Filtered Reality: The Progenitors and Evolution of Found Footage Horror is a collection of sixteen essays from leading academics and writers exploring the genesis and development of the contemporary found footage horror film.

Featuring a foreword from Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and an introduction from Aislínn Clarke (The Devil’s Doorway), the book delves into the formal, stylistic, and technological influences that have shaped and revitalized this unsettling subgenre before charting its continuing evolution in our increasingly digital age.

Divided into two sections — Progenitors and Evolution — its sixteen chapters trace the genesis of the contemporary found footage horror film through multiple lenses, including:

—epistolary Victorian horror novels (Dracula) to Italian Grand-Guignol and giallo films (Torso);

—anthropology in the mondo film (Cannibal Holocaust) to the history of hoaxes (The McPherson Tapes);

—and digital folklore (The Blair Witch Project) to post-cinematic horror (Host) — and what lies beyond…

Progenitors

Evolution

“Your Letters Are Sacred to Me”: Dracula (1897) and the Epistolary Horror Novel

by Samm Deighan

“The medium is the message”: The Evolution of American Folklore Through Found Footage in The Last Broadcast (1998) and The Blair Witch Project (1999)

by Jessica Rose

Irony Is a Dead Scene: Audience Position and the Pursuit of Dramatic Irony in La Compagnia del Grand-Guignol, the Giallo Film and Found Footage horror

by Matt Rogerson

Emblazoned Eve: embodied Spectatorship, material feminism and Monstrous Religiosity in REC (2007) and The Devil’s Doorway (2018)

by Rebecca Booth

The Spirit at One’s Elbow: Denis Johnston, Orson Welles and interrupted radio

by Reggie Chamberlain-King

Fact or Fiction: Layering Media to Construct the Illusion of ‘True’ Crime in The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007) and Lake Mungo (2008)

by Mary Beth McAndrews

Forbidden Files and Ghostwatching: Television, Truth and Transgression

by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Behind every “marked” man is a great coven: hauntology. matrilineality and the accelerationist specter of becoming in the paranormal activity series

by Rebecca Booth and Valeska Griffiths

“See Hangings and Electrocutions”: Early ‘Execution’ Films as Progenitors of Found Footage Horror

by Jon Towlson

The Mechanical Uncanny: Social Media and Digital Doubles in Unfriended (2014) and Cam (2018)

by Dawn Keetley

Cannibalizing Ethnographic Film: Anthropology’s Complicated Relationship with Found Footage Horror

by Gavin Weston, Ricardo Leizaola, and Justin Woodman

Welcome to Hell (House): Haunted Attractions and the Culture of Excess in The Houses October Built (2014) and Hell House LLC (2015)

by Peter Turner

You’ll Only Believe Your Eyes if the Camera Work is Lousy: A Survey of Found Footage Bigfoot

by John Kenneth Muir

Fear and the Ludic Subject: Phenomenology, the Body and Horror Video Games

by Daniel Vella

Infopocalypse Now: Hoaxing as Social Disruption in The McPherson Tapes and Beyond

by Rob Skvarla

Screaming Services: The Audience, the Egregore and Post-Cinematic Horror in “Dear David” (2017-2018) and Host (2020)

by Valeska Griffiths