Shudder is the haunted house of the streaming world – a service full of all things spooky, supernatural, and straight-up terrifying. With collections spanning across all horror sub-genres, from slashers to J-horror and Folk to creature features, there is no end to the creepy content available.
Alongside original and exclusives such as Horror Noire, In Search of Darkness and Cursed Films, Shudder has recently released The Found Footage Phenomenon - a documentary looking at the history and evolution of the subgenre. In that spirit, here is a list of the best found-footage titles streaming now on Shudder.
'Lake Mungo' (2008)
In mockumentary style, Lake Mungo compiles interviews and ‘found footage’ to tell the story of Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker). Alice is a 16-year-old girl who tragically drowned whilst out swimming with her brother Matthew (Martin Sharpe). In the wake of their loss, Alice’s family begins to experience sinister occurrences which lead them to question whether she is really gone, or whether a terrible mistake was made.
As heart-breaking as it is scary, Lake Mungo is an intelligent and creepy examination of how people deal with grief, guilt, and the reality that not everyone is who they appear to be.
'Hell House LLC' (2015)
The Hell House team is a small group of friends who take over various creepy venues and turn them into scare attractions for Halloween. The film follows them in the lead-up to opening night at their latest location - the long-abandoned Abaddon Hotel.
It’s clear from the beginning of the film that what transpires on their opening night is anything but festive, but it’s the occurrences in the days before that is truly terrifying. Think unexplained disappearances, shadows moving in the dark, and three life-size clown figures who seemingly have a mind of their own... Hell House LLC isn’t the most original in premise, but the scares are delivered thick and fast.
'The Medium' (2021)
Shudder exclusive The Medium follows a film crew as they travel to Thailand to meet Shaman Nim (Sawanee Utoomma) and her niece Mink (Narilya Gulmongkolpech). Mink is behaving strangely, becoming more and more withdrawn and violent. The family believes that this is because Mink is inheriting, or rather being possessed by, the spirit of a mysterious goddess named Ba Yan.
The Medium is a mix of religious and folk horror, which uses shaky camera footage and a documentary-style format to explore what happens when you cross the line between the human and spiritual worlds. It’s refreshing to have a possession film that exists outside the realms of Catholicism/Christianity.
'Host' (2020)
Host is the Zoom-based horror film that jumped to the top of the ‘scariest films of all time’ lists everywhere in 2020. The whole film takes place via a video call, where a group of friends decides to take part in an online séance. All seems harmless until one of the girls mocks the exercise, with dire consequences for everyone involved.
Using the format that the world has become most familiar with during the pandemic, as well as different features of social media platforms, Host delivers an array of unique scares. For a movie that was produced entirely remotely: with no in-person direction and every effect and concept executed from their individual locations, Host is truly a feat of intelligent filmmaking.
'V/H/S' (2012)
V/H/S is the horror anthology that follows a group of young men as they break into the house of a mysterious older man. They have been offered money from an unknown source to retrieve an old VHS tape. As they explore the seemingly abandoned home, they stumble across not one, but a whole pile of old VHS tapes, and in an effort to find the correct one, begin to watch them only to find some seriously disturbing footage.
Throughout 5 different segments, a number of horror subgenres are explored – from revenge killings to winged creatures to human sacrifices – V/H/S has something for everyone.