Found footage is an ideal technique for the horror genre. It gives filmmakers the freedom to add realism in a way that can be truly terrifying. Generally, they do not require a high budget or a large cast or crew, and as a result, countless found footage horror movies have been made. To add to the realistic aims of this genre, unknown actors are often cast in the lead roles and much of the cinematography is done by the actors themselves. The first of its kind came in 1980 with Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust, a hugely controversial and graphic horror movie that fooled some audiences into thinking it was footage of real murders. Since the subgenre was popularized in 1999 – and then re-popularized in the mid-2000s – many non-horror movies have been shot in found fotage style such as Chronicle and Project X, but the style seems tailor-made for the horror genre. Here are 12 of the finest:

1 The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez

A true found footage masterpiece, no one can question the impact The Blair Witch Project has had on the subgenre. It cemented a formula that is instilled to this day and has inspired several rip-offs and spoofs. Its magnificent marketing campaign listed the three leads – Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard – as missing, and staged police reports were posted to the movie’s official website, which reported on their disappearance. The actors did not appear on any talk shows or promotional materials for the film and Donahue’s mother even received sympathy cards. Even after all these years, it remains perhaps the most effective found footage horror movie ever made.

It opens with a description explaining the footage was found a year after three film students disappeared while making a documentary on the Blair Witch legend. The movie brilliantly sets up the legend with several interviews with the town’s locals, and each character’s reactions to the stories are interesting to note. For those who listen and watch closely, The Blair Witch Project is an incredibly rewarding horror experience. Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez were able to capture moments of genuine fear from their actors, and the unmatchable conclusion still feels so terrifyingly real. Though it was not the first found footage horror film to be made, The Blair Witch Project first popularized the subgenre.

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2 Noroi: The Curse (2005)

Directed by Kōji Shiraishi

In the years following The Blair Witch Project, numerous found footage horrors blatantly ripped it off. Up until 2005, there were few memorable additions to the subgenre, but Japanese filmmaker Kōji Shiraishi came along and shook up the formula to create Noroi: The Curse, a two-hour piece of unfiltered terror, unlike anything the subgenre has offered before or since. Inspired by Japanese folktales and urban legends, this carefully crafted gem explores the dark work of the malevolent demon, Kagutaba, through the eyes of paranormal researcher Masafumi Kobayashi (Jin Muraki). Unlike the usual one-location setting most found footage horror movies stick to, Kobayashi’s investigation takes him all over Japan. Visually, there is a much more professional aesthetic to this movie which eliminates the common criticism about shaky-cam footage. Noroi: The Curse is presented as footage from a proficient but unfinished documentary that has been deemed too disturbing for public viewing.

Disturbing it certainly is, and it delivers big on scares. The movie spends a lot of time building atmosphere and tension, but conjuring up massively effective, overtly terrifying set pieces. The popularity was not instant, but the film has developed over the years to amass a huge fanbase. Shiraishi also found his flair for found footage filmmaking and went on to make many other great movies including Occult, Cult, and A Record of Sweet Murder.

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3 Exhibit A (2007)

Directed by Dom Rotheroe

Dom Rotheroe’s overlooked British psychological thriller, Exhibit A, examines the real-life horror of abuse hidden behind the doors of a seemingly ordinary family. Judith (Brittany Ashworth) is a troubled young teenager who uses her new video camera as a way of coping with her anxiety. Character development is not necessarily a process that is well-regarded in these types of movies, but the way Judith uses the camera tells us so much about her. It is as if the film lets its audience inside her head. For a while, the movie seems like any normal home video before subtle signs of instability in her father (Bradley Cole) start to unearth. The slow pace is executed in a way that maintains realism in the most compelling way. The emotional connection the audience forms with each character is particularly effective when the traumatizing ending comes. There are no supernatural elements or local legends here, this is horror at its most genuine.

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4 Paranormal Activity (2007)

Directed by Oren Peli

One of the most profitable movies of all time, Paranormal Activity went on to spawn seven sequels with an eighth set to be released next year. The original is still a favorite amongst fans, and it re-popularized found footage horror movies a decade after The Blair WItch Project. It shows footage from an apparent haunting of a young couple’s (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) house after they decide to try and catch the presence on camera. The movie’s simplicity is what makes it so horrifying to behold, and Featherston and Sloat’s natural performances – which consisted of mostly improvised dialogue – keep the movie believable and engaging. Packed full of tense silences and hidden apparitions, director Oren Peli maximizes the terror to produce an influential classic of the genre. Peli took a page from Myrick and Sanchez’s book, and Paranormal Activity ended up blowing critics away and resulted in many walkouts during screenings due to audiences being too scared to stay.

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5 REC (2007)

Directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza

REC is a Spanish found footage horror movie about a TV reporter (Manuela Velasco) and her crew who end up quarantined in an apartment building when a mysterious infection breaks out among the residents. It features some of the most nerve-shattering sequences the subgenre has ever seen as chaos breaks out. Running at a brisk 78 minutes, the movie is a white-knuckle thrill ride that is as exhausting as it is terrifying. Directing duo Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza manage to capture the mass hysteria and panic that sets upon the characters in a relentlessly frightening manner, and the claustrophobic setting swiftly becomes unimaginably treacherous. REC puts audiences amongst an ensemble of likable characters, and once the night vision is switched on, the unthinkable nightmare truly becomes ruthless in that none of them are safe. As well as three sequels, a shot-for-shot English-language remake titled Quarantine was released just two years later. None of these subsequent releases came close to the quality of the first movie.

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6 The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

Directed by John Erick Dowdle

Documentarians follow police as they raid a home in Poughkeepsie, New York, where they find 800 videotapes belonging to serial killer Edward Carver, the “Water Street Butcher” (Ben Messmer). The tapes document the killer’s handiwork, from the point his victim is abducted to the mutilations of the body after death. Frustratingly, Carver is never seen on film without a disguise as he carries out his depraved crimes, which include abducting, raping, and murdering an eight-year-old girl, and placing the severed head of a man into his wife's womb, filming her horrified reaction before killing her. An innocent police officer is framed for Carver’s crimes and is sentenced to death by lethal injection, only for the truth to be revealed afterward. The ever-changing modus operandi makes it impossible for police to profile the killer and deduce where he might strike next, with the only option keeping an eye on where the documentary is being shown, confident that Carver is likely to show up to watch.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes presents itself as a documentary, and the stark realism of the killer’s acts sells it. Only it isn’t. The film is a mockumentary, a genre most often associated with lighter fare like This is Spinal Tap but wildly effective here. It should, in theory, be obvious – any documentarian that allows that level of graphic violence upon real people to be aired would see their career end – but it didn’t stop people from believing it was real. The shelving of the film by MGM only furthered speculation that the film did contain snuff film content. It wouldn’t be until 2014 that the film was released on DirecTV but is much easier to find now on streamers. And it is worthwhile to find it.

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7 Lake Mungo (2008)

Directed by Joel Anderson

Australian horror mockumentary Lake Mungo shows the possibilities within the found footage subgenre. Shot documentary-style complete with archive footage and interviews, the movie presents a fully convincing story of the tragic death of Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker). It appears that she has drowned accidentally, but there are suggestions that there is more to her death than first appears. Distinctly lacking in cheap scares, the dialogue-heavy movie manages to create an unsettling tone, and its commitment to authenticity is one of its greatest strengths. When the painful truths start to reveal themselves, they deliver a sinking feeling of genuine distress. So much terror is generated from a single frame towards the end. Powerful and reflective, Lake Mungo examines grief in a way that leaves an impact on its audience. It is a perfect exercise in foreshadowing, and it is a shame that it remains Joel Anderson’s only feature film.

