1. ‘If You’re Seeing This, I’m Probably Dead’: Poe, Lovecraft, and the Literary Heritage of
Found Footage Horror
Edward Anderson
Portions delivered at South Atlantic Modern Language Association 2012 Convention
It has been said that horror turns on the absence of something essential or the presence of
something unexpected. Sometimes, both are true. The definitions and consequences of the
horrific can be affected just as profoundly by the structure of a narrative as by its elements.
What I will here refer to as ‘recovered manuscript fiction’ could be considered a subcategory of
epistolary fiction, but possessing a distinct and identifiable set of characteristics which render it
decidedly different than what we would expect of more widely­regarded works like
Dostoevysky’s ​Poor Folk​¸ or Lewis’ ​The Screwtape Letters​, or​ ​even another example from
horror, such as ​Dracula​. The horror of recovered manuscript fiction is alluded to in its own
label; it is the found chronicle of some adventure—or misadventure—told by the very figure who
has undergone the experience has not returned to tell the tale in the flesh. What is not so
self­evident is the degree to which interactions and connections are made possible by this
narrative situation, developments that other narrative types might preclude, such as peculiar
engagement strategies and uniquely­functioning plot constructions. The body of film which has
developed as a cross­media descendant of recovered manuscript literature displays equivalent
hallmarks, though technological evolution has allowed for radical approaches to this particular
storytelling practice.

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There is something psychoanalytically engaging about the entire premise of the recovered
manuscript narrative: within the context of its own fiction, it is the product of direct and
desperate reaction to an extant situational trauma, but also an act that fulfills the maternal
imperative to mean by standing, itself, as a testament to the meaning made by the subjects of the
narrative. At some level, we are meant to invest in the idea that ​they​ made​ this message​, this
meaning​. Ironic, then, that the imperative to mean is so closely bound to the mother and the
mirror stage, for the recovered manuscript narrative is often a rather reflective one—as reflective
as the author imagines humans might get at the realization of their own doom—while also being
a final fulfilment of the maternal command, perhaps even a symbolic appeal to the mercy and
comfort of the mother. She is, after all, a foundational icon of both power and salvation, often
referred to in narrative and appealed to colloquially (“Go cry to your momma.”) even as religion
itself, along with whatever other metaphysical beliefs might be relevant, have been undermined
by the hopelessness of the situation. But an overt appeals for salvation are made in vain, for the
document itself​ is meant to stand as the only artifact to have escaped the adventure intact, to have
made it to the reader’s hands.
The central action of the recovered manuscript is the chronicling not of adventure or
other enriching experience—such as is common in travel narratives and more traditional
epistolary—but of tragic misadventure and isolation. Generally, by the time the chronicle has
begun, its outcome is already inevitable; the narrator has been presented with an obstacle or
antagonist which he has little confidence he will be able to overcome or escape, thereby
prompting him to record the events that have lead him to his fate in hopes that his record will
somehow find its way to the outside world; not to serve as an S.O.S., but rather as a warning.

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This situation—the necessity of ​discovering​ the recovered manuscript—is what makes, and the
particular tale we’ll be examining, different from Defoe’s similarly­themed ​Robinson Crusoe​;
there, it is strongly implied that the titular character writes about his adventures rather strictly in
hindsight, while the last line confirms his intention—and ​capacity​—to continue the narrative in a
later volume. In fact, if narratives such as ​Crusoe​ established new inroads for narrative realism,
the recovered manuscript narrative pushes that edge, that tarrying with material reality beyond
the materially possible. As the nature of the recovered manuscript plots is often supernatural, the
manifestation of the nemesis is so alien as to be not entirely comprehensible to the narrator. Yet,
whether natural or supernatural, it is ultimately the inclusion of the fatally undefeatable that
allows recovered manuscript fiction to explore different, darker psychological and social territory
than its antecedent forms; the perspective the of individual ​living​ the ill­fated event is different
than that of the one who ​has​ lived it, and especially different from the one who has lived some
time after surviving it. Though the body of work comprising text­based recovered manuscript
fiction is rather slight, the application of the narrative strategy has expanded into film in the
genre of found footage horror, and the parameters of the cross­media form—an admittedly
derridean feeling out of an amorphous situation that evolves along with the expanding
parameters of communications technology—can be traced out (momentarily, at least) from the
examples explored herein.
There exists within recovered manuscript tales a necessary concern with narrative
temporality, and not simply for the sake of typical authorial considerations such as plot and
pacing. The fictional author/narrator is ever­mindful of the construction of his document and,
given that writing is a time­consuming activity, he must plan so that the account might be

