I dunno, there's a strong case for CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. However, THE McPHERSON TAPE was made a full decade before THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and it is 100% a found footage horror film. With all that entails. Yep. I'm not a fan of "found footage" as a genre as about 98% are unwatchable for me. I enjoy THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Still. To this day. I also love the Australian found footage film THE TUNNEL. Because it is done superbly well. And I went into THE McPHERSON TAPE wanting to like it because it was such a trailblazer in that this "found footage" stuff wasn't really a "thing" back in 1989. So I figured this was sort of unseen territory and not a victim of the oversaturation fatigue that quickly built up around the found footage genre.
THE McPHERSON TAPE runs just about an hour and takes place with the McPherson family around the table celebrating their little girl's birthday while Michael videotapes the "fun". Or is it the Van Heese family. Since all the characters seem to be named Van Heese and no one is named McPherson. Never mind. A lot of awkward, improvised dialogue is spoken (as ALL improvised dialogue is awkward -- not just here in this movie) until a few of the brothers wander around outside after seeing a red flash of light over by the Johnsons' house. They stumble upon a landed spaceship with a trio of alien "greys" standing outside chitchatting. They spot the brothers who hightail it back to the house where they notify everyone inside. The rest of the film is mostly people running around shouting at each other, trying to ad lib some lines that sound interesting or at least natural (they don't) until one of the brothers shoots an alien and (brilliantly) brings it inside the house. This leads to a "siege" of the house by the aliens. And that's about it until a set-aside camcorder shows a trio of greys single-filing it down the hall towards the family in the kitchen.
It kinda breaks my heart that I so hated THE McPHERSON TAPE because, as I said, it would've been nice for such a "groundbreaking" film to be at least watchable. But I'm afraid it just isn't. It's tedious and incredibly fake-sounding as the adlibbed dialogue is, as always, awkward and totally UN-natural-sounding. This is the problem I have with all Christopher Guest movies which people seem to quite like: ALL ad-libbed dialogue, no matter how steeped in improv the cast may be, sounds UN-natural and frankly fake and adlibbed. Cassavettes is another director who, like Chris Guest, is labouring under the misapprehension that adlibbed dialogue by improv performers sounds more real. It actually sounds more fake and hurts the actors' performances because they are devoting so much mental energy trying to invent dialogue that their actual acting suffers. This is also an insult to writers everywhere that they can be so easily replaced by adlibbing improv performers. I've always had a problem with such bold-faced disdain for writers everywhere that this attitude reveals. No, hire a good writer who will give you a good script and good actors will be able to give you a good performance.
And there's just one more thing I want to know: what the hell is my friend Fink doing in this movie?!?!?!?!?
Like I say, I wanted to like THE McPHERSON TAPE but, even at 60 minutes, it felt like 3 hours long and it was all I could do to restrain myself from constantly hitting the FF key. I didn't. I watched the whooooooooooooooooooooole thing. I won't be doing THAT again!
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