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8 Cloverfield (2008)

Directed by Matt Reeves

The Cloverfield marketing campaign stands as one of Hollywood’s best, one that started as a teaser trailer attached to 2007’s Transformers. No title, no explanations, just footage from a hand-held camera filming a house party. When it becomes evident that something chaotic is happening outside, the partygoers, and the anonymous filmmaker, head to the street, only to find a head hitting the street — the head of the Statue of Liberty. The trailer cuts away to show the release date, and that’s it. The cryptic teaser led to intense speculation on what the film was about. Some posited that it was a new entry in the Godzilla franchise, some thought it was a spin-off of J.J Abrams’ Lost, and USA Today speculated that it was a Voltron film.

Coupled with a virtual scavenger hunt that sent hardcore fans scouring websites for clues, the hype for the film was rocketing. But could it live up? Yes. Yes, it could. It was Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project, with footage from a camcorder that the U.S. Department of Defense found in “the area formerly known as Central Park.” The film opens on the party from the trailer, with “Hud” Platt (T.J. Miller) filming goodbyes from partygoers for his friend Rob (Michael Stahl-David), set to leave the U.S. for a job in, ironically enough, Japan. It isn’t long before the Statue of Liberty’s head rolls down the street, and from there the film doesn’t let up once, following the group of friends as they encounter a relentless onslaught of peril brought on by the large monster that’s destroying New York. And just when you think the surviving protagonists are headed to safety, the camcorder captures their heartbreaking final moments. Deceptively simple and highly effective, Cloverfield brought a unique twist to the kaiju film, one that looks to be revisited with one of the long-dormant websites from the original campaign recently back online.

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9 The Last Exorcism (2010)

Directed by Daniel Stamm

Filmmakers Iris (Iris Bahr) and Daniel (Adam Grimes) are making a documentary with the aim of exposing exorcism as a fraud. They find a willing participant in Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), who hails from a long family line of exorcists, but has long given up on believing possession is real. The only exorcisms he performs are fake ones that he sets up on those who believe they are possessed. He agrees to perform one of his “exorcisms” for the documentary and randomly chooses a request from Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) to free his daughter Nell (Ashley Bell), who he believes is possessed by Satan. The three travel to the Sweetzer home, where Marcus sets up hidden speakers and props to fool the family into believing he is driving out demons. After carrying out the ritual, Marcus proclaims Nell to be freed of the demon inside her, which he asserts to the camera is more the result of a misdiagnosed mental condition than any spiritual one. Or, is it? The events that transpire would certainly suggest the latter. The Last Exorcism uses the found-footage format to deliver a lean, straightforward horror thriller that succeeds on the back of its lead actors, with critics lauding director Daniel Stamm’s ability to craft a genuinely scary film within the confines of its PG-13 rating.

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10 Grave Encounters (2011)

Directed by The Vicious Brothers

So many found footage horrors take inspiration from reality ghost-hunting TV shows such as Ghost Adventures or Most Haunted, but Grave Encounters is perhaps the finest of them all. It was one of the first of its kind, and it employed many different methods that the found footage genre had not seen before. Where so many of the scares are often about subtlety, Grave Encounters is invasive and loud. Demons and spirits burst out of the darkness and throw themselves in full view of the camera, and it results in a movie that is equally as fun as it is scary. Sean Rogerson is great as the arrogant and sleazy host of the fictional ghost-hunting show, and once the crew finds themselves locked in an abandoned psychiatric hospital, the scares come thick and fast. A sequel followed but did not achieve the same level of success as the original, and as a result, a third film was scrapped.

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11 Hangman (2015)

Directed by Adam Mason

In one of the scariest found footage horrors ever produced, Hangman taps into the real fear of a dangerous intruder living in a family’s house without their knowledge. The Millers – consisting of the recognizable faces of Jeremy Sisto, Kate Ashfield, and Ryan and Ty Simpkins – are unwittingly watched by a deranged serial killer after he installs hidden cameras around their home. The movie is gradual but thoroughly terrifying to watch the family slowly notice the signs that they are not alone. The image of a dark figure wandering the house at night while they sleep is heart-stopping, and the subtle disruptions caused to the Miller’s lives escalate to a chilling conclusion.

