The 10 Best Found Footage Horror Movies of All Time, From The Blair Witch Project to

This October, Variety enlisted some our favorite spooky content creators to share their scary movie essentials. Joseph and Vanessa Winter, whose film “Deadstream” made a splash on the festival circuit and earned rave reviews from critics, shared their picks for the best found footage films of all time. 

The found footage style has led to some of horror’s biggest hits, from the cultural juggernaut that was 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project” — which introduced found footage to the mainstream — to the microbudget sensation of the first “Paranormal Activity” movie in 2007. Although the first-person perspective can lead to some huge scares, there was a time after “Activity” where Hollywood invested a bit too much in the genre and delivered an abundance of films in the style, many of which felt like cheap cash-ins that lacked the flair and passion of the technique at its best. 

Luckily, writer-directors Joseph and Vanessa Winter are helping to revive the perception of found footage with two big projects. First, their festival hit “Deadstream,” about a disgraced YouTuber who plans to film himself staying in a haunted house overnight, debuted on Shudder as one of the platform’s key October releases. The duo also have the final segment in the just-released “V/H/S/99,” the fifth installment in the found footage anthology series which just debuted on Shudder. Both projects use found footage in inventive ways and prove that there’s plenty of creativity left in the art form. The husband-and-wife creative team were the perfect pair to curate Variety’s list of the best found footage films of all time. 

“I’m excited for the future of found footage,” Vanessa said. “I think that the genre spurs creativity in breaking some rules, which is something horror does anyway. Sometimes the restriction can birth a really new and creative idea.” 

Joseph also noted that, despite what detractors might think, there are plenty of unique challenges in creating a film in this style that might not be immediately evident. 

“I want to tell filmmakers that if you’re going to make a found footage movie, make sure you understand it is not easier,” he said. “I’ve talked to other people who have made found footage movies since then, and they would agree that it’s actually more difficult in some ways.”

• The Visit (2015)

  

  Vanessa: I was surprised when I went and saw it. I didn’t really have any expectations, and it made me laugh and I got scared. I thought particularly the scene under the porch was very scary and a good use of POV filmmaking. I remember walking away thinking maybe a comedy found footage movie could work. Maybe people are ready for that. 

  Joseph: I felt like the movie did more than it needed to, because the horror and the comedy both worked so well. But then it went a step beyond that and was thematically poignant where I, at the end of it, was very touched by this family and their story of drawing closer together and letting go of past grudges. After the movie is over, there’s a scene that thematically wraps things up so beautifully that I felt like, “Hey, this is Shyamalan doing more than he needed to do to be successful,” and I appreciate it so much. It has stayed in the top of my found footage recommendations.  

  Vanessa: I also appreciated the brother-sister relationship and the use of the camera. It increased the intimacy, and that’s one of the powers of found footage: breaking those barriers of intimacy. The idea that holding a camera brings you closer into a scene or closer into a relationship.

• REC (2007)

  

  Vanessa: This was the movie that I went to the most for “Deadstream.” As we started to revisit a lot of found footage movies, it was hard to take cues from them, especially once we decided it was going to take place in real time. Because it wasn’t a super slow burn, it needed to have more of an action-packed feeling to it. And so “REC,” which is one of my favorite movies, is just so well executed and the more I watch it, the more I appreciate it on different levels. But it takes place in almost real time, and so that was really helpful. And the part where it breaks for the little interviews around the midpoint: They make you laugh. They’re so real feeling that it breaks the tension and gets you attached to the different characters. So that’s one thing too that I wanted to bring to “Deadstream,” is for our main character to have some realness and not just be a parody. 

  Joseph: For me, when Vanessa was trying to convince me that “Deadstream” needs to be a real-time film and play out in 90 minutes or so, I was skeptical that you could add a rich mythology to that because it’s a very short amount of time for someone to unfold a backstory to ghosts or whatever is going on. When we revisited “REC” leading up to “Deadstream,” we realized this is so rich, mythologically speaking, in something that does take place in almost real-time. I just was not expecting it to move in that direction, and it gave us a lot of encouragement that in a very short amount of time, you can really deliver a satisfying backstory to the ride that you’re on.

