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.