The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A Found Footage film is a film made in a way to give the appearance that it was video footage shot by people in the midst of dramatic action with video cameras (or sometimes film cameras). It comes with a distinctive look that mimics blurry and jagged handheld camerawork with actors often addressing the camera. (For films that pretend to be documentaries see Mockumentaries).
Most of these films have some type of rationale where the footage is made by documentary-makers, news reporters, investigative amateurs, camcorders, webcams, video chat programs or even from security cameras, sometimes a combination of more than one. The term Found Footage comes from the claims made that these were tapes found left behind by people that disappeared or is police footage or a documentary attempting to piece a mystery together.
It is debatable what was the first Found Footage film but Snuff (1976) is a contender. The genre was popularised by the massive success of The Blair Witch Project (1999), which many people believed to be a real film thanks to the publicity campaign. This saw a number of imitators but the phenomenon went stellar following the hit of Paranormal Activity (2007).
Since then almost every genre theme has had some Found Footage treatment from the ever popular haunting or ghost hunters investigating a haunted locale to the psycho film, the UFO film, the possession and exorcism film, the zombie film, the Bigfoot film, the superhero film, the monster movie, the alien invasion film, the vampire and Frankenstein films to even parodies of the genre.
Sequel to the hit multi-director anthology has a less high-profile line-up of directors, nor hits the astonishingly perverse heights of its predecessor. As always some entries never do much but the film finds its stride in the last few episodes
Found Footage film that cleverly borrows more than a few leaves from An American Werewolf in London with two tourists in Europe where one is bitten and transformed by a vampire
The Asylum’s mockbuster version of Prometheus where they have settled for giving us Predator as a Found Footage film (with a good few doses of Ancient Astronauts nuttinesss)
Extraordinary Found Footage film from Shane Ryan shot from the viewpoint of a killer as he seduces and kills a girl. A quasi-pornographic film that makes us question our own complicity in what we are watching
Sequel to Shane Ryan’s disturbing snuff Found Footage film. This works with the same effectiveness as the original, where the videography is transformed via a dreamily beautiful series of experiments with editing and colour
The first two of these films did ingenious things but now the inspiration is showing through and these films are starting to seem more like a personal fantasy on the director’s part
Not long after the success of Paranormal Activity, The Asylum tried the bandwagon with the novelty of repackaging The Amityville Horror as a Found Footage film
An Asylum film that has the idea of staging a retelling of the true-life Anneliese Michel story that formed the basis of The Exorcism of Emily Rose as a Found Footage film
Clever and well made Found Footage film about a NASA crew encountering something alien on The Moon’s surface. Falls somewhere between Alien, Apollo 13 and Paranormal Activity
Paranormal Activity director Oren Peli’s second film – a gripping Found Footage film about a group breaking into Area 51 in search of evidence of the alien visitors that the US government is holding
Found Footage film as survivors from a commercial airliner that has crashed on a top secret government test site find themselves hunted by mysterious creatures
The Brothers Dowdle made the standout The Poughkeepsie Tapes but this is a sub-Da Vinci Code archaeological mystery that is little more than a Halloween haunted house attraction in the Paris catacombs
Spanish Found Footage film about the investigation of a haunted woods during which almost nothing happens, before a left-field twist ending that makes little sense
The rarity of a really good Found Footage film. Designed to look like lost footage from 1970s psychic experiments, this concerns a scientific team who discover they are dealing with a woman who is demonically possessed
A possession film that takes the Found Footage approach. This takes the traditional approach of Catholic priests intoning exorcism rituals etc and fails to do anything interesting
Following the success of The Blair Witch Project, this was an excruciatingly lame softcore parody with a group of girls tramping in the woods finding almost any excuse to undress and conduct sex-related takes on Blair Witch
The Bare Wench Project was an inane softcore parody of The Blair Witch Project. This is the first of four sequels in which another troupe of girls go wandering in the woods while finding almost any opportunity to take their clothes off
Barry Levinson becomes one of the few name directors to venture into the Found Footage genre and soberingly portrays the outbreak of an ecological catastrophe from multiple viewpoints