• The Blair Witch Project (1999)

  

  Joseph: For me, it was the film that started it all. There were no prior expectations, there were no tropes, there was nothing going into the film that I brought to it. When it plays out like real, literal found footage that someone is shooting, the suspension of disbelief has never been so high with me as it was when I was 13 in the movie theater watching that. It made the final moment in the film so disturbing, something that I carried out of the theater and held onto for a very long time, in a way that very few films I’ve ever seen have done. Now when people watch it for the first time, they’re a little bit let down by the nothingness of it when it comes to the supernatural elements. But I think that it would be really hard for an audience now, that sees it for the first time, to forget the tropes or the expectations. But when it came out, we didn’t have that. It was so revolutionary to me and so incredibly effective. 

  Vanessa: I just consider it a great movie all around because I saw it as an adult, after all the tropes and the hype, and it still worked. It also gave me super bad production anxiety, this feeling of taking care of a crew and getting them in over their heads. It makes me feel character-wise and situational-wise, they were firing on those cylinders too, and not just the supernatural dread. I think it’s a masterpiece.

• Willow Creek (2013)

  

  Vanessa: I love the huge swing that was taken in this movie. I’ve never thought about it, but there probably was some inspiration there for “Deadstream” of taking something to a wacky place, but grounding it in found footage. I think the comedy works really well in this movie. In the first half, the interesting characters that are encountered in the small town are super fun and effective — great performances. I was down for it all the way until the end.  

  Joseph: Most movies can’t get away with this, but “Willow Creek” really shows moments and lets them play out in actual real time. There’s a guy singing a song about Sasquatch and it shows pretty much the entire song, and it’s not really moving the plot forward. But in this film I just appreciated what it was doing, because it helped it feel like this was a guy that was documenting reality. Then there was something that I have never seen since or prior, which is a moment that is several minutes long of just a man and a woman in a tent listening to horrifying sounds outside. It’s just a shot of their faces and it’s really, really long. After a while you just get so sucked into this moment because you’ve never seen something play out this long before and it makes the ending very effective.

• Lake Mungo (2008)

  

  Vanessa: I think it’s such an interesting use of the format of found footage because the cinematography is so stunning and unusual and clearly shot to be unsettling, but you just buy into the fact that it’s a PBS special, or in this case the Australian equivalent. But they’re going very artsy with it, and it’s so good at getting under your skin. My very favorite execution of filmmaking in this movie is the intercutting of the two interviews of the mother and daughter at the end. The timing and the content and the way that plays out? It’s very powerful.  

  Joseph: I was very late to “Lake Mungo.” It was so incredibly effective, and I couldn’t believe how caught up in the story I was for something that was clearly fictional. It felt so real. I needed to know everything that was going to happen, as though I were watching a special about a real-life investigation. The texture of the 16 mm film throughout really helps set a spooky tone. And I want more people to see it and to even know of its existence because it deserves the highest praise.  

  Vanessa: Also the “bad quality” ghost footage you would think would be easier to execute. It’s very tricky to get something that feels low quality but super unsettling and scary.

• The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

  

  Vanessa: This is another movie that I had zero expectations for. Somebody told us to check it out and I thought it was so good. It was so effectively scary and a really good use of found footage. I also was engaged by the premise of somebody that’s going through the tragedy of Alzheimer’s and playing with that, but also confronting you at the same time with the fear around these illnesses that we don’t understand, that take our loved ones away from us. After doing that, it also has a really satisfying supernatural mythology. It just kept going to places that I wasn’t expecting it to go. 

  Joseph: I didn’t know it was a supernatural movie when it was recommended to me, and so every layer that was uncovered throughout the film was surprising to me and so effectively scary. I feel like this one flew under the radar for most people, and I would love if it was regularly discussed in the top found footage movies, because it deserves to be there.

