Abandon all hope, ye who enter here: these are the best found-footage horror movies that’ll leave you too scared to close your eyes… and too scared to open them.
Found footage has produced some of the best horror movies of all time. It can be nail-bitingly simple: a student project gone wrong, a haywire Craiglist ad, or a journalist investigating an elderly woman’s distress call. It can also be bonkers: a WWII doc about undead soldiers (Frankenstein’s Army, consider it a bonus entry on this list), alien invasions, and films exploring the secret lives of vampires.
I could argue its merits all day, but there’s a simple reason it’s the best type of horror: it’s the scariest; terror is in the eye of the beholder, and these films put you on the frontline of the most traumatizing stories imaginable. Even if you can’t see what’s happening, you can’t escape because you’re strapped to the hands of fate.
It’s a subgenre that’s enjoyed extensive evolution over the past 25 years, so before I get into the best found-footage movies, this includes films that revolve around recovered (and discovered) footage, full-length mockumentaries, lost TV broadcasts, and “screenlife” features. Press play!
31. Megan is Missing (2011)
Director: Michael Goi
Cast: Amber Perkins, Rachel Quinn
What it’s about: After Megan meets up with a boy she’s been chatting to online, she disappears – so her best friend Amy tries to figure out what happened.
Why we like it: Megan is Missing was conceived as an ‘educational’ film that would warn teenagers about online predators. It has the charming hallmarks of something you’d be shown in social studies in high school (cringy writing, bad acting) until it descends into the depths of a parent’s worst nightmare, becoming one of the most unshakably horrific movies you’ll ever see. Beware these three words: “Photo Number One.”
30. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
Director: Ruggero Deodato
Cast: Robert Kerman, Carl Gabriel Yorke, Francesca Ciardi
What it’s about: In 1979, an American film crew journeys into the Amazon to make a documentary about its indigenous cannibalistic tribes. They vanish, and when executives recover their film, they witness the horrors that befell them in the rainforest.
Why we like it: The Blair Witch Project may have popularized it, but Cannibal Holocaust is the first found-footage movie – and if you can stomach it, it remains an essential, chilling cornerstone of horror, boasting obscene violence (including real animal abuse) and a deeply unpleasant aura of verisimilitude that hasn’t lost its edge. Many people believed it was a snuff film; almost 50 years on, you’ll still ask, “How much of it was real?” You don’t want to know the answer.
29. One Cut of the Dead (2017)
Director: Shin’ichirō Ueda
Cast: Takayuki Hamatsu, Yuzuki Akiyama, Kazuaki Nagaya, Harumi Shuhama
What it’s about: As a director shoots his low-budget horror movie at an abandoned Japanese WWII facility, real zombies attack his crew, and chaos ensues.
Why we like it: If my brief tease of One Cut of the Dead is all you know, don’t read anything else. It’s one of the most innovative, original found-footage films of the past decade, a joyous metatext on horror as much as filmmaking itself, equipped with frights, laughs, and tears as its director’s story unravels.
28. The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)
Director: John Erick Dowdle
Cast: Stacy Chbosky, Ben Messmer
What it’s about: After police discover 800 tapes belonging to a serial killer, with each video revealing the fate of his many victims, they begin an investigation to figure out his real identity.
Why we like it: The Poughkeepsie Tapes has a well-deserved degree of notoriety. Its faux-documentary style is convincing (an early harbinger of Don’t F**k with Cats and Netflix’s gluttony of true crime), but it’s especially chilling when it explores the harrowing, escalating content of the killer’s tapes; it ebbs and flows, but one scene in a basement is an all-timer.
27. The Outwaters (2022)
Director: Robbie Banfitch
Cast: Robbie Banfitch, Angela Basolis, Scott Schamell, Michelle May
What it’s about: A filmmaker, his brother, and their friends travel to the Mojave Desert to shoot a music video, where they encounter bizarre and life-threatening phenomena.
