Also to be fair, this was not some meaningless shaky camera as in 28 Weeks Later or the Blair Witch camera which always points opposite of whatever would be interesting. So two main flaws of the genre were avoided. By allowing the camera to float, the movie also got a sense of physicality which a neutral bodyless camera would not have had.
I don't think a movie that dark would have gotten the budget necessary to do this the AAA Iron Man way. Found footage (or in this case rather assembled footage, as the concept deviates from the Blair Witch style in the way that the footage is not limited to a specific camera) is a good way to allow a more uneven look and to have unspectabular shots in the midst of expensive ones.
When you look at superhero movies, which one dares to leave the middle-of-the-road way of harmless nonsense? Perhaps there is a dark origin story (or origin-not-story as in the case of Nolan's Joker) but in the end it is good vs. evil, the main character becomes the hero and something is learned.
This movie wanted to show a downfall. It goes where it hurts. It is closer to a story about Columbine High than to the average superhero flick.
By not choosing a specific narrator camera (apart from the beginning where the concept is introduced) the movie almost avoids the found footage effect of becoming insanely constructed, although of course the concept still had its limits. To me it felt more like Modern Family in the way that it adapts a style but leaves open who assembled the material and with which intentions. The positive effect is that the movie is allowed to switch to a different character without breaking. With a neutral camera this would not have been possible if the side character had not gotten a lot more screentime. Instead we can follow the camera and the epilogue fits.
So while I generally agree that found footage and docu-camera should have stayed in the last millenium, I like how it was used here.
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