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updated or finished before he meets his end. The fact that he often does so ‘out loud’, with
references made to the planning of the text in the text itself, is a strategy of authenticating the
narrative, of better equipping the reader to believe that the account is happening—​has
happened​—within their own physical realm. This all has an obvious and profound effect on
1
content, as, barring aforementioned philosophical and redemptive reflections, the authors of the
examples we shall study here dedicate little space to any detail that does not contribute to the
reader’s understanding of the situation. This results in a cast of characters who are exceptionally
transient, often devoid even of name and disappearing from the narrative as soon as the function
of their presence is fulfilled. The state of such characters should not be mistaken as being
indicative of a lack of dimensionality of the recovered manuscript story, however, as those
figures, by virtue of their near­facelessness, significantly enrich the reader’s understanding of the
situation, even if only by our reaction to them. Thus, such characters attain a unique type of
realism that we see just as often in the films that the recovered manuscript form has spun off.
So many discursive concerns and engaging structural considerations thus identified, we
can thus turn to a specific example of the form. Here, we will focus our attentions on one of
Edgar Allen Poe’s tales as a prototypical. It would, initially, seem an obvious choice to examine
his only novel, ​the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket​, an epistolary of diary entries
from the misadventures of a deceased sailor. But, as with Defoe, this is where the previous
description of the recovered manuscript form becomes relevant; ​Arthur Gordon Pym​ does not
qualify as recovered manuscript because, narratively­speaking, Pym died ​after​ the piece was
passed on to the next link in the chain of delivery (a narrative device which will be examined
1
Tangentially: this raises the question of how prudent it would be, regardless of modern writing conventions, to
refer to the action of a given recovered manuscript in past tense.

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later); the ​recovered​ part of the ‘recovered manuscript’ moniker distinguishes ​Pym​ as something
different in its nature.
But ​Pym​, though being unique for its length amongst Poe’s work, is not the first of its
kind thematically, and its antecedent proves a more successful example of the narrative type we
are concerning ourselves with. Just as Poe would write his dead women and premature burial
tales, so the sea and the idea of a record, what’s found of the otherwise lost, had called to him
half a decade before, in ‘Ms. Found In a Bottle’ (1833). A relatively obscure entry within Poe’s
omnibus, the story nevertheless provides us with all the structural requirements heretofore
identified; we are quickly introduced to the journal of the unnamed narrator, a chronically
restless and ironically directionless sailor who finds himself in the midst of a gale. He is hurled
from his own ship and lands, seemingly undetected, on the deck of a mysterious vessel bound for
the South Pole. In his journal, the presented record of the tale, it is made clear that such a
destination can only mean death. As he tries to find a means to preserve himself aboard while
simultaneously grasping for a safe exit, he takes desperate notes about the ineffable crew of the
ghost ship;
A man passed by my place of concealment…. He muttered to himself, in a low broken
tone, some words of a language which I could not understand, and groped in a corner
among a pile of singular­looking instruments…. His manner was a wild mixture of the
peevishness of second childhood, and the solemn dignity of a God. He at length went on
deck, and I saw him no more. (111)
The transience of this figure could be chalked up to the compactness of short story as a form. By
its nature as a literature of panic, however, written under the constant threat of mortal danger,
recovered manuscript fiction alters the valuation of such an appearance, imbuing it with that
same air of inescapability that so hangs over the entire presentation of the tale.

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Meanwhile, although the established conditions seem inhospitable to reflection, quite the
contrary is true. Rightly or wrongly, products of the horror genre are often maligned for their
lack of psychological depth in favor of salacious and visceral thrills, but good literature is often
defined by some degree of emotional development. Horror, as a larger genre, is by no means
barred from such heights, while our example from Poe shows how the deliberate inclusion of
moral and philosophical reflection would come to be a staple of the genre. In an otherwise
un­prefaced passage, the narrator shares an emerging sense of his own fate:
A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken possession of my soul —a sensation
which will admit of no analysis, to which the lessons of bygone times are inadequate, and
for which I fear futurity itself will offer me no key. To a mind constituted like my own,
the latter consideration is an evil. I shall never—I know that I shall never—be satisfied
with regard to the nature of my conceptions. Yet it is not wonderful that these
conceptions are indefinite, since they have their origin in sources so utterly novel. A new
sense—a new entity is added to my soul (112).
This sense of dread is an evolving one, however, and, as he considers it, the narrator can
distinguish the peculiar tortuousness of time, of a period that closes in on fate, but has some
duration still set aside to intimidate, to subsequently, ironically drive the narrator’s reflections.
I have just left the deck, where I find it impossible to maintain a footing, although the
crew seem to experience little inconvenience. It appears to me a miracle of miracles that
our enormous bulk is not swallowed up at once and forever. We are surely doomed to
hover continually upon the brink of Eternity, without taking a final plunge into the abyss.
From billows a thousand times more stupendous than any I have ever seen, we glide
away with the facility of the arrowy sea­gull; and the colossal waters rear their heads
above us like demons of the deep, but like demons confined to simple threats and
forbidden to destroy (113­14).
Dour though the forecast is, and even within the confines of the involuntary voyage—the cage of
a ship gaining on its destination, on finality itself—valuable room in this endemically
time­bound narrative is set aside specifically for the act of chronicling. Indeed, the exploration
of deep emotions is truly endemic to the structure here, as the narrator of the recovered

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manuscript is expected to engage in the sort of philosophical and moral reflection any ​actual
person​ might engage in upon such an event, thereby exposing, perhaps, the expectation of
realism even in the midst of a clearly fantastical situation. At some point, then, he reader comes
to suspend disbelief of the supernatural elements, the ​purely fictional​ points of the fiction, as the
realistic elements are introduced, come to be expected and, as such, allow for an adoption of the
tale as realistically feasible in respects that must still be explored.
To continue the exploration of that obscuring of the boundary between the situation of the
narrative and that of its delivery ​as narrative ​to the viewer, we can turn Lovecraft’s ‘Call of
Cthulhu’. Here, narrator Weyland Thurston records the progress of his research of a malevolent
pagan god and the cult that worships it. If, according to the categorical conventions of
epistolary, ‘Ms. Found in a Bottle’ is to be considered monologic—just the one narrator’s
tale—​Cthulhu​ makes a neat feat out of being polylogic while still maintaining an authentic,
identifiable ‘recoveredness’ in its nature. Ostensible testimonies and notes of several chroniclers
are included, all having been recovered from the belongings of narrator Thurston’s deceased
uncle. As a reflection in his own notes, Thurston comes to realize that it is the very knowledge
of the existence of this supernatural evil that has already doomed him;
“… [This] record of mine… wherein is pieced together that which I hope may
never be pieced together again. I have looked upon all that the universe has to
hold of horror…. As my uncle went… so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult
still lives. … Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose…. Loathsomeness waits and
dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men…. Let me
pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before
audacity and see that it meets no other eye.”
Lovecraft heads ‘Call of Cthulhu’ with a note that, yet again, the story the reader is about to
embark on was recovered from a dead man’s papers: Thurston’s own. Assuming that disbelief

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has been effectively suspended—as the greatest testimony to this fictional character’s death is his
selfsame absence for the reader—the solitary act of reading itself becomes host to a blending of
the real and fictional; the implication for the reader is that they themselves may suffer the same
fate as Thurston for committing the same act with the same text. And the very fact that this
confluence of the two dimensions finds its object in the reader themselves serves as a kind of
psychological stimulation, a subtle but effective strategy that cinema would eventually come to
replicate.
Indeed, to blur that distinction between the viewing experience and the narrative itself,
creative personalities such as William Castle and Arch Obler would eventually rig theater seats
and put movie house employees in costumes to pop out and scare patrons. Even our historical
(and current) ambivalence toward 3­D technology is the result of an attempt at realism that Poe
and Lovecraft succeeded at perhaps more elegantly. Found footage horror, then, is a narrative
approach to obscuring that line, and on that has seen increasing success over the last few
decades. Traditionally, ’found footage’ (sans ‘horror’) has been used to identify cinematic
productions that are either partially or completely comprised of clips from ​discovered home
2
movies, travelogues, newsreels and other personal or documentary sources. These materials are
combined, re­edited, or otherwise processed at some point after their original production, usually
by someone other than their creator, and re­released, often for artistic more than commercial
purposes. As such, ‘found footage’ films often lack any cohesive narrative, a key possibility of
that form that separates it not only from found footage ​horror​, but from most
recognizably­narrative forms of expression. Found footage horror, then—by virtue of the final
2
In a realistic sense: these are actual media products of our own realm, versus the fiction of a ​recovered ​narrative.

9. Anderson ­ ‘If You’re Seeing This, I’m Probably Dead’ ­ 9
identifier, ​‘horror'​—is a commercial, narrative sub­genre, the label of which is, with respect to
reality, a misnomer; all is fabricated, nothing is truly recovered, no previously­synthesized
element is ​found​ in the development process. If the product is effective however, its subjective
status of ​fiction​ can, for the reader, become blurred or more easily ignored in much the same
manner as we’ve seen in the literary examples already discussed.
But, if the body of literature that qualifies as recovered manuscript fiction is slight, so
found footage horror, as one of the newest sub­genres of horror and one of the most novel
story­telling styles currently being used in filmmaking, suffers from a reputation that might just
threaten to likewise curtail its development. As tolerance for horror chronically ebbs amongst
professional film critics, amateur bloggers and horror­dedicated websites such as
Bloody­Disgusting, Fangoria, and ShockTilYouDrop.com have taken over much of the serious
discussion about the benefits, liabilities, and curiosities of the form. Increasingly, the
demographic of the average horror movie reviewer approaches that of the average horror movie
fan, as well as the average found footage horror filmmaker; young to early middle­aged, male,
and tech savvy , a characteristic that becomes important as we consider the reliance of the
3
narrative form on the availability and, anymore, pervasivity of consumer communications
technologies. The form is likewise overlooked within academia, perhaps due to assumptions of
its quality based on the proliferation of those b­level entries that, as with the rest of horror,
discursively detract from the achievements and importance of superior examples. Or, we might
assume that the lack of critical interest is a qualitative judgment made against the relatively scant
3
Many of today’s prominent found footage filmmakers, such as Paco Plaza (​Rec​, 2007), Oren Peli (​Paranormal
Activity​, 2007), and Matt Reeves (​Cloverfield​, 2008) fit this description, as do the filmmakers of such landmark
found footage pieces as Ruggero Deodato (​Cannibal Holocaust,​ 1980, during which time the director was 41) and
Daniel Myrick (who was 37 when ​The Blair Witch Project​ was released in 1999).