Why we like it: To echo a quote from Tenet, “Don’t try to understand it; feel it.” The Outwaters may have a mundane found-footage set-up, but its journey is horrifyingly, cosmically atypical; a round of applause in thunderclaps, a visceral odyssey through the stars of the abyss, honing obscurity to attack your senses. Don’t expect any answers; just survive the ride.
26. Zero Day (2003)
Director: Ben Coccio
Cast: Andre Keuck, Cal Robertson
What it’s about: Two troubled teenagers document their plans for a school shooting, going about their usual lives while plotting a deadly assault on their fellow students, culminating in the execution of their ‘Zero Day’ attack.
Why we like it: Released four years after Columbine as a direct response to the tragedy, Zero Day isn’t intended to call on your forgiveness or anger: it is a potent, dread-soaked glimpse into the making of monsters and the banality of evil, as tragic and infuriating as that can be. This is a tough film, especially in the arresting immediacy of its closing sequence: a school shooting via CCTV footage.
25. The Fourth Kind (2009)
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Will Patton, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Corey Johnson
What it’s about: Nome, a city in Alaska, has a history of unsolved disappearances. Not only does Dr Abigail Tyler believe they may have been kidnapped by aliens, but she’s convinced she was abducted too.
Why we like it: The Fourth Kind’s presentation is ingenious: at the outset, Milla Jovovich warns you that what you’re about to see is a combination of dramatic reenactments and “actual archive footage.” The resulting film is terrifying, a fresh spin on The McPherson Tape with a dash of Paranormal Activity’s fear factor; you’ll never see 3:33am the same way again.
24. Butterfly Kisses (2018)
Director: Erik Kristopher Myles
Cast: Seth Adam Kallick, Rachel Armiger, Reed DeLisle
What it’s about: A struggling filmmaker finds a missing student’s videotapes in his in-laws’ basement. They were making a documentary about Peeping Tom, a Maryland urban legend, so he sets out to finish their movie and convince people it’s real.
Why we like it: Many movies have tried – and failed – to replicate the Blair Witch formula. Butterfly Kisses may be indebted to it, but it’s a superb, spooky film in its own right, grippingly shifting between the rampant neurosis of its present-day director and the creepy, understated doom of his film’s subjects. Make sure you watch closely – the ‘Blink Man’ is always hiding.
23. Willow Creek (2013)
Director: Bobcat Goldthwait
Cast: Alexie Gilmore, Bryce Johnson
What it’s about: Kelly and Jim drive to Six Rivers National Forest to make a documentary about Bigfoot, stopping over in the town of Willow Creek to talk to the locals – and they stumble on more than they bargained for.
Why we like it: I’m a believer. I’m one of those insufferable people who insist Sasquatches are the missing link in evolution (don’t cite the counter-evidence to me, I don’t care). Willow Creek is the first movie that made me frightened of Bigfoot; lo-fi, pulse-pounding guerilla filmmaking that’ll make you think twice about searching for America’s most elusive mammal.
22. Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)
Director: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
Cast: Lauren Bittner, Chris Smith, Chloe Csengery, Jessica Tyler Brown
What it’s about: 18 years before the events of Paranormal Activity, a sinister force invades Katie and Kristi’s home and plays havoc with their lives.
Why we like it: Paranormal Activity 3 isn’t the best entry in the series (more on that later), but it is the scariest, with some of the freakiest scenes in the whole series; in one spine-shivering scene, a ghost creeps and lingers behind a babysitter as the camera rotates on an oscillating fan. It’s a rare prequel that effectively serves and enhances its predecessor while standing apart from the rest of the franchise. And here’s the worst bit: they were f**ked from the start.
21. What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
Director: Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement
Cast: Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement, Jonathan Brugh, Ben Fransham, Stu Rutherford
What it’s about: Viago invites a documentary crew to stay at his house in Wellington and follow their daily lives, whether it’s bickering about chores, going to local bars, or looking after one of their elderly residents. Oh, and another thing: they’re all vampires.
