It seems like lots of horror movies produced these days center around a cinema verite shooting style that presents the action as real found footage, usually shot by a group of young adults on some little adventure. Their shaky camera operation rarely manages to capture more than a glimpse of whatever monster or apparition is tormenting them. Film creators do this because a) the terror that your imagination can create having only seen a snippet of a frightening sight is stronger than the terror you might really feel if you got a long, good look at the frightening sight, b) things are more frightening if they seem realistic, and the less you see of something that's not real, the more realistic you will imagine it to be, and c) it's much cheaper to concoct a frightening image for one second than to orchestrate entire drawn-out sequences. So this strategy makes sense.
But it occurs to me that if any message is being sent by these films, it's that you shouldn't film outings or trips that you take with your friends, especially if you are all twenty-something singles. If you're driving to the Catskill Mountains with a bunch of college buddies, for example, filming your trip seems to greatly increase the likelihood of something awful happening to you. So just take some pictures on your phone and call it good. Your friends will thank you after they're not tortured and dismembered in the Catskills.
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