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12 Hell House LLC (2015)

Directed by Stephen Cognetti

With complaints that the subgenre was growing stale, Hell House LLC came along and delivered a horrifying Halloween treat. After an unexplained accident at a haunted house attraction, a documentary crew further investigates the incident and make some shocking discoveries. Director Stephen Congetti smartly creates genuine fear with hardly any cheap scares. There are a lot of silences and mounting tension, and the intimidating setting works well. Packed full of strange dolls, morbid clown props, and fake blood, the feeling of being caught in an inescapable trap entombs the audience as it does the characters. Not only is the movie terrifying for audiences, but the actors were often scared for real too. It builds to a horrifying cliffhanger ending which left audiences craving more. Hell House LLC II: The Abbadon Hotel and Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire were released on Shudder in 2018 and 2019 with Congetti finishing off his trilogy in an ambitious way.

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13 Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)

Directed by Jung Bum-shik

South Korea’s first found footage horror movie sees a doomed crew of a horror web series enter Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital for a livestream investigation. As each crew member explores different rooms in the abandoned asylum, there is an ever-growing sense that they are not alone. The performances are all genuine and the characters are unusually likable. They step far away from the character tropes that were beginning to frustrate fans of found footage. After an expectedly slow build-up, the second half is a breathless scarefest that plummets audiences into a finale of pure terror. It was the most acclaimed found footage horror in years and has become one of South Korea’s best-known horror movies. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum kept the found footage formula alive for the modern age, and demonstrated that the subgenre can still be effective.

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14 Host (2020)

Directed by Rob Savage

Found footage is so expansive that it even has its own subgenres, the most common one being screenlife movies, or "computer screen movies." These are films told through, you guessed it, a computer screen. Many would think the first ever was Unfriended, which is definitely one of the best examples. But the origin of the screen life film dates back as early as 2002 with The Collingswood Story. A lot will roll their eyes at this form of filming as it is such a departure from classical cinematic storytelling. To those who have an upturned nose, let me introduce you to Rob Savage’s pandemic-set hour-long terrifier, Host. It’s so well executed and genuinely scary that it was once crowned the scariest horror movie ever according to science.

Host follows a group of friends on a Zoom call (hence the strict one-hour runtime) amidst the COVID pandemic. To beat the endless boredom and refinement, they decide to do a seance over the call. When one of the friends makes a joke of it all, the girls have a rude and bloody awakening. They are picked off one by one, and Savage employs just about every internet tool from filters to pre-recorded videos and compounds them with classic horror tropes to bring an Internet-based horror experience like nothing you’ve seen before. For those who are skeptical of found footage films, Host is the movie to change their mind.

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15 Horror in the High Desert

Directed by Dutch Marich

If you loved the slow pace and documentary style of Lake Mungo, then you’re sure to enjoy Horror in the High Desert. Released in 2021, the film tells the story of a hiker, Gary Hinge, who goes missing in the Great Basin Desert. The film intertwined interviews with Gary’s sister, roommate, the private investigator that Gary’s sister hires, and a journalist. They all tell their own accounts of Gary’s disappearance and their theories about what really happened.

Between all of them, we see self-filmed clips of Gary, as he documents his outings in the desert, offering tips and tricks for hiking enthusiasts. As we get more details about Gary’s case, we realize that this isn't a case of a hiker meeting unexpected adverse weather conditions or slipping and hitting their head. When Gary’s truck turns up with bare human footprints that aren't Gary’s - it’s clear that something a lot more sinister has gone down. Incredibly similar to the real case of Kenny Veach, Horror in the High Desert manages to offer an extremely intense and terrifying watch without any jump scares or graphic effects. It’s a slow burn but it’s well worth the wait. Don't expect any high concepts or gore - this one commits to its documentary style.

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