Why we like it: If you mixed The Lost Boys and Father Ted with a squeeze of Kiwi, you’d get What We Do in the Shadows, the early peak of Waititi’s career and one of the funniest mockumentaries ever made (“We’re werewolves, not swear-wolves”). It spawned a TV series that’s arguably even better, but the movie’s laugh-out-loud scenes still hold up, and beyond the comedy, it’s a really good vampire film.
20. Lake Mungo (2008)
Director: Joel Anderson
Cast: Talia Zucker, David Pledger, Rosie Traynor, Martin Sharpe
What it’s about: 10 days after Alice’s funeral, her family becomes convinced she’s trying to make contact via strange incidents in their home, so they seek the help of a parapsychologist.
Why we like it: Lake Mungo refuses to give into the temptation of its contemporaries. It’s a somber, sensitive twist on the sadness of a haunted house: how the living must confront the memory of someone they’ve lost and how unsettling (and comforting) it could be to contend with their soul as it lurked in your home, seeking comfort that’ll never be reciprocated.
19. Hell House LLC (2015)
Director: Stephen Cognetti
Cast: Ryan Jennifer Jones, Danny Bellini, Gore Abrams, Jared Hacker, Adam Schneider, Alice Bahlke
What it’s about: On October 8, 2009, 15 people were killed after a new haunted house attraction opened in upstate New York. This is the uncut footage of what happened behind the scenes as the staff prepared for that fateful night.
Why we like it: On paper, Hell House LLC sounds like a shrug: a haunted house, a doomed documentary crew, big whoop. However, its near-perfect delivery of the found-footage playbook (that damn clown), authentic performances, and timely (*cough* McKamey Manor *cough*) premise has seen it become revered as a modern classic of the subgenre, spawning a successful and worthwhile franchise.
18. The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)
Director: Adam Robitel
Cast: Jill Larson, Anne Ramsay, Michelle Ang, Ryan Cutrona
What it’s about: A student filmmaker starts making a documentary about Deborah Logan, an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease. However, as her condition worsens, her behavior becomes more erratic and violent, and it seems she may be afflicted by something even more insidious.
Why we like it: What is the real horror of The Taking of Deborah Logan? Is it the titular subject’s frightening, possessed antics in the middle of the night, that scene towards the end (open wide!), or is it the inescapable erosion of your mind from a disease that can’t be cured, and how unknowingly corrosive that trauma is to those around you? It’s all scary, and that’s why it’s a must-see.
17. REC (2007)
Director: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza
Cast: Manuela Velasco, Pablo Rosso, Ferrán Teraza, David Vert
What it’s about: During a quiet night shift, a reporter receives a tip about an old woman trapped in her apartment. Alongside her cameraman and two firefighters, they head over there to save her – but something far more horrifying awaits them.
Why we like it: Handheld camera movies are tried, tested, and tired. But in their relentless post-Blair Witch output, dynamite emerged in REC, a blistering dose of zombie-fuelled adrenaline anchored on the tangible gasps, tears, and screams of our ill-fated Spanish news reporter. Its nail-dragging final shot sits with the greats.
16. The Bay (2012)
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Will Rogers, Kristen Connolly, Kether Donohue
What it’s about: In 2009, Claridge, Maryland becomes a hotbed for a waterborne parasite that causes horrific symptoms. The epidemic spreads quickly, and the town descends into anarchy.
Why we like it: As the world closed its doors in the pandemic, Contagion re-emerged as a prescient, terrifying horror movie. Perhaps The Bay was too much. It doesn’t skimp on realism, nor does it hold back with graphic, wailing imagery that may trigger that lingering 2020 trauma in your head. It’s an altogether more cruel and nihilistic film – and it’s brilliant.