10. Anderson ­ ‘If You’re Seeing This, I’m Probably Dead’ ­ 10
subdivision of a larger genre that, itself, has had difficulties being taken seriously. This last
supposition rings false, however, considering the wealth of serious study dedicated to related
subjects, such as the cultural foundations of the slasher movie, the sociopolitical underpinnings
of cinematic zombie mythology and, of course, issues ranging from familial tensions to
consumer psychology to gender difference amongst classic creature features. Found footage
horror continues to be produced, however, and in greater volumes all the time. In 2012,
Paranormal Activity 3​ enjoyed an opening weekend of $52.6 million, a fall record at the time
(Box Office Mojo). That franchise, arguably the most successful in the subgenre, will be
continued in another film in 2015. And it will be competing with a host of new entries, including
The Gallows​, ​The Fear Project​, ​Stalker​, ​The X Species​, and ​Occupants​, as well as international
titles including Ukraine’s ​Ghoul​, and the UK’s ​Night Fall​. Meanwhile, 2014 saw the most
recent installment of perhaps the most successful non­American franchise, the Spanish ​[REC]
series.
4
But, academic attention notwithstanding, even the marketplace prevalence of the form is
a radical departure from where such films were even thirty years ago, at the dawn of practical
home filmmaking. At that point, with Poe and Lovecraft long dead and the recovered
manuscript form being taken up only occasionally and never with any great degree of success, it
becomes fascinating that the ultimate impetus for the resurgence of such a unique narrative
perspective would not be the development of new media content, but of new media forms and
increased consumer access. The economic and technological advancements of the second half of
4
Though, to be fair, the franchise name, a reference to the common on‐screen notification from many brands of
video cameras, becomes ironic; only the first two films of the series are presented entirely as found footage. ​[REC]
3:​ ​Genesis​ is only partially shot in the style, while the last, subtitled ​Apocalypse​, abandons the format entirely for a
traditional, 3​rd​
person camera perspective.

11. Anderson ­ ‘If You’re Seeing This, I’m Probably Dead’ ­ 11
the 20​th​
Century brought a commensurate lowering of production costs, so that independent
filmmakers were being allowed broader access to their materials, thereby leading to a greater
degree of cinematic experimentation far outside of studio structures. The affordability and ease
of amateur video production became the lynchpin that made found footage possible; as Super­8
gave way to videotape, it became increasingly plausible that a group of amateurs would be able
to produce in the isolated locations that often provide the setting for found footage horror. In
fact, while set­based shooting has always been common to studio productions, filmmakers of the
1980’s and 90’s were taking lessons from gritty exploitation films, opting to shoot more cheaply
‘on location’ wherever and whenever possible—be that location the Amazonian jungle of
Cannibal Holocaust​ (1980) or the local woods of ​The Blair Witch Project​ (1999). Given that
suspension of disbelief is of special importance to found footage horror, which strives for
plausibility within its own fantastic context, a no­budget production quality and unadorned
performances would become not only standard to the form, but would serve as some of the
hallmarks that made the ‘reality’ of the narrative more accessible ​as​ real.
But, while we might tend to look at examples of other genres in relative isolation—a
study of the film restrict to ​just​ the film—another great novelty of found footage horror is how it
often utilizes other media to more effectively blur the reality/fiction barrier. One the genre’s
most notable titles, the aforementioned ​The Blair Witch Project, ​made extensive use of the
internet as part of a marketing strategy of what we will call ‘authenticity confusion’. Rather than
relying strictly on traditional forms of marketing—such as interviews with the actors that
reference the process of making the film ​as​ a fictional piece—the producers of ​Blair Witch​ used
new media to plant the idea that what audiences were going to see was the chronicle of a

