J'adore le Genre: Found Footage

Found Footage films are known to catch a lot of flack – Kind of like when Mitt Romney calls himself a ‘self-made man’.

The public can see through the falsities like the X-ray of a Larval Leaf Scorpionfish

Found Footage films are – in short – contrived bits of amateur film making spliced together to give audiences a front row seat into the action of a story that is presented to have been recorded by accident, and usually involves some disaster, catastrophe, and/or paranormal incident.

I have designated a special place in my heart for this genre to reside because I find these films to be fun, captivating, and - with a little stretch of the imagination - scary.

Mind you, this is coming from someone who yelled at the screen while watching Disney’s Up, “A bunch of balloons carry a house away? This could never happen!” – So you may argue that I have a hard time with suspension of disbelief and should therefore dislike this genre - which is partially true, but an entirely different blog post. But I think we can all agree that suspension of disbelief is a personal experience based on one’s own perception. And for some reason, I do not have trouble suspending my belief for this genre of film.    

I understand that the intelligent part of the  ...

J'adore le Genre: Minimalist Disaster Film

Disaster films have the distinction of being one of the most popular film genres of all time. Starting at the beginning of the century with films like Fire! and Night and Ice, to the mid-20^th century with films like War of the Worlds and King Kong, and on to more recent titles like Independence Day, The Road, and Melancholia, this genre has done its job of captivating audiences on a global level.

But I’m not going to talk about disaster films.

Today I will tackle another lesser known genre lovingly-known as the Minimalist Disaster film. A Google search of this genre may return very few results so I guess before I go any further I should mention…I made this genre up.

My reasoning for creating this genre was two-fold.

Fold One: I got tired of people referring to certain films as disaster films and lumping them into the same category as those mentioned at the beginning of this post when they are clearly different in many ways.

Fold Two: The films included in this niche category are some of my all-time favorite films and therefore I felt a need to segregate them and honor them with their own specific genre.

I think the best way to describe these films is to name some rules that a film must adhere to in order to be considered a true Minimalist Disaster film. These rules are non-negotiable and all must apply in order for a film to be considered a true Minimalist Disaster.

Official Rules of a Minimalist Disaster Film: