The Death of Found Footage? Looking at Lovely Molly

In my continuing quest to see every damn bit of found footage horror that exists, I have subjected myself to another pair today, Lovely Molly and Evidence. Lovely Molly is the return to found footage horror of one of the directors of The Blair Witch Project, Eduardo Sanchez. Like REC 3 and End of Watch it goes down the route of only using found footage when it feels like it rather than constantly. I keep wondering if this is the death of found footage or merely an adaptation that will keep the sub-genre alive and kicking.

With other genres dabbling in found footage from End of Watch to Chronicle and Project X, and REC 3 deciding to kill its camera operator off in the first 20 minutes of the film, it feels like the stale stuff is being kicked aside and the found footage technique is being rediscovered in a way.

Lovely Molly has a protagonist who uses a video camera to capture what she is seeing when things start going bump in the night. It opens with our heroine Molly apologising to camera and trying to kill herself. It then flashes back to video footage of her wedding and then the diegetic camera device is used sparingly throughout. Molly often films things and we see her footage but much of the film is cinematic and ditches the technique. It works well switching between devices but the video camera scenes are slightly redundant.

Molly is one mixed up Mrs it seems and what she is seeing is not exactly what we are all seeing. Her husband Tim bares the brunt of her strange behaviour and the film has some deeply disturbing ideas. It's never too scary but as a study of a woman dinsintegrating when she should be enjoying newlywed bliss, it is pretty horrible. The insinuations of what is going on with Molly and why are pretty nasty and its a shame its not handled a little more sympathetically. But then again this is horror and its supposed to be scary not too sympathetic.

Its a shame it doesn't build to a bit of a bigger climax and the very ending is all a bit Paranormal Activity inspired for my liking. However it shows that Eduardo Sanchez still has a future in horror and his upcoming slate includes a slot in VHS sequel S-VHS and another found footage horror about Bigfoot called Exists.

So I guess that means its definitely not the death of found footage just yet then.

Here's the trailer: