Reel Talk With The Doctor Interview With Mike Rock - I Hate Found Footage

When two roommates head into the woods to make a found footage movie, they stumble across something they never expected.

Their low-budget film shoot quickly turns into a fight for survival in this horror comedy.

Written and directed by Michael Rock and starring Eddie Blake, Michael Rock, Amanda Morgan, Hannah Welty, and Blake Heyer.

No, there is a very specific grimy magic to the found footage genre.

It's a format we genuinely love because it strips away the studio polish, throws away the safety net and drags you right into the dirt with the characters.

But let's be totally honest.

The exact tropes that make it so immersive are also what makes it beautifully easy to playfully roast.

We all know the sacred formula, long agonizing stretches of people just hiking endlessly through the trees painfully authentic but completely disjointed conversations about absolutely nothing and those chaotic, frantic camera drops that somehow always end up focusing on an extreme close-up of a terrified nostril.

It's a beloved tried and true recipe for dread.

But when you step back and really look at the mechanics of it, it's a sandbox that is practically begging to be messed with.

Enter Ollie and Filbert, two characters who look like they just took a wrong turn off of Sesame Street and wandered straight into the horrorverse.

I Hate Found Footage follows these two aspiring filmmakers who just happen to be felt puppets heading deep into the woods to shoot a low budget found footage masterpiece.

Unfortunately for them, they stumble right into the middle of a very real, very human, sacrificing cult conducting their annual hunt for doomed campers.

Now, personally, I absolutely love the found footage gimmick.

In fact, if you think about it, what we do here on this podcast is essentially the audio equivalent of found footage.

We take these insane, dark, horrifying stories.

We dive into the lore and we talk about them like they're 100% real.

It's about world building a world and fully committing to the bit.

Phone footage does the exact same thing visually.

And that shared DNA is exactly why a movie like I Hate Phone Footage hits my sweet spot.

Despite the aesthetic, by its very nature, I Hate Phone Footage is not a phone footage movie.

It's a movie about puppets who set off to make a phone footage movie.

So from the outset, we are firmly in the spoof and parody playground.

I bring this up because found footage is all about committing to the bit.

And this film uses that rule to its advantage by refusing to play it straight.