First of all, a lot of people complained about the shaking of the DV shots of the picky film, the lack of plot twists in the characters' dialogues, and the lack of drama in the characters. But this movie doesn't put you in the role, it's a pseudo-documentary. While it documents real life like documentaries, it is actually fictional. Shooting in this way gives the audience a sense of realism, as if you were sitting at home watching the midnight news on TV and suddenly noticed something different and scary. Therefore, the beginning must be bland. An ordinary reporter leads a cameraman to interview some people and things. As things become more and more unbelievable, the reporter will of course make some effects for the report. Therefore, the heroine (that is, the reporter) ) began to be frightened (to create effect for the report) "Death Video" is a very unique horror film. It gives us face-to-face truth about death in camcorder style. While watching this film, I was naturally reminded of the paranormal events in Portugal that happened in 2006. In this accident, we saw the supernatural phenomena that he and his companions saw in the last moments of their lives through the DV filmed by the teenager who died in the car accident. Let's not debate whether the female ghost in the DV is true or not, but from the perspective of the circulating video, it is very frightening. Such an intuitive image is similar to the movie "Death Video". Although I doubt its authenticity, I am still frightened by the image itself.
Pseudo-documentaries are not documentaries at all, but are made by imitating some of the characteristics of documentaries. Like "Cloverfield Files", "Blair Witch", "District 9" are all pseudo-documentaries. Regarding the "pseudo-documentary", no clear definition has been found. There should be two situations: one is that something happened, but some feature film creation techniques such as rehearsal, reproduction and fiction are used. For example, another British "pseudo-documentary" "168 Hours of Ice Peak" records the story of how two climbers in distress were rescued. The film uses a large number of interviews with the parties, and also uses actors to perform the action scenes of the location. It's kind of close to a documentary because he's based on facts. The second is pure fiction. For example, "Blair Witch" and this "Death Video", although many documentary lens languages are used, the basis of the entire story and event is based on speculation and should belong to the category of drama films. Although the audience knows that the premise of the film's story is purely fake, the film uses a large number of photojournalistic techniques such as location interviews, media reports, and news footage to create a strong sense of reality, which makes the audience almost believe it.
It has to be said that this genre of horror is at its peak, but there is definitely a time for it to fall back. Because of the limitations of the shooting technique, many special effects cannot be used better. Only by winning the plot can a better film be made. For example, in 2010, many new pseudo-documentary horror films such as "The Abandoned Family" (South Korea), "Exorcism" (North America), "Troll Chasing" (Norway), etc., are unbearable films and have no sincerity. Want to use low cost to recover high box office, not every director can do it.
And I think it is precisely this pseudo-documentary style of hand-held photography that created the "Death Video" series, which makes us feel the same realism as zombies are often ambush around us. Such a special style of horror film, I like it.
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