The 15 Best Found Footage Horror Movies Ever

“Paranormal Activity” (2007)
Surprisingly, the despite the enormous profitability of “Blair Witch,” it didn’t inspire a wave of imitators: studio executives weren’t sure what to make of it, and mainstream horror was still pushing through the wave of “Scream” ripoffs and end-of-the-century apocalyptic anxiety pictures like “Stigmata” and “End Of Days.” It was really only “Paranormal Activity” that launched the found-footage craze in a big way, and even then only after a long route to the screen. Ultra-low budget, it sees a young couple (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) set up a video camera to attempt to record an ominous presence that she claims has followed her whole life. The imitations and multiple, mostly shoddy sequels have diluted its impact, and we can’t claim to be massively interested in the central characters, but Peli’s inventiveness with his meager budget is still enormously impressive…though some of the jump-scares are kind of cheap, he plays with tension beautifully, and uses the format not just for the budgetary advantages, but because it helps prey on the universal fear of something being in your house. Screened first at a horror festival in LA, it was eventually picked up by Paramount, and two years later (the release delayed to reshoot the ending), proved a surprise smash. And though it’s time may have passed now, it’s not hard to see why.

“[REC]” (2007)
After the dormant zombie genre got a shot in the arm with Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” in the early 00s, the genre quickly became omnipresent, and already kind of stale (he said, over a decade later and with “The Walking Dead” now in its four-hundredth season). But one of the more effective, and purely terrifying, spins on the genre came with “[REC],” a Spanish film from directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, which took inspiration from live-news TV and, clearly, “Blair Witch Project” to make a found-footage zombie film, an idea so annoyingly brilliant and simple that it’s not surprising that the genre’s creator had it at the same time (see below). The film sees a reporter follow a Barcelona firefighter crew into an apartment complex where an old woman bites a police officer, which turns out to be ground zero of a zombie outbreak. As is sometimes common with the genre, the characters are pretty forgettable, and it’s perhaps intense more than it is truly scary, but boy is it intense: Balagueró and Plaza put you right in the throng of it, and familiar tropes become new because of a fresh perspective. Three sequels and a U.S. remake, “Quarantine,” followed, but the original recipe is the best here.

“Diary Of The Dead” (2007)
Given that he literally created the zombie as we know it with his classic “Night Of The Living Dead,” George Romero should be allowed to do whatever he wants with the genre, to be honest. And what he wanted to do with his “Diary Of the Dead” was take the genre he birthed and give it a found-footage spin. It was, at the time, the least of his ‘Dead’ movies (though has since been replaced by the genuinely bad spin-off “Survival Of The Dead”), but when it works, it really works. Set, once again, amidst a zombie apocalypse, it sees a group of film students making a horror movie when the shit hits the proverbial fan and they attempt to reach safety. Casting and directing actors hasn’t always necessarily been Romero’s strong point, and that holds here, with a cast of meat-in-waiting who are dull even by the genre standards. And more than most of his films, the tone is uneven. But it has much more on its mind than something like “[REC]” (and much more of a sense of humor too), and Romero’s direction and gore-wrangling is remarkably spry for a filmmaker who was then approaching his 70s.

“Cloverfield” (2008)
After found footage witches, ghosts and zombies, the next logical step (aside, perhaps from vampires, an idea that wouldn’t be tapped successfully until the more comedic “What We Do In The Shadows”) was a giant monster movie. Created in secrecy and rushed into theaters, “Cloverfield” united a very talented trio who’ve since gone on to greater success — producer J.J. Abrams, writer Drew Goddard (who went on to helm “Cabin In The Woods” and win an Oscar nomination for “The Martian”), and director Matt Reeves, most recently of “Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes” fame. By some distance the biggest-budget movie, it sees a going-away party for bland, handsome twentysomething Rob (Michael Stahl-David) interrupted by an attack by a giant, terrifying monster that’s attacking Manhattan, forcing Rob, his would-be-girlfriend Beth (Odette Yustman) and their friends into trying to escape. Reeves choreographs the action expertly, with a great monster (playing with expectations by introducing just a limb here or there, making it hard to imagine what the creature could possibly look like) and some inventive action sequences that still manage to be clearly told. And, while the characters are fairly basic, the team’s heritage on shows like “Felicity” and “Buffy” gives a sweet, romantic grounding to the mayhem that some of these films are rather lacking in, and T.J. Miller and Lizzy Caplan bring some texture to proceedings too.

“Trollhunter” (2010)
Depending on how strict you are about your genre definitions, you might not qualify “Trollhunter” as a horror film, putting it more in the fantasy camp. But the film takes enough cues from “Blair Witch” and co, and has enough fearsome monsters, that we’re happy enough including it here. Reminiscent of a less splattery version of early Peter Jackson, it sees a group of college students in Norway heading out to make a documentary about a bear poacher (Otto Jespersen), only to discover that their subject actually tracks mythological trolls (rather than people who leave comments under YouTube videos, obviously). It’s stretched out a little bit — even at 103 minutes, it’s a little long — and is rarely truly scary. But director Andre Ovredal (who just made his English-language debut with “The Autopsy Of Jane Doe” at TIFF) makes up for it by making something that’s just enormously entertaining, with a dry sense of humor and some real blockbuster flair that makes us surprised that bigger projects haven’t yet come calling. The wrap-up is a bit untidy, picking up a conspiracy thread from earlier in the film that never really landed, but it’s otherwise a very satisfying, enjoyable picture.