15. Host (2020)
Director: Rob Savage
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Cast: Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Webb, Radina Drandova, Caroline Ward, Edward Linard
What it’s about: Six friends get together for a virtual seance, but when they “disrespect the spirits” and unwittingly invite a malevolent presence into their call, there’s no escape from its torment.
Why we like it: This is the first truly frightening screen-recorded horror movie, leaning into (but never exploiting) its pandemic setting and rekindling familiar tricks anew with a game, likable cast whose hysteria feels unbearably real. Ultra-scary, wicked, and immersive – Host is The Blair Witch Project for the Zoom age. It’s that good.
14. Creep 2 (2017)
Director: Patrick Brice
Cast: Mark Duplass, Desiree Akhavan, Karan Soni
What it’s about: In an effort to spice up his violent exploits, a serial killer invites a YouTuber to his remote cabin – and he admits that he’s a murderer. However, as she continually ‘matches his freak,’ he’s caught between bonding and trying to intimidate her.
Why we like it: Creep 2, wisely, isn’t just another tape (that’s what the TV show is for). Its sequel rummages in the psyche of its eponymous maniac, amazingly evoking vague sympathy for an eccentric, lonely serial killer who’s lost his mojo. It’s actively hilarious, letting you soak up every jaw-droppingly awkward moment between ‘Aaron’ and his unexpected foil as they strike a morbid, can’t-look-away connection. It’s not as scary, but it’s just as entertaining.
13. Cloverfield (2008)
Director: Matt Reeves
Cast: Michael Stahl-David, Odette Yustman, Lizzy Caplan, TJ Miller
What it’s about: As Rob enjoys his going-away party in New York, an explosion rocks the city in the distance. It’s not a terrorist attack; it’s an alien invasion, and they need to flee before it’s burned to the ground.
Why we like it: Cloverfield is one of the most iconic movies of the 2000s; a brilliant big-budget twist on the noughties’ preeminent genre of horror that’s also an edge-of-your-seat rollercoaster (with a dose of post-9/11 anxiety). It also has one of the greatest teaser trailers of all time, bravely forgoing the movie’s name and allowing curious word-of-mouth to fester. It was worth the wait.
12. The Borderlands / Final Prayer (2013)
Director: Elliot Goldner
Cast: Gordon Kennedy, Robin Hill, Aidan McArdle, Patrick Godfrey, Luke Neal
What’s it about: When a church in the English countryside claims to have experienced a miracle, the Vatican sends three men – a priest, a layman, and a tech expert – to investigate and judge whether or not it’s true.
Why we like it: What does it mean to have faith? Should you strain your belief in the pursuit of evidence? Could you retain your devotion to a ‘just’ God even in the belly of the beast? For the most part, Final Prayer is a wry, creepy movie elevated by the snippy banter of its two leads and well-executed frights – but its ending is one for the ages; an all-time gut-wrenching climax that will mess you up for life. “You said it wasn’t real.”
11. V/H/S 2 (2013)
Director: Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Timo Tjahjanto, Eduardo Sánchez, Gregg Hale, Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard
Cast: Lawrence Michael Levine, Adam Wingard, Fachri Albar, Jeremie Saunders
What it’s about: Two private investigators searching for a missing person find a stack of cassettes in their abandoned apartment. With the hope they’ll contain clues to their whereabouts, they start watching them.
Why we like it: The V/H/S series is one of the greatest franchises to emerge from the found-footage boom, and its first sequel remains the peak of its powers. There’s not a bum note here, but there are two highlights: Gareth Evans (who directed The Raid) and Timo Tjahjanto’s ‘Safe Haven’, involving an unholy Indonesian cult; and ‘Slumber Party Alien Abduction’ (my favorite), which may have the scariest extraterrestrial encounter put to film.
10. As Above, So Below (2014)
Director: John Erick Dowdle
Cast: Perdita Weeks, Ben Feldman, Edwin Hodge
What it’s about: A young archeologist is determined to achieve her father’s dream and find the philosopher’s stone (no Harry Potter connection). Her search leads her to Paris’ sprawling catacombs and an expedition deep underground.
