. However, there are rare occasions when this format shines like the diamond in the rough it once was. Films that I continuously praise like Atrocious or REC are just a few examples of how this bad boy can be done right.
Well, good thing for us, a few directors still see the potential in this format without just dumping some standard shaky camera, poorly produced turd in our laps. Bryan Bertino is the man folks! His film Mockingbird is an astonishingly well done found footage film. We get the tension, we get the humor, and we get some genuinely frightening moments. Let’s not forget a story that doesn’t involve ghosts for once.
Three different perspectives, all woven together in one central plot, keeps the story moving and the tension building until the finale. The ride to the end credits will leave you excited and anticipating the next scene. This is a great example of a pot boiler. Alfred Hitchcock would have done similar, if this format was around for him. This is almost his formula by the letter. He used to say, if two people were having a conversation for five minutes and a bomb blew up, you would get five seconds of shock, with no build up. Take the same scene and show the bomb under the table with a timer set for five minutes… then let the characters enter and have the same conversation. The terror changes completely. Bryan Bertino understands what needs to be done to build the terror, and this is what this sub-genre is missing.
Please for the love of God, check this one out, folks! I give it 4 VHS tapes out of 5.