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historical event, the most recent manifestation of a supernatural phenomenon that had been
established and studied for decades. Elements of a fabricated mythology were posted to web
blogs and bulletin boards, with hired writers taking on the guise of amateur detectives, sharing
clandestine information about Elly Kedward, the titular witch, histories of strange incidents and
ritualized murders, and even the police confession of Rustin Parr, a mid­20​th​
C. hermet, familiar
of Kedwards, and serial murderer. Such savvy marketing was quite successful, both in making
Blair Witch​ the first found footage horror film to earn top box office sales—almost $250M
worldwide (Box Office Mojo)—and, perhaps more impressively, in making some portion of
early fans legitimately believe that the narrative represented a material truth.
But home video technology like that used to produce ​Blair Witch​ had been available to
consumers since the mid­1970’s, and it is hard to believe that the market would take two and a
half decades to develop a genre that fit its expanding functionality so well; indeed, ​Blair Witch
had its precursors. ​Cannibal Holocaust​—an Italian production showcasing not the emerging,
more convenient technology of video, but the 16mm film that was beginning its market
decline—concerns the disappearance of a documentary film crew in the Colombian Amazon. As
opposed to efforts like ​Blair ​Witch, in which local terrains were used as film setting, director
Ruggero Deodato and his crew used multiple means of transport to get to shooting locations deep
within the rainforest. Ironically, though, the best aid to suspension of disbelief that Deodato
provides is not in the realism of his piece, but in its fiction. As with the textual precedents we
have examined, horror as an overarching cinematic genre often integrates supernatural themes;
found footage horror, as a form, is no exception, but, unlike the other examples examined here,
Cannibal Holocaust​ eschews such elements entirely. While the settings are exotic, Deodato

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chooses to deal only in horrors possible in the viewer’s own world, and it is the knowledge of
that possibility that casts the grotesqueries of the frame and plot as all the more striking and
disturbing. Besides being an early example of found footage horror, ​Cannibal Holocaust​ is
notable for being something of a cultural pariah, a historical blight that may be somewhat
responsible for the present reputation of the genre. Amongst so many other disturbing scenes of
death and dismemberment, Deodato filmed his actors gleefully slaughtering and eating a large
turtle, an act which would be hardly noteworthy if not for that fact that it was not simulated.
This and other scandalous images easily earned the film a place on the British Board of Film
Censors ‘video nasties’ list. Further, as the production used real cannibal tribesmen as extras, the
filmmakers’ attempt at authenticity confusion worked out quite better than they had hoped:
besides simply being banned in the UK, the producers of the film were prosecuted in several
countries for obscenity violations and speculation that the piece was actually just a glorified
snuff film persisted for decades, despite subsequent media appearances of the actors who
portrayed the ‘lost’ film crew (Balun).
Traditional horror film structure often includes the ‘grand reveal’, typified by Lon
Chaney’s (presumably) shrieking Phantom of the Opera, the unveiling of The Fly, or the first
glimpse of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Found footage horror, on the other hand,
assumes its position as thoroughly post­modern by offering the audience no such pay­off. In
Matt Reeves’ ​Cloverfield​, we are given only passing views of the nemesis; labels such as
‘monster’ or ‘alien’ seem insufficient or assumptive, as the nature of the creature is even more
obscured than its physical presence in the frame. This common practice amongst found footage
horror is to the genre’s psychoanalytical credit, as the inability to get a good look at the nemesis

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mirrors the inability of the characters—victims in shock—to fully understand what they are
going through. A sense of profound disorientation persists until the ‘moment of catharsis’, or,
more colloquially, the ‘if you’re seeing this…’ moment. Here, the protagonist expresses both his
fears and insights as he comes to understand that he will not be rescued along with his chronicle.
In ​Cloverfield​, the tale of a small group traversing New York as the city is attacked by a gigantic
creature of unknown origin, the moment of catharsis occurs as protagonist Robert Hawkins’ final
avenue of escape is cut off. He and girlfriend Beth become stranded in what the title card—the
all­knowing future of Hawkins’ world, from a time on the other side of the disaster—refers to as
‘the area formerly known as Central Park’:
ROB
Approximately seven hours ago… something attacked our city.… If
you’re watching this right now, then you probably know more about that
thing than I do…. It killed my brother, Jason…. Among others…. We
took shelter under this bridge. The military… they’ve begun bombing
that creature. And we’re caught in the middle.
At the point of catharsis, the characters become as fully­dimensional as they will be, maximizing
the potential for viewer sympathy even as all hopes for survival are irrevocably dashed. For Rob
and Beth, the moment of catharsis comes to its end as they proclaim their love for one another,
meeting their fate together as Central Park is carpet­bombed. Meanwhile, in ​Blair Witch​, the trio
of characters is whittled down until, Heather, the team’s leader and last surviving member, turns
the camera on herself. She apologizes to the families of her comrades before confessing to her
own culpability: “It was my project, and I insisted. … Everything had to be my way and this is

