Blood on the Lens

Connects the found footage horror subgenre to significant traumatic events and societal anxieties in American history and contemporary America Explores how the most visually recognisable post-millennial subgenre engages with cultural trauma Demonstrates how found footage horror continues to offer new thematic and aesthetic ways of confronting and working through trauma and anxiety Analyses a range of key films (both mainstream and lesser known titles), and key movements in the subgenre (for example the movement from documentary conventions to social media aesthetics) Identifies how significant cultural events have impacted on, and been integrated within, found footage horror Examines the subgenre in a post-cinematic age, where cinema is no longer the dominant cultural spectacle it once was Through an identification of key case studies both mainstream and lesser known, Blood on the Lens: Trauma and Anxiety in American Found Footage Horror Cinema argues that found footage horror cinema is uniquely able to confront a pervasive contemporary culture of anxiety and trauma. This book traces how and why the subgenre has continued to endure, even as we enter a post-cinematic landscape. Through three distinct sections, Blood on the Lens proposes key observations on the found footage horror subgenre. She questions how these films engage with national trauma, the common themes of this body of films and how they relate to wider anxieties. In addition, McMurdo investigates the effect various cultural movements have had on the aesthetics of found footage horror, how these films position their spectator and encourage an active viewing mode, and how the line between fiction and fact is blurred both paratextually and within the films themselves.

Shellie McMurdo is Senior Lecturer in Film and television at the University of Hertfordshire. Shea is a co-convenor of the BAFTSS Horror Studies Special Interest Group. She is the author of Devil’s Advocates: Pet Sematary (2023, Liverpool University Press) and Blood on the Lens (2022, EUP).