Unnamed Footage Festival Short Films Collection (2024) – Short but Sweet [Unnamed Footage Festival 7]

Posted on by Jim Cox
Unnamed Footage Festival 7 (2024) Short films

At this year’s Unnamed Footage Festival, the lineup of short found footage films promises to immerse audiences in thrilling and chilling narratives captured through unconventional lenses. From eerie home videos to haunting surveillance footage, these shorts offer glimpses into the unexplained and the macabre. With each film offering a unique perspective on the found footage genre, viewers are in for a smorgasbord of suspense, mystery, and terror at this year’s Unnamed Footage Festival.

List:

Beholder (2023) 

Beholder is a Canadian found footage short, written and directed by Thomas Pardo and Evan Churchill. Something’s made its home in Thom’s camera. It wants a show, and Thom’s the star. Evoking intrusive thoughts and violent impulses, this creature projects its madness direct-to-tape.

An incredibly fragmented story by design, Beholder is a perplexing enigma of a short film. With the main narrative being fractured, it can be difficult to piece together the overarching story together. However, the main star of the show are the impressive glitch effects, produced by co-creator and glitch artist Even Churchill—delivering an amazingly realistic degradation of the VHS footage and creating some incredibly unnerving moments throughout.

Extreme Gravity (2023)

Extreme Gravity is a Spanish found footage short, written and directed by Lorenzo Ayuso. What would be the worst thing that could happen to you when trying to kill yourself? Will Camilo crack when he finds out?

A darkly comedic take on a sensitive subject, Extreme Gravity isn’t afraid to make light on the act of suicide. Consisting of a single static shot of a man’s attempt to take his own life, the short is very much a situational comedy more than an attempt to tackle any philosophical elements—and that’s just fine. Whilst not to everyone’s taste, the short’s portrayal lacks any melancholic nihilism and is intent on providing a droll, tongue-in-cheek experience. Furthermore, the shorts stylised, glitchy effects, black-and-white aesthetics, and noticeable scanlines unquestionably add an unprocessed Rawness overall.

Homebody (2021)

Homebody 2023 short found footage film

Homebody is an American found footage short, written and directed by Andrew J. Paulsen. A traumatized young woman is convinced her terrorizer has returned, but this time she’s determined to catch them in the act.

Tapping into a relatable fear, Homebody details an attempted home invasion and all the paranoia derived from such a traumatic event. The use of technology to try to ease a fraction of this discomfort instead feeds the fires of delusion as our main character obsesses over this new perspective from the mass of security cameras. Despite this, the writing, overall, is rather generic and predictable, making it fairly obvious to the audience what the outcome will be. Additionally, with some occasionally forced performances from the cast, the short feels amateurish in quality overall.

Kelly (2024)

Kelly (2024) short found footage film

Kelly is a Brazilian found footage short, written and directed by Luiz Lapin. A found-footage tale about a troubled man who builds himself a new companion.

Created on a shoestring budget, Kelly is a uniquely creative piece of found footage. Whilst the effects are somewhat laughable, with our unnamed protagonist’s new BFF being created out of sticks, leaves, and a crudely drawn face on a plastic bag head, the short can be quite unnerving at points—with prolonged periods of static silence as bizarre visuals are bombarded at the audience. With scenes ranging from ritualistic to downright peculiar, the 9-minute short is a simple yet effective horror experience that fully embraces its genre’s roots.

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Red Leather Yellow Leather (2023)

Red Leather Yellow Leather(2023) short found footage film

Red Leather Yellow Leather is an American found footage short, written and directed by Harry Mcdonough. Detective Roach follows up with a report filed by Jake on an incident that occurred the night of the 26th.

Certainly an enigmatic tale of supernatural encounters, Red Leather Yellow Leather takes an atypical approach to its narrative. Consisting of a single POV perspective in a single environment, the short implements the use of videos displayed on a phone to further the story and provide its paranormal activity—inadvertently creating an unbroken tracking shot throughout. Whilst the visualisation of the spooky entity is rather benign, the film’s unexpected twist undoubtedly exacerbates the short’s eerie nature overall.

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Turtle? (2022)

Turtle! (2022) short found footage film

Turtle? is a Chinese found footage short, directed by Yangqi Deng. The film is a pseudo-reporting montage based on a true story about an unidentified object.

Comprising entirely of stolen repurposed footage from News broadcasts, documentaries, and other media, Turtle? is certainly a uniquely framed piece of found footage. Delivering an alternate ‘what if’ scenario of the fateful day on May 19, 2020, when Latonya Lark had a turtle smash through her windscreen while driving on the Harry S. Truman Parkway in Savannah, what if this was no accident but a ploy from the reptilian race who came here from beyond the stars to begin their attack on humanity? As mindless as this sounds, the implementation of real footage undoubtedly holds what little validity there could be to this claim and delivers an interesting collage of real media with an implied new narrative.

What I Remember (2023)

What I Remember (2023) short found footage film

What I Remember is an American found footage short, written and directed by Alex Hera. Two strangers, Sam and Ryan, meet each other in a stroke of fate. Ryan documents everything in his life with a camera, and Sam, a lonely troublemaker, welcomes him into her life.

Documenting the blossoming friendship between two unlikely characters, What I Remember is a fractured but conscientious account of strangers becoming friends, to something perhaps more intimate. However, the short’s twist abruptly hurled at the audience certainly shatters this lighthearted and sweet substantiation of young love, providing an uncomfortably ambiguous conclusion that will leave the audience craving more narrative detail. However, the addition of the montage chaperoned with soft rock sits counter to the raw footage design of the first act, feeling far too produced for the unrefined nature of found footage as a genre.

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