10 Annoying Problems With Found Footage Movies

Over and over in found footage films, the action will be gearing up, and then just as the characters are in grave danger and everything is getting insane, they drop the camera, they're killed off screen, and that’s it. But a completely unsatisfying ending like this is supposedly okay because this is how real footage would end! Really, it’s just an excuse to cop out of giving the audience any sense of resolution.

Easily the worst example of this was in The Devil Inside. Everything’s really heating up when the characters get into a car accident and the camera cuts to black. A title card comes up saying that the case of these people is still unresolved and the audience can visit a website for more information. In no other genre would it be acceptable to suddenly cut to black and just redirect the audience to a website.

Obviously it’s okay to end with the camera being destroyed and the characters being killed if there’s a sense of finality and resolution, like the end of Cloverfield. But too often these movies simply cut the audience off right as things are getting good. After all, they’ve already wasted the audience’s time and made plenty of excuses to not show them anything as a way to save money, so why give them a real ending?