As distant thunder rumbles, it is Becca's ragged breath that dominates the soundtrack. The young girl's camera lamp cuts a swathe through the darkness of the bedroom where she is trapped. It is her footage that we are watching, her record of the event. In the torchlight, an old woman's hand appears from underneath the bed, an image from the primal fears of every sleepless child. It grabs a handful of the bedcovers and pulls them down.

Searching for an exit, Becca swings the camera wildly – we see a candle holder, and a mirror, but nothing else distinct. She turns the thin blade of light back to the bed.

From behind the bed, the moaning old woman slithers up onto the mattress, her body obscured by the bedsheet, which she crawls under. She rises up, shrouded, a caricature of a ghost – but nonetheless frightening, especially for Becca, who turns away, eyes closed, refusing to meet the veiled form with her gaze. Both the camera and her terrified face are reflected in the mirror, but she does not see the shrouded woman approaching, slowly creeping into the light.

Becca's eyes open, and then widen, now sharing our view of the woman's approach – until the woman drives her face forward, into the glass, shattering our mirrored perspectives.

THE QUESTION OF EMPATHY

This moment from M. Night Shyamalan's film The Visit (2015) (Figure 5.1) draws us into the focus of this chapter: alternative conceptions of empathic engagement with the image, that may build upon our identification with the film's protagonists, but that are not predicated upon it. This chapter seeks to expand on the previous chapter's investigation of the bond between viewer and image. To this end, I will examine new ways of conceiving of this spectatorial interface by exploring the role of the body in emotional and ‘empathic’ engagement. In doing so, I will ask the following questions: does found footage produce a different experience of spectatorial empathy? And can the subjective camera and marked point of view, like that discussed in the previous chapter, reconfigure our engagement beyond traditional notions of empathy?