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where we’ve ended up. And it’s all because
of me that we’re here now.” The
disorienting angle of this scene made it
material for several of the film’s posters and
advertisements, and the clip itself has
become perhaps the most recognized
segment of the film. Such a scene also
makes clear how efficiently found footage
horror evokes the dramatic; like the
Shakespearean soliloquy, all that is needed
is a single speaker and the viewer. But
while the ​soliloquist addresses himself or
G­d or the thin air, the wielder of the
reflective camera knows—or hopes—that
her words won’t be lost along with her life.
Thus, ​like Lovecraft’s complicit reader, the
found footage viewer serves, in turns, as
interloper, witness, inheritor and,
ultimately, successor.
But recall, too, that the creation of
the record in the recovered manuscript is a
slow and deliberate process, done during

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breaks in the action that require singular focus. Migration of such tales to film, and the
commensurate inclusion of technology allows events to unfold at a pace independent of the
recording, at least within the context of the story. Likewise, the impetus toward adventure—and
peril—with camera in­hand affords the audience a view largely different from more conventional
cinematic perspectives, which rely on wide shots, telling angles and the artistic close­up (as
opposed to what we see in the cathartic ‘nose shot’ shot of ​Blair Witch, mentioned above​).
Instead, the viewer is literally in the hands of whoever is holding the camera and aware only of
what is happening in the immediate vicinity of that character. No breaks to the creation of the
record are necessary, aside from manufactured, strategic technology faults, such as a battery
dying or a lens getting damaged. This, of course, necessitates ‘missed moments’, episodes in
which the camera operator fails to catch an essential piece of visual information or some view of
the enigmatic nemesis. But the forced subjugation of the viewer is also a means by which to
gain insight into the mentality of the cameraman, especially when he deliberately chooses what
to record. In ​Diary of the Dead​, a group of student filmmakers, cut from the same mold as the
Blair ​Witch trio, stumbles upon and is moved to document George Romero’s latest zombie
apocalypse. While roaming an abandoned hospital in search of help for an injured friend,
group­leader Jason finds that his video camera has run out of battery life and he must plug­in to
recharge. The others urge him to continue searching the hospital with them while the camera
charges. His response; “I can’t leave without the camera. The camera’s the whole thing.” The
context of the fiction demands that at least one of the participants bind themselves to the
documentation process; the viewer, on the other hand, is bound ​to​ the camera, or its product, and
the development and delivery of content are what make the transaction valid, at least for Jason.

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Yet, the needless complications of such dedication are not lost on other characters, as the found
footage horror film strives to counter­balance blunt illogic with sensibility. Jason’s incredulous
girlfriend, Debra, disparagingly proclaims that “If it’s not on camera, it’s like it didn’t happen”.
The viewer is meant to relate better to this more practical perspective, yet we also know that the
value placed on documentation must will out if there is to be a film at all and if we are to be able
to continue playing our own role within a history that we ourselves imagine for it. Accordingly,
Jason sits out the action of his own volition, foregoing even the opportunity for catharsis as he
futilely searches for a solution to reinsert the camera into the center of the action. Upon
returning, Debra confronts Jason with another camera, found elsewhere in the hospital. As she
demands that the filmmaker become the filmed, his squirming is visible and understandable.
Even though his own camera has never left his hand, Jason’s relationship with his film has
suddenly taken a sharp turn. Such abrupt distancing of author and media, and the commensurate
redefinition of one’s role in the creation of the other, provides a point of sharp contrast with the
genre’s literary ancestor. As the entirety of the recovered manuscript relies on the deliberate
recording of the events, so the author not only must find the time to write, but must have the
chance to focus on nothing else. The document becomes not simply a record, but an extension of
the author’s state of mind. The automated creation of content made possible by the camera
obviates such intimacy to the point that the device will continue to record even if there is no one
present—or alive—to operate it. As the shot switches from Jason’s view to Debra’s, the
originator of the document becomes just another subject of its focus.
5
5
Tangentially, ​Diary of the Dead​ also shows how found footage horror has come into its own since Cannibal
Holocaust and The Blair Witch Project. Romero, being arguably as important a director to the horror genre as
Steven Spielberg is in mainstream cinema, makes extensive use of new media forms in this expansion of his ​Night
of the Living Dead​ mythos. The use of the internet to research and track the epidemic inverts ​Blair Witch​’s own

