| Abstrakt: |
Italian horror found footage Road to L. - Il mistero di Lovecraft (2005) and mockumentary H.P. Lovecraft - Ipotesi di un viaggio in Italia (2004) revolve around the fictional discovery of a letter by the American supernatural writer, documenting a putative journey to Italy. The films envisage the conception of the HPL mythos stories following the writer's imagined encounters with the gloomy geography, folklore, and cryptic creatures from the Italian river Po delta. Ipotesi is a mockumentary focusing on the fabricated manuscript. Road to L. is Ipotesi's Blair Witch-inspired "backstage", revolving a found VHS and documenting a film crew's Italian journey on the tracks of HPL. The study discusses horror found footage as a sub-set of risemantisation practices characterised by features, such the diegetic camera and a make-believe register, that aim to bridge over regionalist landscape and "folklore" representations and global horror tropes, depicting the Po Delta region as resonating with the accursed geographies of Lovecraftian literature. The films represent examples of how make-believe found footage and mocku-horror formulas have been used to repurpose regional themes to align with global popular canons to attract national and international audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