What starts out as a seeming mockumentary about a serial killer turns into an hilarious deconstruction of the tropes and cliches of the slasher film. Imagine a film like Man Bites Dog crossbred with Scream
Following Paranormal Activity, The Asylum made a series of Found Footage films with the novelty selling point of claiming the films were taking place on the sites of famous murders or haunted locations
A bizarre Japanese about a documentary crew who make a film about a man who becomes a giant-sized superhero to fight off giant rubber monsters
This is a Found Footage film that features a film crew interviewing a crazy hermit who claims to have the carcass of a Bigfoot and naturally enough encountering the real thing
A Found Footage vampire film. This only follows where The Blair Witch Project went before, while the long build-up to the revelation of its creature proves a damp fizzle
The Blair Witch Project was genuinely innovative. It is a surprise that we never saw a string of sequels. Adam Wingard finally does here but at a time when the Found Footage genre feels played out of moves
This shot-on-video film that became a word of mouth sensation with many people believing they were watching real video footage of a trio lost in haunted woods by a witch. Of course, what nobody knew at the time was this was creating the Found Footage film
The Found Footage horror film quickly became worn out. However, this effort about the investigation into a haunted church in the English countryside manages to generate some quite reasonable atmosphere
A revival of the Nazi zombie fad, which essentially becomes a First Person Shooter film as someone wearing a GoPro camera runs through a bunker dispatching zombies
A Canadian film where a corrupt politician makes the slow realisation that he is a character inside a film. The comedy heads for obvious places at times but the film is carried by the originality and amusement of its premise
THE most extreme film covered on this site. The defining work of the notorious Italian cannibal genre, a pseudo-documentary work that features stomach churning tortures, guttings and actual animal mutilations
A Canadian-made micro-budgeted Found Footage film about a couple filming themselves as they plan out a murder for the thrill of it – only to fall out in the midst of doing so
Essentially a Found Footage version of a teen underdog discovers psychic powers film like The Fury or Akira. Nothing original, just a novelty of approach conducted with conviction
This has the distinction of being the very first Found Footage possession and exorcism film. This has become commonplace since but is quite different in its treatment than subsequent efforts
A J.J. Abrams produced film that was made under an absolute pall of secrecy. Released, it turns out to only be a fairly ordinary monster movie that is shot Found Footage style
Creep was a wonderfully creepy film with Mark Duplass as someone who invites a videographer to make a film but proves over-friendly to the point of highly disturbed. This is a sequel where Duplass returns for more
An improvisational project shot between actor Mark Duplass and friend Patrick Brice, a two person handheld-shot film where videographer Brice is hired by an over-friendly Duplass who becomes increasingly disturbed
A film based around real-life YouTube influencer Brian ‘Faze Rug’ Awadis as he buys a new mansion only to move in and find his neighbours are an alley of sinister clowns
As far as one is aware, this British effort is the first Found Footage alien invasion film. Not outstanding but this conducts a halfway reasonable job on limited resources
Director Rob Savage made a splash with the Zoom horror film Host. His second film here is an insanely crazed horror film that is shot from the point-of-view of a dashcam
A rather funny horror comedy based around the concept of a livestream conducted from a haunted house – all of which proceeds to quite hilariously go wrong
This was the first Found Footage film to deal with the Satanic pregnancy theme, prefiguring the more high-profile Devil’s Due. This draws on the plotting conventions and cliches laid down by Rosemary’s Baby in every way
Found Footage horror that unimaginatively rehashes The Blair Witch Project with a trio of people equipped with videocameras wandering around a supposedly haunted forest in Romania
Another Found Footage variant on an exorcism film. This was a big box-office hit but only ends up repeating the tired cliches of the exorcism and possession genre
Irish made Found Footage film where the investigation into a seeming miracle at a Catholic orphanage uncovers a case of possession and assorted deviltry taking place
A Found Footage film that seeks to overhaul the Satanic impregnation film a la Rosemary’s Baby. Both the Found Footage and the Satanic impregnation genres feel well-mined by now and this fails to offer anything new
George Romero returns to zombies, making a Found Footage film. After the disappointment of Land of the Dead, he delivers the goods here, while making powerful political points about modern media
