8. Awful Camera Work
This one is sort of a territorial hazard. Movies, horror films especially, that employ found-footage techniques do so to bring a sort of ultra-realism to their stories. While this can be effective at times, it also saddles the bulk of the film with camera work that ranges anywhere from mediocre to abysmal. The problem is that while shaky, hand-held camera work can make an action or horror sequence seem much more lifelike and frantic, for the rest of the film its usually useless and often times distracting. Worst of all, there is a large difference between well done handheld camera work and bad handheld camera work. Usually, found footage films employ the latter, so that even when the shaky-cam should be upping the intensity of a scene, its so poorly executed that its hard to see anything, and thus, harder to get anything out of it.