Archival Anxiety in Documentary and Mockumentary HorrorExamines Gothic realism in documentary and horror cinema, highlighting how films evoke archival anxiety and unsettling realities, from gothumentaries exploring ineffable subjects to mockumentaries and found-footage films addressing modernity’s overwhelming and mediated nature. This study concerns the dark, sensorial epistemologies emerging from intersections of documentary and horror cinema. From the ineffable subjects of horror documentaries and pseudo-documentaries, to the obsessive chroniclers of mockumentary horror cinema, the films examined here express a generalized millennial and 21st-century archival anxiety around an unsettled and unsettling hypermediated reality. Part I focuses on gothumentaries, nonfiction works evoking the Gothic unreadable subjects and undetected realities. Case studies show key documentary films such as Capturing the Friedmans, Cropsey, and The Hellstrom Chronicle bringing Gothic-horror tropes and conventions to bear upon documentary subject matter to produce skepticism of American environmental, social, and national stability from the 1970s onward. Part II explores mockumentary, fake found-footage, and screen life horror cinema that turns to strategies of documentary and factual discourse to express an archival anxiety around human interaction with recording technologies. Case studies of pivotal films such as The Blair Witch Project, Diary of the Dead, Lake Mungo, Unfriended, Sickhouse, We Are All Going to the World’s Fair and The Outwaters, turn to Gothic reflexivity as a way of expressing the subject’s relationship to, and experience of, a modernity that overwhelms in terms of its immensity, speed, and recordability.These fiction and nonfiction moving-image manifestations of archival anxiety adopt the mood, themes, and rhetorical strategies of horror and documentary to form a critical discourse that troubles the real—focusing spectatorial attention on the limits of representation and teleological forms, shifting viewers to questions of embodiment and sensation. The primary focus is on Anglophone cinema from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, with reference to other works produced in Spain, Germany, and France. |
Contents
| 1988 | |
| 2004 | |
Homo Sapiens | |
Attractions Politics in the Horror Pseudodocumentary | |
Interceptés | |
David Holzmans Diary | |
Screenlife Horror and Hypermediated Reality | |
Horror Mockumentary as Spirit Cinematography | |
The War Game and Threads | |
References | |
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Gothic Realism and Archival Anxiety in Documentary and Mockumentary Horror ... Kristopher Woofter No preview available - 2025 |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Alice Alice's archival anxiety audience becomes Blair Witch Project camera camera-bearing Capturing the Friedmans Chapter characters Cloverfield confront create Creepypasta critical Cropsey cultural David David Holzman's Diary Dead desire Diary diegesis diegetic discourse discussed Doane document dread edited epistemological evidence experience fake found-footage horror fiction Figure film's filmmakers focus footage found-footage horror film framing ghost Gothic Gothic-horror gothumentary haunted Heather Heather Donahue Hellstrom Chronicle highlight Home Movie horror and documentary horror cinema human hypermediated illusion imagery images kind Lake Mungo Leviathan manifests manipulation medium Monkeyshines monster monstrous multiple narrative obsessive Outwaters Paranormal perspective phantasmagoria potential present produced pseudodocumentary Rand realism reality recording technology reflexive representation revelatory Robbie scene screen screenlife horror film sensation sense sensorial shot Sickhouse Skype social media space spectacle spectator spectatorial spirit photography strategies suggests uncanny Unfriended unsettling users viewer visual voice-over Wisconsin Death Trip World's Fair YouTube