Editorials
The Evolution of Found Footage: A History of Screenlife Horror
Epistolary storytelling has been immersing readers in fiction since the very dawn of literature. Using simulated letters, diaries and other documents to craft complex tales with shifting points of view, the format inevitably ended up attracting inventive filmmakers who realized that it could be adapted into a cinematic tool to instill terror. From The McPherson Tape to The Blair Witch Project, Found Footage movies have kept the epistolary tradition alive through their use of faux home video and other diegetic media.
However, with over four decades of Found Footage experiments out there, the genre has seen quite a bit of innovation. Personally, I think one of the most interesting off-shoots of Found Footage is the ongoing trend of Screenlife films, where the entire narrative is told within the confines of digital screens. While this curious format has only recently become popular in mainstream media, it’s actually older than most people seem to realize, and that’s why I’d like to take a look back at the surprising history of Screenlife horror.
Since these movies obviously rely on digital technology to tell their stories, Screenlife was a relatively rare gimmick before the days of high-definition digital photos and online webcams. Before the 2000s, depictions of digital screens were usually relegated to brief inserts in traditional media, often with unintentionally humorous results since filmmakers weren’t accustomed to dealing with computer graphics.
That being said, 1997 saw the release of Chris Marker’s French mockumentary Level Five, which told the story of a grieving widow attempting to finish her late husband’s videogame project, with the filmmakers heavily incorporating digital imagery into the movie. It wasn’t exactly a Screenlife film, with the digital elements only complementing the documentary experience, but this experimental picture was a sign of things to come.
Nostalgic scares incoming!
In 2000, audiences were presented with the first feature-length Screenlife movie in Pierre-Paul Renders’ eerily prescient Thomas Was in Love, which told the story of an agoraphobic man who lives out his solitary love-life through webcams and virtual sex. While this French indie darling was mostly a futuristic romance, it wasn’t long until genre filmmakers were using its ideas as a jumping off point to produce digital scares.
Released in 2002, Michael Costanza’s The Collingswood Story was the first scary movie to take webcam-based narratives seriously, using shifting points of view to spin a supernatural yarn concerning sinister mediums and long-distance relationships. While it wasn’t exactly a ground-breaking experience, this primitive predecessor of minimalist horror classics like Paranormal Activity stood out through its use of lo-fi video and simulated desktops, eventually earning a cult following as the first true Screenlife horror flick.
After that, the format would only really kick off during the 2010s, due in no small part to the rising popularity of social media and more advanced consumer-grade tech. Movies like the controversial Megan Is Missing (a cautionary tale which explores the perverted dark side of online interactions) and even Bloody Disgusting’s own V/H/S (which features a memorable Screenlife segment directed by Joe Swanberg) would begin to tap into society’s growing obsession with what had once been a niche stereotypically reserved for tech geeks.
Of course, there’s no discussing Screenlife horror without bring up Russian-Kazakh filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov. Known for helming Night Watch and Wanted, this innovative director-turned-producer is a recurring champion of the Screenlife format and rose to horror notoriety after producing 2014’s incredibly successful Unfriended. Directed by Levan Gabriadze, the film tells the story of a group of teenagers who fall victim to a vengeful spirit while chatting online, with the flick’s visuals making heavy use of real computer software. While Unfriended was filmed on a meager $1 million budget, the film’s $62.9 million box-office return suggested that Screenlife movies were more than just a passing fad, so it’s no surprise that a sequel was soon greenlit (as well as a series of cinematic copycats).
Unfriended: Dark Web hit theaters in 2018, replacing the supernatural scares of its predecessor with more believable online threats like stalkers and hackers. It may not have achieved the same financial success as the original, but the film still made impressive use of desktop visuals to tell a legitimately chilling story despite sharing more than a few similarities with 2013’s underseen gem The Den.
Livestream chats can be pretty scary!
Naturally, the Unfriended franchise was only one of several Screenlife projects produced by Bekmambetov. The same year as Dark Web, the filmmaker would also produce Aneesh Chaganty’s Searching, which helped to popularize the format beyond traditional horror circles. An easily digestible thriller that uses social media to unravel a compelling mystery, Searching is currently one of the most successful Screenlife movies ever made, outperforming its predecessors and leading Bekmambetov to sign a five-picture deal with Universal regarding a series of unspecified Screenlife projects.
Beyond studio-backed blockbusters, the late 2010s also saw quite a few indie Screenlife pioneers. Filmmakers like Hannah Macpherson (who directed 2016’s Sickhouse, which is meant to be watched as a giant Snapchat video) and Michelle Iannantuono (creator of the Livescream franchise, which expertly combines online streamer culture with internet creepypastas) make a solid case for the format as a versatile tool that allows low-budget filmmakers to play around with visual storytelling without alienating genre fans. Even when these cinematic experiments don’t completely work, it’s hard to deny the creative charms of unorthodox movies like Nacho Vigalondo’s Open Windows, which reach outside the box when attempting to craft a new breed of tech-based thrillers.
