If done right, found footage can be one of the most chilling, dread inducing subgenres in horror cinema. Unfortunately, it became a venue for filmmakers too lazy or inept to carry out proper camera works trying to conceal their shoddiness behind this once revolutionary and exciting, but now simply exhausted category. So I was interested in how the translation into literature would work when I heard about Found: An Anthology of Found Footage Horror, edited by Andrew Cull and Gabino Iglesias, but was admittedly not very hopeful. What I found didn’t exceed my expectations by very far, yet I still was able to enjoy quite a few good stories.
Found footage in writing is expectedly not exactly the kind of genre that will give you space and opportunities to display flowery writing, word plays or literary skill. It’s important then to be able to compensate that with originality, inventiveness and more intense chills and thrills. So the contributing authors had an extra difficult task ahead of them and not surprisingly, the totality of the anthology is a mixed bag. Still, there was quite a number of short stories which were really fine and even outstanding. Let’s take a look at them, here are my highlights;
“Junk Pickup” by Fred Fischer, IV
Perfect example of how effective a simple concept can be. Found footage tapes of a boy and the monster underneath his bed, one of the most basic fears of your childhood. Nothing spectacular, still better than most, more elaborate stories here. I was surprised to read it is the author’s first published story, it was that good.
“The Spew of News” by Clay McLeod Chapman
A tongue-in-cheek-but-deadly-serious story of a news channel which turns people into monsters (but in the first step they become politically conservative) and is as fun as it is bitter reality. This concept of a horror that “spreads”, reminds me of early King stories such as “Gray Matter” or “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” and I really like that style.
“Regular Saint” by Donna Lynch
For me, this story of witness reports written in the verse form is the absolute winner of this anthology. A poem about a girl admitted to a Catholic School, who gradually indulges more intensely in a self-invented saint and finally commits a gruesome crime is retrospectively told (probably sung) from the perspective of three of her once friends. A kind of crooked threnody and probably the single most original interpretation of found footage I have ever come across. Awesome.
On a side note; the way the girls talk reminded me of the short film Possibly in Michigan by Cecelia Condit – a similar mixture of annoying, excellent and creepy sing-sang.
“A Grave Issue” by Bev Vincent
After the 2019 earthquake in Izmir, Turkey, which saw many dead and many injured, a video went viral where a young gamer casually streams and chats on twitch and first low and then high-key panics as the earthquake gets gradually stronger. At the end of the video he shouts “it’s an earthquake, it’s an earthquake!!!!” and runs out of the room, while the building keeps shaking violently.
“A Grave Issue” has nothing to do with earthquakes or gamers. It is about a deadly book. Still, it reminded me of that video because it captures that same fascination of people witnessing something from the distance and freaking out after. You will know what I mean when you read it.
“The Novak Roadhouse Massacre” by Alan Baxter
Baxter is a top writer who really deserves more attention and acknowledgement than he actually gets. Despite this being found footage, this story has some seriously good writing, the topic as well as the execution were just superior. Read more Alan Baxter, you won’t regret.
All things aside, the cover alone justifies the purchase of this book - it's in the shape of a VHS cassette!
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