ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some initial observations on the presence of the camera and viewer address in several examples found footage horror films. It explores how the protagonists/filmmakers' motivations for filming, as expressed in their behavior and comments to the camera, construct viewer positions based in a reception of the footage as entertainment or documentation or both in the Spanish films [REC], [REC]2, Atroz/Atrocious and Apartment 143. The set-up of the positions in found footage horror films borrows from documentary practices and magnifies the native strategies of horror film by drawing on combined tools for producing a 'realistic' encounter with terrifying events that ultimately intertwines emotional and cognitive experiences in cinema. Bill Nichols' landmark study, Representing Reality, outlines several modes of documentary: expository, observational, interactive and reflexive. Found footage horror borrows most heavily from observational and interactive modes, but aspects of all of them appear piecemeal, sometimes in the same film.