More recently, the Covid-19 pandemic led to a significant boost in Screenlife releases, with studios becoming desperate for readily available horror content that could easily be distributed on streaming platforms. From Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Spree (an underrated satire of modern-day rideshares and streamer culture) to Rob Savage’s Host, which became the Pandemic’s first viral hit and spawned a spiritual successor in the form of this year’s Dashcam, there’s plenty of Screenlife horror to go around these days.
Reaching millions of viewers without the aid of massive marketing campaigns, these peculiar films serve as engaging snapshots of a moment in time, telling appropriately modern stories about the terrors of a screen-obsessed world. And with movies like Bekmambetov’s recent Profile (not to mention his bizarre Shakespeare adaptation R#J) proving that there are still novel thrills to be had in visual storytelling, I can’t wait to see where filmmakers take Screenlife horror next!
Shudder’s ‘Host’
It’s been 75 years since The Thing From Another World first warned us to “watch the skies”, and filmgoers have done just that by showing up to multiple instances of extraterrestrial contact on the big screen. This makes sense, as a recent CBS news poll estimated that 63% of Americans believe in intelligent life on other planets, and the ongoing disclosure movement aims to raise that number with each passing day.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day leaving many genre fans hungry for more alien footage (preferably of the spooky variety), today I’d like to share a list recommending six underrated alien invasion thrillers for your viewing pleasure. After all, regardless of whether or not you believe that we’re alone in the universe, it can be fun to dream about the worst-case scenario if our cosmic neighbors ever decide to visit.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on lesser-known invasion stories rather than the popular extraterrestrials of franchises like Alien and Close Encounters of the Third (or even Fourth) Kind. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own alien favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling movie.
While it won’t be featured in this article, I’d highly recommend checking out Dean Alioto’s UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape if you’re up for some ufology-inspired found footage thrills.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. The Arrival (1996)
Not to be confused with Denis Villeneuve’s Academy Award-winning Amy Adams vehicle about learning to communicate peacefully with extraterrestrial life, David Twohy’s The Arrival is a much more straightforward (but no less entertaining) genre romp where Charlie Sheen faces a global conspiracy involving hostile alien invaders.
It’s not exactly up there with Close Encounters or even Independence Day, but Twohy’s conspiratorial thriller plays out like an exceptionally fun episode of The X-Files that I’d recommend to sci-fi/horror fans who don’t mind a little bit of wonky CGI and 90s excess alongside their alien thrills.
5. Extraterrestrial (2014)
The Vicious Brothers made a name for themselves with the success of 2011’s Grave Encounters, but that was far from the Canadian duo’s only collaboration. And while it’s not exactly a fan favorite, I always point out 2014’s Extraterrestrial as one of their most underrated projects simply because I agree with the filmmakers’ opinion that there aren’t enough ‘cool alien abduction movies’ out there.
Admittedly, the majority of the picture functions like a run-of-the-mill creature feature with paper-thin characters and familiar horror tropes, but I’d argue that the cosmically-terrifying final act elevates the experience to new and memorable heights. The movie also boasts great performances by both Michael Ironside and Emily Perkins – a combination that more than makes up for the occasionally janky CGI.
4. Alien Raiders (2008)
Director Ben Rock has gone on record lamenting how his John-Carpenter-inspired creature feature was forcefully renamed from Supermarket to the painfully obvious Alien Raiders (a change which likely resulted in many potential viewers skipping out on the experience), but the new title doesn’t change the fact that this single-location thriller is something of a hidden gem.
Taking place entirely within a supermarket, Alien Raiders tells the story of an ensemble of customers and employees who are taken hostage by a group of armed men looking for something far more dangerous than an easy payout. I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoiling the experience, but I’d highly recommend this criminally underseen flick to fans of John Carpenter and the Resident Evil games.
3. Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
You’d think that a Ridley-Scott-produced retelling of one of the most infamous real-life UFO sightings of all time would have a bigger following, but I rarely see Justin Barber’s Found Footage period piece brought up during discussions about extraterrestrial-focused horror movies.
This is a huge shame, as Phoenix Forgotten is just as spooky as it is convincing, with this well-researched dive into the Phoenix Lights incident benefiting from surprisingly believable special effects as well as an appropriately horrific finale.
2. Communion (1989)
I wouldn’t blame you for disregarding Whitley Strieber’s controversial book about his alleged close encounter as sensationalist slop, but I’d argue that Phillipe Mora’s 1989 adaptation of these events is much better than the source material. After all, the movie works as a standalone piece of speculative fiction while also benefiting from an incredible performance by the one and only Christopher Walken!
Mora’s take on Communion may not be particularly scary, but the film is still an unforgettable character study regardless of whether or not the abduction really happened. Not only that, but the flick also paved the way for plenty of future sci-fi stories where the extraterrestrial invaders aren’t as evil as they initially appear.
1. Altered (2006)
Originally envisioned as a Sam Raimi-style horror-comedy titled Probed, Eduardo Sánchez (of The Blair Witch Project fame) eventually realized that it would be much more interesting to turn the film into a serious exploration of the emotional aftermath of a traumatic abduction incident.
That’s how we got Altered, a clever inversion of the standard abduction narrative that follows a group of troubled friends as they capture and experiment on an alien in order to enact revenge for their own abduction years prior.
You must be logged in to post a comment.