One of my favorite lines in all of horror cinema comes from The Blair Witch Project (1999). Josh (Joshua Leonard) gazes through a video camera view-finder at Heather (Heather Donohue) and trenchantly notes that the picture isn’t “quite reality.”
He’s
right, of course. And that’s part of the
reasons we love movies so much. For ninety minutes or two hours, the
camera becomes our eyes, and what we see through that camera isn’t quite
reality. It’s heightened reality. It’s
manipulated reality. It’s shaped and
edited reality.
Given
how crucially important film grammar is in constructing an effective horror
film, in crafting a sense of escalating unease and terror, it’s only natural,
perhaps, that the camera itself has become an important player and topic of debate
within the texts of many popular horror films.
Thanks
in part to technological improvements, the portable home video camera became
affordable and lightweight in the mid-1980s.
Accordingly, a revolution in home movies began, and very shortly, this
trend “trickled down” into horror movie narratives. Videographers or amateur movie makers started
out by appearing in the “victim pool” of mid-1980s horror films (April
Fool’s Day [1986], Friday the 13th VIII: Jason
Takes Manhattan [1989]), but more than that the camera soon became a player itself in the longstanding social
argument about the value of horror as a genre.
Consider
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1989), and the notorious scene in
which Otis (Tom Towles) and Henry (Michael Rooker) go out “hunting” and kill a
randomly-selected suburban family. They
record the horrific murder and rape spree on their camcorder and later -- while
drinking a few beers -- kick back and watch their blood-thirsty escapades. Otis even rewinds the tape, thoroughly
entertained: “I want to see it again.”
The
issue here is quite simply this: do we, as human beings, actually revel in the
suffering of other people? Does the video
camera actually transform another person’s suffering into our entertainment? This isn’t
just a horror movie question, either. This is a
real life question. Consider how often the grotesque footage of Saddam Hussein’s dead, bloody sons was replayed on cable television. Or think how often the terror of the 9/11
attacks on the WTC were rerun in the days following the horrific event. Do we, by watching recorded events, become complicit in a
news event? That’s certainly the
territory of such films as Ringu (1998) and The Ring (2002).
A
similar was developed in Flatliners (1990). There, a yuppie
doctor-in-training, Joe Hurley (William Baldwin) secretly filmed all of his
sexual conquests, and then watched and relived them later. He had taken a liberty with his “lovers” and
would have to pay for that moral trespass. His actions had consequences. The video camera could be used to commit a crime, an invasion of personal space and privacy.
In
the aforementioned Blair Witch Project (1999), the video-camera, as Josh notes,
functions as a shield, distancing the
viewer from unpleasant reality. Josh
notes that the camera offers a “filtered
reality” in which one can “pretend
everything isn’t quite the way it is.”
In
other words, the act of perceiving reality through a camera lens distances
oneself from the objects and situations perceived. In a non-horror setting, this was actually
the subtext for the final episode of the popular sitcom Seinfeld in 1998. Jerry and his friends watched a crime being
conducted (a car-jacking) through a video camera, but did not intervene to actually stop the
crime as it was occurring. The apparently-passive act of
gazing through the camera enabled George, Elaine, Kramer and Jerry to see
themselves as being somehow apart from reality, and apart from community, even
from the law itself. There was no need to help
the victim of a crime. They were merely…watching,
as they would a TV show.
With
the heyday of found footage films upon us (including [REC], Cloverfield,
Paranormal Activity, Apollo 18 and the like) we as viewers are asked
again and again to reckon with the role of the camera in our lives, and in
horrific scenarios.
But
where The Blair Witch Project asks us to assemble a sense of order
out of grainy pixelized images that didn’t make sense in a conventional fashion
and didn’t reveal anything about the looming threat (the Blair Witch), these
later examples of the form strive more for certainty than uncertainty. The Demon in Paranormal Activity (2009),
for example, presents for a full-frame close-up at the end of the film, just so
the audience gets its money’s worth out of a “creature feature.” This (dumb...) ending belies the fact that more
people own cameras now than at any time in human history, and nobody has ever,
anywhere, recorded footage of a demon. Films like Paranormal Activity don’t
use the camera to reveal how our eyes can lie, only to assure that audience
expectations are met.
The
camera can also be a social good in the horror film.
It can be a tool of investigation and observation (The Lost World: Jurassic Park,
Poltergeist), but more often the point of many horror films is that you can’t
really hide from terror behind the eye-piece.
The camera may be a filter, but, in the final analysis, it’s a filter
that doesn’t protect you. Beyond the camera
lens, life is happening in all its unpredictable, horrific, and sometimes
wondrous forms.
The greatest terror associated with the video camera is that it could be all that survives a terrible event, a witness to death, and to your very end. Years later, your footage might be found...
The greatest terror associated with the video camera is that it could be all that survives a terrible event, a witness to death, and to your very end. Years later, your footage might be found...
The
video camera and videographer appear in (but are not limited to) such films as:
Dead
of Winter (1985), April Fool’s Day (1986), Slaughter
High (1986), Cellar Dweller (1988), Friday
the 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), A
Nightmare on Elm Street IV: The Dream Master (1989), Henry:
Portrait of a Serial Killer (1989), Flatliners (1990), Mr.
Frost (1990), Puppet Master 2 (1991), Basket
Case 3: Progeny (1992), Prom Night IV: Deliver us From Evil
(1992), Man’s Best Friend (1993) Brainscan (1994),
Scream (1996), Anaconda (1997), Lost
World: Jurassic Park (1997), Scream 2 (1997), Ringu
(1998), The Blair Witch Project (1999), The Rage: Carrie 2
(1999), The Descent (2006), [REC]
(2007) Diary of the Dead (2007), Cloverfield (2008), Paranormal Activity 3 (2011), Apollo
18 (2011).
"A Serbian Film" is probably the most powerful and effective use of the camera-as-prop since "Blair Witch".
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