18. Anderson ­ ‘If You’re Seeing This, I’m Probably Dead’ ­ 18
Backstory of the nemesis, like the ‘grand reveal’, is another custom often bucked by
found footage horror, especially when the production has a good grip on its material and it
wishes to maintain a greater degree of suspense by invoking and manipulating viewer fears of
the perpetually unknown, a modern manifestation of the same sort of constitutive otherness that
has captivated western thought since Hegel. ​Cloverfield​, after all, is essentially a remake of
Godzilla​, at least in terms of the nature and scope of the threat, and a more well­known villain is
hard to find; the ‘God­lizard’—a product of nuclear weapons testing in an era when the Bikini
Atoll experiments were in the midst of their 12­year run—has been the subject of dozens of
productions within both Asian and English­speaking markets. But ​Cloverfield’s​ alien—a fitting
term regardless of origins—gives us no clues beyond a scene in which the characters watch news
footage of the rampage as a literal riot unfolds around them. In any of the ​Godzilla ​films, the
action might regularly cut back to scientists, military men, or others who are removed and,
subsequently, better­informed; the nature of ​Cloverfield​ and its ilk, however, renders such
background so inaccessible as to be irrelevant. Rather, all the viewer knows in any detail is the
cast of characters with whom they are presented and become familiar, and it is those
characters—in the midst of their deepest grappling with their own mortality and the threats that
serve to redefine it—to whom the viewer turns for the only relatability to be had, stilted though it
is. Despite the chronically brisk pacing and straightforward plot goals, found footage commonly
displays subtlety in how it chooses to parse out character background and motivations. In
contrast to ​Diary of the Dead​’s use of the technology failure to restrict the viewer’s access even
as unseemly character motivations are made explicit, ​Cloverfield​ employs a variant of the same
aforementioned advertising strategy, while YouTube becomes central to the dissemination of the film within the
world of the fiction.

19. Anderson ­ ‘If You’re Seeing This, I’m Probably Dead’ ­ 19
conceit to expand the audience’s understanding of and sympathy for its cast’s quest. Rob
Hawkins begins the evening of the film at a going­away party; he has recently taken a job in
Japan and will be leaving the next day. Beth, the heroine, is also in attendance, along with her
date. Throughout early party scenes, the viewer catches snippets of conversation which allude to
Rob and Beth’s recently­ended relationship and the pair is eventually caught fighting by Hud, the
film’s first cameraman, at which point Beth leaves. Once the creature is introduced, Rob (in
typical hero fashion) resolves to rescue Beth from her half­demolished apartment before they and
their accompanying friends flee the city. Soon thereafter, as pieces of a ruined New York are
raining down on the group—including the severed head of the Statue of Liberty—a camera
failure allows the action to cut back to footage which has been largely recorded over: a night and
day, several weeks before, which the lovers spend together at Coney Island. Aside from
providing a welcome respite from the pace and violence of the main plot, these few segments
allow ​Cloverfield​ to transcend its status as a horror film and become something of a tragic
romance, even if only a sophomoric one. A similar strategy can be seen in ‘The Lost Tape:
Andy’s Terrifying Last Days Revealed’, a short film accompanying 2004’s ​Dawn of the Dead​.
Here, the isolated survivor of a zombie outbreak records a video diary; but rather than taking the
camera along during his scavenging missions, Andy leaves it on a tripod in his apartment; the
filmmakers likely adopted the stationary­camera strategy to cuts costs and lessen the chance of
factual conflicts with the main feature. The conceit of a camera malfunction gives the viewer
greater insight into the protagonist’s strained relationships with his family. Andy has
unknowingly taped over portions of a family day at the park; his adoration for his daughter is
evident, as are the beginnings of a friction with his wife that will eventually end in divorce. Both

20. Anderson ­ ‘If You’re Seeing This, I’m Probably Dead’ ­ 20
daughter and ex­wife are heavily alluded to
as Andy records his diary; their fates are
left unknown even as Andy’s own tragic
end is displayed plainly. ‘The Lost Tape’
also highlights the aforementioned
necessity of only a single actor and the
viewer, as the great majority of the piece
features Andy in seclusion and there are no
other on­camera speaking roles during the
apocalyptic scenes.
But all of the concerns we have noted thus
far are eclipsed by a construction—or,
perhaps, a form of documentation—that
allows us to perceive novelty of use even
within documentation itself. In Poe’s
tale­­or, more accurately, its title­­we can
examine an attempt to resolve an issue so
pervasive and lasting that, even today, it is
overtly addressed in almost every example
of found footage horror. The fact that the
story is titled ‘Ms. ​Found​ in a Bottle’
indicates that the message has been

