25 Scariest Found Footage Movies

In 1999, The Blair Witch Project became one of the most surprising and successful horror movies of all time. The film grossed over 240 million dollars off a budget of $750,000 and terrified viewers with its documentary style. Although it took about another decade to take off, found footage movies soon became a dominant horror subgenre, as movie studios wanted a significant return on a small cost and moviegoers wanted the immediacy that the format provides.

Only some movie makers proved to be good at found footage films, but those who understood the genre created unique and terrifying masterpieces, like the 25 movies on this list.

1. [REC] (2007)

Every maker of found footage movies needs help to explain the never-ending recording. Why would anyone worry about keeping the camera going when monsters go on the attack? Spanish filmmakers Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza get around that problem with [REC] by making the main character Ángela Vidal a newswoman (Manuela Velasco) reporting on firefighters answering a late-night call in Barcelona.

When the call leads them to an apartment under siege by zombies, Ángela must keep recording to document the unbelievable events. From this premise, Balagueró and Plaza use the camera inventively to shock the viewer without ever breaking the film’s reality.

2. Creep (2014)

Around the fifteen-minute mark, Josef (Mark Duplass) produces an ornate wolf mask. Frightening as the visage certainly is, Josef explains that it is the face of “Mr. Peachfuzz,” a harmless character created by his father. Josef tells this to videographer Aaron (Patrick Brice, director of Creep), whom he hired to make a video diary for his unborn son. As the movie unfolds, Aaron and the viewers discover that while they may not need to fear Mr. Peachfuzz, Josef may have real malicious intent behind his awkward and playful exterior.

3. Willow Creek (2013)

Most people know director Bobcat Goldthwait as either a comedian with a distinctive voice or a filmmaker behind transgressive films such as World’s Greatest Dad. With Willow Creek, Goldthwait bucked his own trend to film a found-footage movie about a pair of twenty-somethings (Alexie Gilmore and Bryce Johnson) searching for bigfoot.

As silly as that premise sounds, Goldthwait treats the subject matter with the utmost seriousness, including terrifying scenes such as a long, unbroken take capturing the duo hiding in their tent from the monster outside. Willow Creek may be Goldthwait’s lone excursion into found footage filmmaking, but he proves he understands the genre’s strengths.

4. Lake Mungo (2008)

Written and directed by the reclusive Joel Anderson, the Australian movie Lake Mungo creates tension by constantly undermining the audience’s expectations. It begins with a straightforward premise about a family grieving the death by drowning of their daughter Alice (Talia Zucker). While the family’s efforts to contact Alice in the afterlife fall short repeatedly, Anderson hints at the girl’s ghost throughout the film, in places the family fails to look and the audience may not see. This approach creates a movie as mournful as it is frightening.

5. The Visit (2015)

When The Visit hit theaters in 2015, it seemed like director M. Night Shyamalan had hit rock bottom. The man once christened “the next Spielberg” had turned in a series of flops, and his reputation had sunk to an all-time low. It seemed like a found-footage cheapie like The Visit was the only thing a studio would let him make.

Rather than slum it, Shyamalan applied his uncanny visual instincts to the found-footage format, creating a fun, spooky story about two kids (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould) trapped with grandparents who become killers when the sun goes down (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie). Shyamalan’s embrace of The Visit’s lowbrow potential revived his career and made him a respected name in Hollywood again.

6. Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

No franchise has capitalized on the found footage craze like Paranormal Activity, created by Oren Peli. For the third entry, Peli stepped aside and let Catfish creators Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman direct a script by Christopher Landon, who would go on to make horror comedies Happy Death Day and Freaky. This new blood re-energized the franchise, pushing the found footage genre to heights. Landon’s script looks back at the childhood of the franchise’s main character, Kristi, but he and the directors are more interested in finding new ways to shoot ghosts on old video equipment.

7. [REC] 2 (2009)

[REC] 2 is to [REC] what Aliens is to Alien. Where the original [REC] told a claustrophobic zombie story in a quarantined apartment building, [REC] 2 follows a team of commando priests sent by the Vatican to clean up the mess. As such, returning filmmakers Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza amp up the action in their second installment, but never at the cost of the central horror. The well-armed and informed soldiers discover that they know very little about what happened in this apartment, making the zombie threat all the more frightening.

