Reel Vs. Real
Despite a hefty amount of publicity heaped upon Cloverfield’s “found footage” approach to the kaiju genre, audience members at the screening attended by yours truly were still audibly alarmed when the film began in bars and tone. J.J. Abrams and Co. never made it their (stated) goal to fool the public en masse into what they were seeing was real, and there was little chance they could’ve even if they had tried based on the fantastic nature of the project, but they did do a pretty neat job of using a reality-based aesthetic to drive Cloverfield’s otherwise pedestrian story.
In light of the film’s warm critical reception and boffo box office over its opening weekend, this edition of the ToM will focus on a few other projects that posit fantastically heightened versions of our own reality by way of grafting familiar visual techniques onto unfamiliar situations.
Ghostwatch - a notorious Halloween hoax perpetrated by the BBC back in 1991, Ghostwatch front-loaded audience expectations about whether what they were seeing was real by staffing the televised investigation of a fictional haunted house with nationally known news personalities, including venerable presenter Michael Parkinson, and giving little indication beyond an end credit crawl teeming with actors and writers, that it was all a sham. Brief consideration lays bare the program’s stagier elements, but there’s no denying Watch’s ability to conjure atmosphere amid the strange sensation that what you’re watching looks and sounds, at times, very real.
Special Bulletin - long out-of-print and criminally underseen, this early MFTV effort from director Ed Zwick presents a “you are there!” scenario in which a reporter and camera person are kidnapped by a group demanding the dismantling of a cache of nuclear warheads in South Carolina. Part of the Threads / The Day After crowd of nuclear scare pics from the early ‘80s, Zwick’s film packs an immediacy which heightens tension throughout, and is graced with strong performances and exceptional editing. NBC would do right by re-issuing this title – the rogue brigade whose demands drive Bulletin’s narrative are perhaps an even more relevant point of discussion today.
Without Warning - a cheesy TV movie (starring Loni Anderson, no less!) is “interrupted” by a breaking news report – meteorite impacts have been recorded around the globe. The coverage continues as bizarre phenomena mounts and governments spiral into panic. Warning takes a page from Ghostwatch’s playbook by casting former NBC correspondent Sander Vanocur as the anchor of the fictional newsdesk which guides us through the narrative. A tad melodramatic and populated by recognizable TV actors, Warning still proves the power of aesthetic by keeping its viewers off-balance, filtering the fantastic through everyday media.
Gang Tapes - like Cloverfield, Tapes plays itself off as “found” footage, in this case offering viewers the recorded contents of a stolen camcorder which accompanies a South Central youth through a rambling, ultimately tragic weekend. Tapes benefits by being a little rougher around the edges than Cloverfield and thus closer to what you or I might capture behind the lens, and it doesn’t hang its painstaking docu look and feel on an overly cinematic arc laced with too-observant wit; what tends to get lost in Cloverfield stays front and center here – you really feel as though you’re watching someone’s “life” play out before you.
The Last Horror Movie - shock-mock-doc from the UK owes much to Man Bites Dog, and although it doesn’t quite scale that film’s more formal heights, it does manage to spin one helluva creepy yarn around the haphazardly captured, sadistic exploits of serial killer Max Parry – presented here as having been “taped over” a lame teen slasher pic. The slice-of-life sections of the film, wherein Parry dotes over his sister’s kids and cooks elaborate meals for friends, lure viewers into an uncomfortable zone wherein not every serial killer opts to dance naked in front of a mirror or design Rube Goldberg-worthy traps to ensnare his or her prey, but rather look – and for the most part – act a lot like you and me.
The list of these sorts of pics goes on for some time, and many offer unique experiences unto themselves. I’ve purposefully avoided touchstones like The Blair Witch Project, Cannibal Holocaust, and Man Bites Dog in an attempt to highlight the variety of creative stabs at feigning reality on screen. What other examples are there? What works for you, what doesn’t?