Why we like it: As Above, So Below is basically a mix of Indiana Jones and Blair Witch: a frantic, hellish search for treasure that’s surprisingly rich in mythology, complete with on-location cinematography and chest-tightening, claustrophobic set pieces that boldly descend into eternal darkness. Don’t ask me why it was panned by critics; in short, they’re embarrassingly wrong on this one.
9. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)
Director: Jung Bum-shik
Cast: Wi Ha-joon, Park Ji-hyun, Oh Ah-yeon, Moon Ye-won, Park Sung-hoon, Yoo Je-yoon, Lee Seung-wook
What it’s about: The group behind a ghost-hunting web series picks their next haunted location: Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital, where two teenagers recently went missing. They think it could be their biggest livestream ever – but they didn’t consider that it might be their last.
Why we like it: Gonjiam takes the Grave Encounters formula and updates it for the Twitch generation. It is an exceptional K-horror with tactile, considered production value (it always makes sense that they’re filming, a common found-footage gripe), a personable cast, and an intense sense of paranormal menace. It’s ultimately a parable about greed, but my takeaway was much simpler: just stay away from old mental hospitals.
8. The Blackwell Ghost (2017-2024)
Director: Turner Clay
Cast: Turner Clay, Terri Czapleski
What it’s about: After returning home to Kentucky, a filmmaker sets out to make a documentary that proves (or debunks) the existence of ghosts, starting with a haunted house with a morbid past.
Why we like it: I’ve cheated here, because this isn’t just one film: it’s eight found-footage movies, but they come as a collection of ‘documentaries’, and they deserve to be watched together. This is old-school, love-of-the-game filmmaking at its best; densely packed, niftily constructed, and extremely believable. They’re also consistently unsettling; the kind of film that makes you second-check that dark corner of your room as you fall asleep.
Even if they’re not real, the part of my brain that wants to believe is more powerful than the cynic within me. “Coincidence is the mind’s way of making sense of what it can’t believe is real.”
7. Skinamarink (2022)
Director: Kyle Edward Ball
Cast: Lucas Paul, Dali Rose Tetreault, Ross Paul, Jaime Hill
What it’s about: The year is 1995, and Kevin hurts himself while sleepwalking. When he wakes up, he’s in his house – but it’s submerged in darkness, and there are no windows or doors.
Why we like it: Skinamarink isn’t a traditional found-footage movie. There’s no agency in its lens; imagine the camera that drops at the end of a horror film as someone’s dragged away into the darkness, staring at a wall or the ceiling indefinitely as the muffled sounds of screaming fade into the dark. That’s how this whole movie looks.
It’s also the scariest movie I’ve ever seen as an adult. It made me feel like a child; a wee boy shuffling muffledly, weepily, through sights and sounds I couldn’t even conceive in my worst nightmares. A sense of genuine evil emanates from the film; “Go to sleep,” the face says, and over a year later, I’m still struggling.
6. Ghostwatch (1992)
Director: Lesley Manning
Cast: Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith, Craig Charles
What it’s about: In this controversial live edition of Ghostwatch, the BBC investigates a home hit with an “astonishing barrage of supernatural activity,” according to host Michael Parkinson. Its footage was so disturbing that it’s never been aired on British television again.
Why we like it: America has The Blair Witch Project. The UK has Ghostwatch, an extraordinarily committed, heart-thumping exercise in fear that belongs in the echelons of TV legend. Over 30 years later, its analog presentation has only made it scarier. It has the insidious aura of lost media, but remember, “Pipes wants to see everybody!”
5. Paranormal Activity (2007)
Director: Oren Peli
Cast: Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat
What it’s about: When Katie becomes convinced their house is haunted by evil forces, her boyfriend Micah sets up a camera in their room to see what goes bump in the night.