8. Host (2020)

Director Rob Savage could have had a disaster on his hands with Host. Filmed and released at the height of the pandemic, Host takes place entirely on a computer screen, as a group of friends in quarantine perform a seance over Zoom. No one will be shocked to learn that the seance goes wrong and a demon starts harassing the participants.

Savage puts a new spin on an old tale by using video conferencing software, using face filters to show a ghost that shouldn’t be there, and building tension with the screen freezes. Even though everyone grew sick of Zoom in 2020, they all still lined up to watch Host.

9. The Bay (2012)

Like M. Night Shyamalan, director Barry Levinson came to the found footage genre after developing a respected but declining career as a Hollywood movie maker. The limitations of found footage forced Levinson to rely on his best sensibilities as a director while making The Bay, working from a taught screenplay by Michael Wallach about a parasite infesting a Maryland shore town. Levinson mixes news and interview footage with home camera recordings of people suffering from the infection, making a movie that feels all too believable.

10. The Last Exorcism (2010)

In The Last Exorcism, the cameraman keeps recording because protagonist Cotton Marcus won’t let him quit. Marcus made a name for himself as a TV preacher, thanks to practices he now declaims as scams. To set things right, he hired a cameraman to follow him as he performs one last exorcism, planning to reveal all the tricks of the trade. But when young Nell (Ashley Bell) turns out to be the victim of actual demonic possession, Marcus’s camera captures a reality he never knew existed.

11. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Blair Witch Project changed everything. Even those who doubted the studio’s claims that The Blair Witch Project contained actual footage shot by real people who disappeared years before felt like they had just seen something forbidden. Even though familiarity has stripped away much of the mystique, the film has enough solid scares to make the most hardened horror fan shiver. The image of a potential victim with his face to the wall still stands as one of the most frightening shots in cinema history.

12. Cloverfield (2008)

Cloverfield stands out for its inventive filmmaking in a genre defined by its limitations. Written by Drew Goddard and directed by Matt Reeves, Cloverfield tells a kaiju story from the people’s perspective on the ground. Audiences barely get a glimpse of the giant monster invading Earth and instead, see bits and pieces of the creature around the faces of terrified New Yorkers. Even better, Cloverfield uses the conceit of a re-dubbed video cassette to get glimpses of the protagonists’ pasts, making them real people instead of just monster chow.

13. Creep 2 (2017)

More than most sequels, Creep 2 cannot rely on the same things that made the first Creep so effective. Anyone watching this follow-up already knows the man danger presented by the man who first called himself “Josef” and now calls himself “Aaron” (Mark Duplass). Instead of trying to recreate that tension, returning director Patrick Brice gives the homicidal video star a match in Sara (Desiree Akhavan), who runs a YouTube channel about internet oddities.

14. Paranormal Activity (2007)

Although The Blair Witch Project popularized the found footage genre, Paranormal Activity capitalized on it. Writer and director Oren Peli made a hit by taking the same basic premise of the earlier film and moving it indoors, as boorish boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat) sets up cameras in his house to record the strange occurrences around his girlfriend Katie (Katie Featherston).

Thanks to a minimal budget (at least until Stephen Spielberg saw an early cut of the film and secured funding for a CG-heavy final shot), Peli had to rely on suggestions instead of explicit scares. But images of Katie standing over sleeping Micah or the sounds of heavy footsteps carry more scares than the most intricate computer-generated beastie.

15. The Last Broadcast (1998)

Released only in a few markets in 1998, The Last Broadcast was quickly overshadowed by The Blair Witch Project. But those who did catch The Last Broadcast saw a very different approach to similar material. Directors Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler take a more overtly documentarian approach to investigating the disappearance of people studying the Jersey Devil. In place of the immediacy of The Blair Witch Project, The Last Broadcast has a cold, reserved tone, one that creates a different type of horror.

16. V/H/S 2 (2013)

Despite what its title may suggest, many of the shorts in the anthology film V/H/S 2 are recorded on digital devices, not video cassettes. However, anyone who gets hung up on the distinctions will miss out on some of the most potent found footage shorts ever made. While the frame narrative and first two shorts in V/H/S 2 have their charms, it’s the final two where the movie stands out.

