MM


Footage of cannibals, recordings of supernatural occurrences, images of a hideous monster stalking the streets of New York. We are told that all of these events are true but did they really happen? James Rose tries to expose the truth behind the horror mockumentary.


A spate of recently released films – Cloverfield


(Matt Reeves, 2008), Rec (Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, 2007) and its American remake Quarantine (John Erick Dowdle, 2008) – are unified not just by their classification as horror but also by their mode of presentation. Each of these films, and a few others beside, claim that they are actually real: instead of being a work of cinematic fiction they are presented to the audience as a work of fact, a recording of real events happening in real time before the camera. But, in reality, of course, these films are not


‘real’ at all. Just like all the other films within the horror genre, they are fictional. Yet their claim to be real has given rise to a new sub-genre within horror, the mockumentary: although a clear academic description for this term has yet to be fully resolved, a general definition of this type of film would be one that first and foremost presents itself as a work of fact as opposed to a work of fiction. Defining themselves in this way suggests they are a documentary and, as a consequence, such films exploit the visual qualities of the documentary mode to heighten


english and media centre | December 2009 | MediaMagazine 49


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