Adam Green, director of the Hatchet films, makes a Found Footage film about the search for an underground world of monsters. The monsters, when seen, are quite imaginative
A mind-bogglingly meta film that starts out as a regular crime thriller before it gets invaded and taken over by psycho fan Penn Jillette who abducts the star and is determined to write himself in as the hero
The Dyatlov Pass Incident has gained a fascination as an unexplained mystery. Here Renny Harlin makes a Found Footage film that heads for full on conspiracy theory explanations
Found Footage film that nostalgically homages, if not outrightly borrows, from E.T.. It does build a sense of wonder well but then dissolves into far too much near-identical running around
Found Footage film about various people in the woods in the aftermath of a UFO crash. Essentially The Blair Witch Project with UFOs instead of a backwoods haunting
A groundedly realistic film about an expedition to search for life on Europa that that emerges as a disappointment coming soon after the similar space-based Gravity
Another Found Footage entry about a group of people being stalked. This generates some passable tension and one or two surprises
A Found Footage film from the early days before Paranormal Activity went big. This unnervingly charts the psychological disintegration of an ordinary English family under economic pressure
Eduardo Sanchez, the co-director of The Blair Witch Project, makes a Found Footage Bigfoot film. He makes a solid entry but not one substantially different to the last 238 Found Footage films
An absolutely hilarious parody of the Found Footage film about a film crew trying to conduct a shoot in a haunted house. This comes with mind-spinning levels of meta-fiction
A documentary charting the history and varying permutations of the Found Footage film, conducting an in-depth examination of the key films and players
This makes a fictitious claim to be a dramatisation of alien abductions that took place in Alaska. This creates something that is undeniably interesting before shooting itself in the foot by heading into Ancient Astronauts territory
A Found Footage Frankenstein film. There is little of Frankenstein and his monster here and this feels more like a Found Footage Quest for Bigfoot film in all but name
One has difficulty with the notion of a Found Footage Frankenstein film, although the film does credibly justify this. That said, the film offers up a series of genuinely phantasmagoric and out of this world creations
This has the great idea of paranormal investigators investigating the home of real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Alas, Gacy is of zero relevance and the film no more that a tatty Found Footage effort
Though this received a reasonably high-profile release from Blumhouse, it transpires as no more than a Found Footage film about the haunting of a high-school play
Classic BBC live broadcast tv special where a camera crew investigate a haunted house. Cited as one of the first Found Footage films, this does some ingenious things blending fact and fiction and messing with its audience
We have had a few UFO Found Footage films, most of which are rehashes on The Blair Witch Project with aliens instead of backwoods hauntings. This is one entry that produces a series of eerie jumps
Grave Encounters was an unremarkable Found Footage film. This much smarter sequel takes its lead from Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 in being a meta-fiction that investigates the phenomenon of the first film
Another Found Footage horror film with a reality tv ghostbusting team investigating a haunted asylum. The Found Footage genre quickly became exhausted and this only treads where others have gone before
A really good, unrecognised early Found Footage film, supposedly a series of videotapes that chronicle the activities of a serial killer. A film that takes us inside an incredibly disturbed headspace
Oliver Stone’s son Sean makes a Found Footage horror film. The haunted asylum has become a thoroughly overused cliche. That said, Sean Stone wrings some undeniably spooky jumps out of the material
An intense kick of pure adrenaline. Imagine a version of The Six Million Dollar Man shot First Person Shooter style by hyper-adrenalised parkour junkies dragging the audience through a series of death-defying stunts
A Singaporean entry in the Found Footage genre with a camera crew searching a supposedly haunted abandoned hospital. Constant hyped build-up without much payoff
Marlon Wayans treads the same territory as the Scary Movie films in this parody take on Paranormal Activity. Most of the film is pitched as a series of crude lowest common denominator gags
An Asylum mockbuster aimed to exploit the release of the Transformers spinoff BumbleBee. This has the unique distinction of being a Transformers-type film shot as Found Footage
A modest Found Footage film that builds up an effective mystery about the disappearance of a hiker in the Nevada backwoods. Three sequels followed.