17. Hell-House LLC (2015)

Part of Hell-House LLC follows the well-worn found footage trope of victims inadvertently recording their final moments on Earth, such as a group of haunted house participants who die because of an equipment malfunction. However, writer and director Stephen Cognetti takes it one step further by following a group of documentarians investigating the accident years later and discovering a far more evil cause of the group’s death. Through these dove-tailing narratives, Cognetti heightens the tension of Hell-House LLC with a narrative conceit unique to found footage.

18. Open Windows (2014)

Where most of the movies on this list heighten their movies’ realism (and save on the budget) by avoiding recognizable stars, Open Windows features adult actress Sasha Grey as b-movie star Jill Goddard and Elijah Wood as her number one fan, Nick Chambers. Nick records a live stream to show his followers the dinner with Goddard he won in a contest and keeps the recording going after discovering he’s being blackmailed to attack his favorite star.

Like his twisty debut, Time Crimes, Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo keeps things interesting in Open Windows, proving that found footage movies can also be slick blockbusters.

19. Deadstream (2022)

Few formats can critique the perils of internet fandom better than found footage. Case in point: Deadstream, written and directed by Vanessa Winter and Joseph Winter. The latter stars as disgraced YouTube celebrity Shawn, who tries to re-establish his credibility by spending the night in a haunted house. The first spooks Shawn encounters are superfan Mildred (Melanie Stone).

As the night goes on, Shawn learns that Mildred and the house have much more planned than harmless pranks. Both funny and intelligent, Deadstream proves that found footage remains an influential subgenre in the 2020s.

20. One Cut of The Dead (2017)

The first half of One Cut of the Dead feels like a lesser version of [REC], a generic Japanese zombie movie that hits several familiar plot beats. And then, halfway through, writer and director Shin’ichirō Ueda changes things up, taking the movie in a hilarious new direction. Takayuki Hamatsu stars as madcap director Takayuki Higurashi, a man desperate to get the most “realistic” take from his actors, including Yuzuki Akiyama and Kazuaki Nagaya. One Cut of the Dead may not scare like the other entries on the list, but few can beat it for pure entertainment value.

21. The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

Before making future cult favorites Escape Room and Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, director Adam Robitel debuted with the supernatural film The Taking of Deborah Logan. The story that Robitel wrote with Gavin Heffernan follows a camera crew as they document the day-to-day life of Alzheimer’s patient Deborah Logan (Jill Larson) under the care of her daughter Sarah (Anne Ramsey). As the crew looks further into Logan’s treatment, they uncover something far more sinister than they could have imagined.

22. As Above, So Below (2014)

Despite having more mobility than most productions, most found footage films stay in banal locations, like houses or the woods. Not so for brothers John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle, who set their film As Above, So Below in the catacombs of Paris. A camera crew goes to these catacombs at the behest of researcher Scarlett Marlowe (Perdita Weeks), who leads a search for the mythical philosopher’s stone. However, Marlowe and her team discover something they did not want, something far beyond their understanding.

23. Blair Witch (2016)

After the dismal sequel, The Blair Witch Project 2: The Book of Shadows, eschewed the found footage format, writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard returned to the format for their 2016 reimagining Blair Witch. Instead of trying to avoid the inherent confusion invited by the found footage style, Barrett and Wingard use it to their advantage, putting the viewers in the same position as the befuddled characters. Not every part of the film works as well as the original, but Barrett and Wingard offer some scenes that haunt viewers, including a disturbing sequence involving a tiny tunnel.

24. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Cannibal Holocaust has an infamous reputation, and not just because it foretold the found footage craze several decades earlier. Italian director Ruggero Deodato and writer Gianfranco Clerici push almost every boundary in telling the story of a team searching for missing filmmakers in the Amazon rainforest. Deodato and Clerici make a powerful point about the arrogance of Western civilization toward other cultures. Still, it comes via some very upsetting imagery, some involving real animals and people.

25. Unfriended (2014)

Unfriended might be the Zoomer horror film, and not just because its title invokes the perils of social media. Like Host, Unfriended involves a group of friends on a video conferencing call. Their friendly banter gets interrupted by an uninvited user who starts making their lives difficult, first by revealing past sins and then by doing bodily harm to the participants. Director Leo Gabriadze and writer Nelson Greaves come up with clever reasons to keep the video recording through the chaos, making a modern-day update about the ghost who comes back for revenge.