21. Anderson ­ ‘If You’re Seeing This, I’m Probably Dead’ ­ 21
discovered by someone other than its author and, ultimately, delivered to a publisher. Though
we rationally understand the story to be fiction, full investment necessitates an actual structure
from which to suspend disbelief; the establishment of some chain of delivery, no matter how
scant, will suffice. In fact, while some link in the chain of delivery is essential, the overall lack
of information regarding the delivery process frees the reader to imagine for themselves how the
material came to the attention of the public. Poe’s title belies his intention that the reader should,
to some degree, take what he is reading as chronicle of an actual event; to maintain that
suspension requires the reasonable and explicit documentation of but a single step in the
document’s journey from creation to publication. Lovecraft fulfills this requirement in a
similarly effective manner in ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, noting in the epigraph that the chronicle has
been “​Found Among the Papers of the Late​ ​Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston,” Thurston
being the narrator of the tale’s outermost frame.
In the establishment of a piece’s perceived authenticity, the chain of delivery is perhaps
the most important element of all. But while the recovered manuscript is, within its context,
usually produced for the sole motive of documenting the horrific, the same cultural
developments that made found footage horror plausible also tend to lead to substantially different
premises for filming. ‘Real’ or artistic found footage presents the material in a way that deviates
from the original intention of its creation. So too, found footage horror functions on the premise
that what we are seeing was originally produced for a different purpose or audience, and that it
has been re­appropriated due to the very events it chronicles. Though the phenomenon itself
might spark a number of broad questions about the ways that the viewer interacts with the film,
the establishment of the chain of delivery in an example of found footage horror is usually a

22. Anderson ­ ‘If You’re Seeing This, I’m Probably Dead’ ­ 22
straightforward matter. ​Cloverfield​, for example, begins with an official­looking identifier rather
than a formal title; a document number, the media (a digital card, presumably recovered from
Hud’s camera), then an association to the larger events that this film is only a single, small part
of; “Multiple sightings of case designate ‘Cloverfield’”. In a sly reinforcement of authenticity
confusion, the same screen also contains a superimposed watermark, a well­known claim of
ownership: “Property of the U.S. government / Do not duplicate.” If C​loverfield’s​ strategy is at
all subtle, ​The Blair Witch Project​ takes a decidedly more overt route, harkening back to the
openings of such mainstream horror classics as ​The Texas Chainsaw Massacre​: “In October of
1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while
shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found.” ​Diary of the Dead​, on the other
hand, frames itself as a YouTube posting, taking advantage of ubiquitous real­world technology
to facilitate suspension of disbelief and make the story not only more accessible, but accessible
in a manner which is rare even for found footage and which might ultimately mark the future
direction of the entire subgenre. Once the narrative has been presented in such fashion so as to
maximize its plausibility, the inculcated viewer takes his place as the final link in the chain, the
recipient—or inheritor—of the lost narrator’s message.
As more and more found footage films are produced, the parameters of the genre expand
and change; Video, internet, and associated communications technologies are fast approaching a
point that today’s ‘essential elements’ of found footage horror may eventually be obviated.
Cannibal Holocaust​ is only associated with modern found footage horror amongst the small
minority of aficionados who even know if its existence, and it eschews some conventions which
would be considered standard or even necessary today. Indeed, even ​The Blair Witch Project​,

23. Anderson ­ ‘If You’re Seeing This, I’m Probably Dead’ ­ 23
Cloverfield,​ and other more modern examples might eventually be seen as relics as technologies
such as Blu­Ray and innovations such as YouTube fundamentally reshape media creation and
reception.

24. Anderson ­ ‘If You’re Seeing This, I’m Probably Dead’ ­ 24
Works Cited
Balun, Chas.. Liner Notes. ​Cannibal Holocaust: 25th Anniversary Edition DVD​. Dir. Ruggero
Deodato. Grindhouse Releasing, 2005.
"The Blair Witch Project (1999)." ​Box Office Mojo​. IMDB.com, Inc., n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2012.
The Blair Witch Project​. Dir. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. Perf. Heather Donahue.
Artisan Entertainment, 1999. Film. Blairwitch.com. Web. 8 Sept. 2012.
Cannibal Holocaust: 25th Anniversary Edition DVD​. Dir. Ruggero Deodato. Grindhouse
Releasing, 2005.
Cloverfield​. Dir. Matt Reeves. Paramount Pictures, 2008. DVD.
Diary of the Dead​. Dir. George A. Romero. The Weinstein Company, 2008. DVD.
"The Lost Tape: Andy's Terrifying Last Days Revealed". Perf. Bruce Bohne. Universal Pictures,
2004. DVD Extra (​The Dawn of the Dead​).
Lovecraft, H. P. ""The Call of Cthulhu"" ​Weird Tales​ Feb. 1928: n. pag. The H. P. Lovecraft
Archive, 20 Aug. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2012.
"Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)." ​Box Office Mojo​. IMDB.com, Inc., n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2012.
Poe, Edgar Allan, and Gary Richard Thompson. "Ms. Found in a Bottle." ​The Selected Writings
of Edgar Allan Poe: Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism​. New
York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. Print. Norton Critical Editions.
Stoker, Bram. ​Dracula​. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable &, 1897. Project Gutenberg, 30 Apr.
2011. Web. 10 Aug. 2012.