Why we like it: Cannibal Holocaust introduced the found-footage genre. The Blair Witch Project ignited it. Paranormal Activity remolded it. It’s easy to forget just how petrifying the first film was – considering its multiple mundane sequels, with the exception of the third – and its significance. It’s no overstatement to call it an event movie, capturing every moviegoer in its fixed-lens scares and launching a horror empire with Blumhouse.
4. Grave Encounters (2011)
Director: The Vicious Brothers
Cast: Sean Rogerson, Ashleigh Gryzko, Merwin Mondesir, Mackenzie Gray, Juan Riedinger
What it’s about: A TV crew locks themselves in an abandoned psychiatric hospital overnight, hoping to capture paranormal phenomena on film. Their naivety comes at a price, and soon, they understand the true meaning of a grave encounter.
Why we like it: A horror movie that backs itself on how many times people watched its trailer shouldn’t be good. Grave Encounters defies the odds, both as a charming, affectionate ode to ghost-hunting entertainment and a genuine chiller. There’s a gripping mystery at its core, and like any good found-footage film, you quickly forget their fate is a foregone conclusion.
3. Noroi: The Curse (2005)
Director: Kōji Shiraishi
Cast: Jin Muraki, Rio Kanno, Tomono Kuga
What it’s about: Masafumi Kobayashi, a renowned paranormal investigator in Japan, goes missing after his house burns down and kills his wife. His final documentary explores the months leading up to the fire – and the ‘curse’ that may be responsible.
Why we like it: Noroi is irresistible; an analog-horror triumph that throws you on the unstoppable track of its knotty, jam-packed chronology. As the movie inches closer to the present, flicking through haunting vignettes and tying once-disparate threads together, its tension becomes more and more uncomfortable, to the point it’s even upsetting. There’s no catharsis in its payoff – just despair.
2. Creep (2014)
Director: Patrick Brice
Cast: Patrick Brice, Mark Duplass
What it’s about: Josef, an unusual man who’s dying from an inoperable brain tumor, hires a cameraman to film a video diary for his unborn child – but as the day goes on, his increasingly intense behavior starts to frighten his guest.
Why we like it: Creep puts you on the back foot from the start. Is he really dying? Why does he want to be filmed in the bath? Why does he have a werewolf mask? He is profoundly menacing, but also hilarious, but also demented, and that’s down to Duplass’ performance – a candidate for the Mount Rushmore of horror.
But it’s more than its star: it’s equipped with a sharp, jangly script, and Brice’s direction doesn’t give into shaky-cam panic; it never looks away, even when its ill-fated filmographer doesn’t know what’s coming.
1. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Director: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
Cast: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard
What it’s about: Three student filmmakers venture into the Black Hills near Maryland’s Burkittsville to make a documentary about an urban legend: the Blair Witch.
Why we like it: Local folklore and spooky bedtime stories are the bedrock of our horror lives. Therein lies the allure of The Blair Witch Project, a found-footage masterpiece that dares to wander into the woods; one so convincing, many believed it to be real.
From the start, it’s charming; a rough ‘n’ ready mash of dated handheld camerawork and black-and-white segments of a college documentary focused on Burkittsville’s titular ghoul.
The spookiness soon ramps up. Piles of rocks, pitch-black crackling, twig stick figures; someone, something, is messing with them, and when darkness falls, they aren’t afraid to show it. You soon realize Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez aren’t showing you a study of a ghost story – they’re putting you in one.
Creepiness soon evolves into raw terror, with panicked sprinting through the moods, a terrified goodbye, and a finale that still leaves me breathless and desperate for light. The film’s unfiltered “What the f**k was that?” hysteria makes it entirely authentic. “I’m scared to close my eyes; I’m scared to open them.”
It scares me more than any other movie ever has and ever will.
For more spooky content, check out our full Terror-Tober schedule, including our lists of the best zombie movies, the most violent horror movies, and the scariest horror TV shows.