• Unfriended (2014)

  

  Vanessa: “Unfriended” was a movie we had to be talked into watching because, ironically, we don’t like to watch movies about social media. So once we finally sat down to watch it, I think “Deadstream” was already kicking around in the back of our minds. So I was really impressed with the technology, or rather, making technology cinematic, because it wasn’t as simple as just a screen capture. Everything was very intentional where your eye or the audience is. I was being drawn to comments or what you could see onscreen, or what you couldn’t see onscreen. There’s so much going with the multiple cameras and comment section, but you always know what you’re supposed to be watching. Your eye is always driven to the story within the technology, and so that part really stood out to me. And I think that was something in the back of my mind when we were making “Deadstream” and thinking about comment interactions. When they’re onscreen, it really has to be decisive. That’s the thing that I took from “Unfriended.” 

  Joseph: I felt like, “There’s no way in that short of a film in real time that they would be able to uncover a supernatural tale that was interesting,” but it was so compelling and impressive throughout. Basically, it becomes a ghost investigation in real time, on a FaceTime chat. 

• Host (2020)

  

  Vanessa: We sat down and watched “Host” right after we got done shooting “Deadstream” and we were like, “Damn, these guys beat us.” Not that our movies are the same, but it was just so well executed, and they did it so fast and it was so good. I had such a great time watching it. And I think this comes back to whenever I think about people who criticize found footage: There are so many artists that are taking a filming format and pushing it to its limits. Being able to capture the feeling of sitting down and being in a Zoom meeting was just so well done.  

  Joseph: The pandemic literally just happened and here was a movie that could not have been better timed to be maximum scary. Because everyone that was watching it when it hit was experiencing these Zoom calls.  

  Vanessa: And it’s a short movie. It’s pretty bold. 

  Joseph: Big time. It’s great how many people are just treating it like a regular feature. They’re not giving the caveat, “Oh, but it’s only 50 minutes.” And I think that’s actually really cool, because I think in the future of cinema, movies should really be the runtime that’s best for that story. 

  Vanessa: They were able to execute that full story within that amount of time and people felt that satisfaction.

• V/H/S/94 (2021)

  

  Joseph: There’s a segment in “V/H/S/94” called “The Empty Wake” that is one of the few things I’ve ever experienced in cinema that could recreate the feelings I had hearing my dad read “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” when I was a little kid. The type of story, the way it’s paced and the ending, play out like one of those stories which I adore, and that feeling that it gave me… I was so giddy afterward and just wanted to share the film. Not to mention that the movie is just really good overall. It just works as a comprehensive horror anthology. There’s so much creativity throughout.  

  Vanessa: Yeah, there’s a lot of good segments. I think “Storm Drain,” better known as “Raatma,” is also one of those pieces of art that’s inspiring because it’s so gutsy. It takes some really bold swings with horror and comedy and it lands. It was just nothing I’d seen before. I think there is something about found footage specifically where people can still take it to unexpected places and do experimental things with it. And it works.

• The Last Exorcism (2010)

  

  Vanessa: I just love where it goes, the way it plays with tropes and expectations. It’s a movie that inspired me to feel like you can start in one place and then end it in a different kind of place. “Deadstream” definitely falls into that category. 

  Joseph: It was also thematically rich, and the character arc of the protagonist was very unexpected and took it beyond just trying to get scares. It was so dedicated to being just a very well-rounded film. 

  Vanessa: Yeah, I think the levels of disturbing-ness were really great. There’s the supernatural element, and also the main characters’ motivations are a little bit disturbing, and then the family that they’re visiting, their problems are pretty disturbing. It’s very much a “Believe in the supernatural, don’t believe in it” situation. But even when you’re doing that bait and switch, there’s these other layers that are emerging that are increasing this feeling of dread.

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• Host,
• The Blair Witch Project

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