Top 10 Found Footage Flicks

There are some subgenres of horror that I’m just plain tired of. Zombie movies are numero uno on my exhaustion list, but second-up is found footage. There was a period there in the late 2000s, after Paranormal Activity hit, that nearly every horror movie was leveraging the format — audiences obviously craved it and production costs were super low, and the Paranormal Activities and Blair Witches of the world proved there could be an absolutely gobsmacking return on investment. But of course the market got flooded. To this day, I rarely seek out a new found footage movie. But regardless, when they’re made well, they’re often extremely effective and scary because their whole intention is serve as a proxy for the audience, which enables a much more intimate viewing scenario that can create genuine fear. Here are 10 films that, in my opinion, best utilized the format.

10. V/H/S 2 (2013; dir: Various)

The original V/H/S sparked kind of a resurgence in found footage after horror audiences had burned out on the wildfire Paranormal Activity created. The original was edgy, kind of weird, and enlisted some promising young filmmakers. Its sequel evened out the quality level from the first one and, in fact, Gareth Evan’s “Safe Haven” segment ended up being one of the best horror anthology segments of all time.

9. Paranormal Activity (2007; dir: Oren Peli)

While this franchise is unfortunately ubiquitous now, there is a reason for that: the original film was very savvy. There aren’t many horror films that have better used the audience’s imagination against them. Almost nothing is shown on screen, but we spend the entire runtime watching the darkness for movement or listening for a sound that doesn’t belong. The tricks rolled out in this film have been recycled endlessly since then, often to much lesser results.

8. Creep (2014; dir: Patrick Brice)

Brice’s Creep franchise earns points for daring the viewer to sympathize with its killer. Mark Duplass’ dorky but somewhat charming serial killer is essentially the protagonist in both this and the sequel, and we spend a lot of time getting to know him and often forgetting he gets a thrill out of murdering folks, which makes his moments of malevolence much more surprising and shocking. The Peachfuzz sequence is forever part of the horror psyche now.

7. They’re Inside (2019; dir: John-Paul Panelli)

This movie came out of nowhere for me. It wasn’t especially heralded and I watched it on a whim with with very low expectations. But They’re Inside capitalizes on what works so well about movies like The Strangers (2018) and The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007) by illustrating the often random nature of violence and the complex relationship that can sometimes develop between victim and victimizer. The dog food scene at the end is particularly chilling.

6. Lake Mungo (2008; dir: Joel Anderson)

This is a complex movie that is at once creepy and heartbreaking. What starts out as sort of a traditional but well-done ghost story evolves into a very interesting look at the lengths some folks will go to to cope with tragedy and the crippling depression that lies beneath the surface of many folks and drives them to desperate acts. Lake Mungo ends up as one of the most emotionally bleak horror movies I’ve ever seen.

5. The Bay (2012; dir: Barry Levinson)

The Bay isn’t an especially complex film, but it’s an extremely potent and grisly look at an outbreak of a deadly parasite, with a few extra credit points for some commentary about human destruction of the natural environment. But mostly, this is a special effects vehicle to show people being eaten from the inside out by large sea bugs. And it certainly does well what it sets out to do. This will make your stomach turn many times over.

4. The Blair Witch Project (1999; dir: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez)

This is the movie that essentially started it all. It’s been parodied endlessly over the last 2 decades, but The Blair Witch Project was groundbreaking in its less-is-more approach and viral marketing campaign that has been copied over and over but rarely replicated as successfully, and is one of the best examples of just how scary it can be not to show the audience a damn thing. The most jarring scenes in the movie are all executed via implication. Never has standing and quietly staring at a wall been so unnerving.

3. Banshee Chapter (2013; dir: Blair Erickson)

A caveat: this movie isn’t entirely found footage; some of it definitely is, but other parts are just traditional narrative shot with shaky-cam. But it still deserves a place here because it’s just so supremely spine-tingling. This movie is an intersection of many things I find discomforting: secret government experiments, numbers stations, and weird-ass monsters that exist in parallel universes. This hybrid of H.P. Lovecraft and Hunter S. Thompson is a terrifyingly bad LSD trip put to film. It exploits paranoia to maximum effect and shows just enough of the weirdness to pay off.

2. Cannibal Holocaust (1980; dir: Ruggero Deodato)

This Italian horror shocker is the prototype for the subgenre. Like the previous entry on this list, it’s a hybrid: there’s a traditional film that centers on finding some found footage. Deodato’s film is notorious for its depiction of realistic (but fake) human deaths that incurred actual murder charges against Deodato and real animal deaths, and it’s all made even more queasy by Riz Ortolani’s beautiful and practically happy score, which, juxtaposed with the carnage on screen, is absolutely haunting. This is not a movie for everyone, but it’s undeniably effective and will scar your soul.

1. The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007; dir: John Erick Dowdle)

This movie was left in movie purgatory for years after its quiet festival release in 2007, and I first saw it as a rip on YouTube. And honestly, that’s how everyone should first see this eerie movie, because it adds to the snuff film tint of it all. The killer is mysterious — his face and motives are never revealed, nor is he ever caught — and there are a number of sequences that are just harrowing, including the torture scene pictured here and an interview with his long-term captive that’s just devastating in its depiction of Stockholm syndrome.