Mockumentaries, or pseudo documentaries, have proven to be interesting mediums to blend fact with fiction. Most of them are satires on a particular aspect of pop culture or society, often exaggerating real-life elements. While classics like This Is Spinal Tap might feel over-the-top, there are mockumentaries like The Atomic Cafe or Man Bites Dog that weirdly give off a realistic vibe. In fact, there can be contexts when even the aforementioned over-the-top mockumentaries start feeling real, for it’s a crazy world with crazy people after all!
Here, we count down 10 such convincing mockumentaries that could pass as the real deal.
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Surely, Andy Samberg playing a dumb pop star sounds like comedy gold but also loud, unrealistic cinema. Still, Popstar can pass off as a found footage biopic of an actual popstar consider the current state of artists in the age of social media.
We live in a world where seasoned artists like Kanye West or newbies like Lil Pump can do or say anything off-stage, which would pass off as ridiculous news for the tabloids. As the music industry seems to be entertaining more and more TMZ-worthy controversies, the movie and its ridiculously catchy songs don’t seem that unrealistic.
Interview With The Assassin
This film didn’t garner much of a cult following but still makes for good true-crime drama especially if you’re into conspiracy theories around John F Kennedy’s assassination. Time and again, various films have been made telling us that it wasn’t a simple assassination plot and there’s more than what meets the eye.
Interview With An Assassin finds an unemployed cameraman interviewing his neighbor, a retired Marine suffering from cancer. On his deathbed, he confesses that there was indeed a second gunman with Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot the President. He recounts the events preceding his plan in a hauntingly real manner.
I’m Still Here
A reason why some believed I’m Still Here to be an actual documentary is the way the film was promoted. Before its release, it was suddenly announced that actor Joaquin Phoenix has decided to give up acting and wishes to pursue a career in hip-hop instead, something which this new documentary would cover.
The news was definitely bizarre but then Phoenix has always had a bizarre and unconventional off-screen personality. Furthermore, he’s a straightforward personality who boldly critiques the perils of capitalism or killing animals for meat or the excesses of stardom. People, therefore, fell for this documentary which just turned out to be an elaborate prank instead. And thankfully, the movie wasn’t real for he went on to act in movies like Her win an Oscar for Joker. He might have been good at singing Johnny Cash covers but Phoenix was simply not cut out for rapping.
The Blair Witch Project
This is the cult horror film that revolutionized all pseudo documentaries and found footage films forever. It’s intended to look like a student film as three students venture out to a forest that supposedly harbored supernatural incidents. Things go awry when they lose their way.
There’s not many jump scares or gory scenes in the film but it’s the anticipation that creeps out viewers, giving them an immersive documentary experience of a haunted place where anything can happen. The frames where you see the fear in the protagonist’s eyes as she records everything add to this fear.
Fear Of A Black Hat
A sociologist embarks on a journey to document the career of a rap group called N***** With Hats (a parody of NWA and Public Enemy) in this mockumentary.
In no way does the film undermine the impact that such rap groups have had on American culture, it just attempts to satirize the outlandish or “macho” aspects of gangster rappers. The three main rappers whom we focus on in the movie have similar whacky names Ice Cold, Tasty Taste, and Tone Def! It’s easy to dub Fear Of A Black Hat as the “This Is Spinal Tap” of the hip-hop world. While Chris Rock came up with a similar parody of rap groups called C4, it is this mockumentary that has garnered more of a cult following.
Tour de Pharmacy
Another Andy Samberg-starrer, this HBO mockumentary deals with the prevalence of doping in professional cycling. It’s a hilarious take on the issue but it does point out a bitter truth. In that sense, the film gets believable when it even features disgraced Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, who as we know confessed about his doping charges in a conversation with Oprah Winfrey.
Tour de Force can be watched as the comedy version of Icarus, an Academy Award-winning documentary that deals with the same theme but with actual facts.
Man Bites Dog
A classic Belgian black comedy, Man Bites Dog finds a crew of filmmakers documenting a serial killer and his crimes. While it’s funny in the start, you see a change in these filmmakers too as they get influenced by the violence and chaos that they see and record. This dark change can be compared to Jake Gyllenhaal’s almost-emotionless character from Nightcrawler.
It’s all in good humor but also makes you ask questions about morality and the extent to which one can record reality. Man Bites Dog is definitely one of the most essential watches in this genre.
Dark Side Of The Moon
Apart from UFOs and Kennedy’s assassination, the one conspiracy theory that captures our attention is that the moon landings were probably staged. Many put forward director Stanley Kubrick’s name as the man who recorded the fake landings.
Dark Side Of The Moon takes this narrative and tries to paint a convincing picture, which might yield mixed results depending on how much you actually end up believing. Several iconic figures like Buzz Aldrin add to the footage with fake interviews that would make you scratch your head. You might still think that man did go to the moon, but somewhere down the line, you might still ask if they were real or not.
Best In Show
Christopher Guest has directed various mockumentaries in his career but it’s his 2000 film Best In Show that seems to be oddly real. It portrays contestants in a dog show and exposes the cutthroat competition such events would create.
Who could have imagined that the world of pet dog contests would be so serious? However, it’s just the pet owners who take all of this seriously. For the viewers, the film is a laugh riot. In the fashion of many mockumentaries, some of the scenes were just improvised by Guest at the moment which only adds another touch of realism to the film.
F Is For Fake
An underrated gem from the latter part of Orson Welles’ career, this one is a genuinely real, well-researched documentary (or even a video essay) in its own right. Welles himself narrates the exploits of two forgets who made huge profits copying books, signatures, and paintings. But then there are parts where Orson Welles creates fake narratives on purpose to build up suspense.
He would randomly point out a random connection between an artist like Vincent Van Gogh and his wife Oja Kodar in such an intriguing manner that you might take each word of his as the gospel truth. But then all of a sudden, Welles laughs at the camera and reveals that he was just faking it. While the majority of the film is real, even such “fake” parts seem like the real deal.
