It has always been important for found-footage movies to reinvent themselves.
Since the subgenre’s popularity skyrocketed with The Blair Witch Project in 1999, there have been countless movies which have stuck painfully close to the formula and critics have flagged this as a problem.
Often, movies that put a different spin on that formula have been more positively received.
Recently, there have been shake-ups with movies like The Medium and Incantation which have both been widely acclaimed, as well as Zachary Donohue’s new series The Unknowable incorporating a style of found-footage in excellently inventive ways.
One of the subgenre’s most effective additions actually came before The Blair Witch Project.
In 1989 – ten years before its release – a movie called The McPherson Tape (aka UFO Abduction) was written, produced and directed by Dean Alioto.
Alioto made the film with no budget and no professional actors.
The result was a grainy
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