10 Annoying Problems With Found Footage Movies

Most found footage movies thankfully avoid this, but it’s popped up enough times to be a really annoying trend.

A few of these films actually add music and sound effects into scenes to make them more closely resemble a traditional horror film, as if audiences can't possibly be scared without this. Just like with adding multiple angles, if you’re making a found footage film, you should commit to that gimmick. Having music just feels like the director is chickening out and reverting back to standard movie cliches.

Take George Romero’s Diary of the Dead, meant to be assembled from documentary footage but which has lame horror movie music all throughout that completely detracts from that. It’s hard not to imagine the editor within the film’s universe, assembling all this footage of people literally dying on camera and overlaying a cheesy film score.

When working with found footage, half the fun is committing to those limitations and being creative with them. Using things like music and sound effects just takes the audience out of that experience and reminds them that they aren’t actually watching footage from someone’s camera. They’re watching a Hollywood movie.