The first major genre film made during the Covid lockdown, a modestly effective work that borrows the basics of Unfriended for a story about a séance being held over a Zoom call
A Found Footage film with a camera crew searching Halloween attractions for the most extreme haunt only to find something else. The film has a certain effect where we are not entirely sure what is real
Sequel to The Houses October Built with the same group touring Halloween haunts encountered sinister figures beneath the masquerade as everything starts happening all over again
A Found Footage film about a tv crew investigating Lovecraftian cultists who are trying to raise an elder god. This makes an okay stab but is distinctly hampered by a low budget
The most successful Taiwanese horror film of all time, a Found Footage film about paranormal investigators who witness a ritual and are afterwards haunted by it
A witty parody of the Found Footage form where the attempts by Werner Herzog to make a documentary about the Loch Ness monster are constantly upset by the director’s insistence on sensation and faked monster appearances
Albert Pyun makes an alien body snatchers film that has been shot Found Footage style and takes place entirely from the viewpoint of the dashcam camera of a police car
Found Footage film involving something (it is never clear) stalking people around disused cellars. Direction consists of a handheld camera vaguely waved in the direction of what is happening
A unique Israeli Found Footage film shot from the perspective of a pair of internet-enabled glasses as two US tourists are visiting Jerusalem as it is overrun by possessed demon figures
A Found Footage film about a family who finds everything they do is being filmed by hidden cameras before their home is invaded by masked figures
An Australian Found Footage film about a haunting. Rather than the intense spookiness of Paranormal Activity, this is more a mockumentary that is constantly turning what we expect is going on on its head
One of the very first Found Footage films, predating The Blair Witch Project, although this is less people running around the woods with cameras than an investigative mockumentary
An exorcism film made Found Footage-style with Patrick Fabian as a conman exorcist. This is constantly confounding everything one expects of the genre with considerable cleverness
British effort from the early days of the Found Footage film that reminds of Man Bites Dog with a serial killer demonstrating his techniques to a videographer
This conducts a perfect simulation of a 1970s tv talkshow with David Dastmalchian as a host who tries to expose/debunk a demonic possession before things go wrong live on air
Sam Qualiana is a director who has made some incredibly bad films elsewhere. Here he takes on making a Found Footage film about the hunt for a Bigfoot-like creature
A modern-day vampire film set at a time when vampires have revealed themselves to the world. This is shot as Found Footage film as a tv crew go to interview a brood of vampires
A smart and boundary pushing Found Footage film in which a regular joe wins a competition and is selected as an actor on a porn film only to be pushed to snapping point
A Found Footage film that has fun uniting wacky conspiracy theories into a grand unified thesis. The swim of ideas is head-spinning
One of the very first Found Footage films, an hilarious Belgian-made black comedy with Benoit Poelvoorde as a cheerful serial killer who demonstrates his techniques to a film crew
A Thai possession film shot Found Footage. This takes place among very different cultural rituals, which makes a welcome difference to the cliches that dominate Western possession films, and builds up to something quite out there
Bryan Bertino who made the impressive home invasion thriller The Strangers and this was his follow-up. This was held up so long in release that its originality has been rendered everyday by others milking the Found Footage genre
A Hungarian-made Found Footage horror film with vague claims to being about the Mothman. This only goes where The Blair Witch Project trod before, although subverts it in a twist ending (8)
A strong contender for the worst Blair Witch copy AND the worst Amityville film ever made. This has the feel of a home movie made by a husband and wife and is laughably ridiculous in its failings
The British equivalent of The Blair Witch Project, although this makes the title not strictly accurate – it should more correctly have been called A Night on the Moors. This conducts the build-up in an especially interesting way with much interplay between the trio of characters who all come holding secrets
Any Found Footage film about people venturing into a haunted forest cannot help but draw comparison to the progenitor of the genre, The Blair Witch Project. This comes up with some sufficiently original twists and spooky moments, even if it is eventually unbuckled by its pretensions
A Japanese Found Footage film made not long after The Blair Witch Project with a man investigating various paranormal incidents around Tokyo
This takes the old conspiracy theory about the Moon Landing being faked by tv and rather hilariously is a Found Footage film being shot by two filmmakers who have been tasked with fabricating the Moon Landing