“The Devil Inside” and Found Footage movies
This weekend saw a shocking box office success of The Devil Inside. Pre-release audience polling suggested the movie would hit $15M in opening weekend revenues, but instead the film raked in $34M. That sound you hear in Hollywood are heads exploding. The ROI on TDL, which cost $1M to produce, is in the same stratosphere like other uber-successful horror pics before it such as The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.
LAT’s film folks Steve Zeitchik and Amy Kaufman wrote all about it yesterday:
“The Devil Inside” was a surprise hit at the box office this weekend — a micro-budget horror film with no stars and plenty of bad reviews, the film came out of nowhere to gross $33.7 million and become the third-highest January opening in Hollywood history.
But far from a novelty, “Devil Inside” is the first in a new wave of films that use the conceit of “found footage” — movies that blend fantastical plot lines with supposedly real video — due for release in the coming year. A found-footage high school comedy is on its way. So is a superhero tale, and more horror films.
In a time when expensive, effects-driven movies rule the roost, this inexpensive form of pseudo-verite is appealing both to Hollywood and, potentially, to filmgoers.
Ah, found footage movies. Where have we read about that before?
Oh, how about my post here looking at the sub-genre in the GITS Movie Story Type series.
Or here where we read and analyzed the found footage screenplay for Cloverfield.
Or here where I interviewed screenwriter John Swetnam who sold two found footage spec scripts last year: Evidence and Category Six.
So if you’ve been reading GITS, you are way ahead of the curve on the whole found footage front.
My question to you today is this: Why are found footage films so popular? More specifically, what about them appeals to you? There are lots of angles and theories about the subject, and I have plenty of my own ideas, but I’d like to hear from the GITS community to see if we can shed new light on the emergence in popularity of this sub-genre, and determine if it will continue to have legs after 2012, a year in which at least a half-dozen found footage films will be released.
For more of the LAT article, go here.
To see Amy Kaufman’s video report of the weekend’s box office results, focusing much of her analysis on The Devil Inside, you can go here.
Here is an article from TheWrap about the marketing of TDL.
Finally this funny rant between Matt Ryan and Matt Singer about their respective experiences watching TDL. An excerpt:
Mike: So here’s the question: Are demons stupid?
Matt: They are in this movie. But everyone in this movie is stupid. Like the priests, who explain how transference works and then can’t believe it when it happens. Or the doctor who lets them perform an illegal exorcism in his hospital right under his nose.
Mike: And are all demons homophobic, or is it just this one?
Matt: What did this demon do that was homophobic?
Mike: It used a homophobic slur. The same one that Brett Ratner used.
Matt: Ah, yes. Are you implying Brett Ratner might be possessed by a demon?
Mike: That would explain ‘Tower Heist.’
I haven’t seen TDL, but I must say it’s not often a movie gets an such low marks on Cinemascore [42% D or F], yet is such a resounding success at the box office.
Must be the found footage thing…
Comment Archive