10 great found-footage films

Long before we picked up film cameras to tell stories, gothic literature employed the trope of the found document to imply a validity to their terrifying narratives. Often regarded as the first gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s 1764 book The Castle of Otranto is written in the form of a 16th-century manuscript – purporting to be a rediscovered artefact from a Catholic family – with the intention of offering authenticity to its supernatural tale.

The fake archive quickly became a popular device in gothic fiction, used in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire among many others. In each case, we’re aware of the deception at hand, but the promise of reality tinged with the unthinkable becomes a delectable fantasy in itself. With their promise of legitimacy, such stories have the staying power of an urban myth or a ghost story told at a sleepover. We know the friend of a friend doesn’t really exist, but we’d rather momentarily believe the lie than check our sources to confirm the deceit.

Perhaps this explains why the found-footage film is most dominant in the horror genre, where supposedly amateur footage lends authenticity to horrifying happenings. Just like gothic literature, in recent decades movies have found mischievous ways to assure the audience that the events you are about to witness are real – whether this be by uncovering ‘lost’ footage, in a faux documentary, or even in a special Halloween broadcast gone horribly wrong…

Director: Peter Watkins

An early forerunner of the modern found-footage genre, this Nixon-era mockumentary isn’t a horror film, but it shows horrifying atrocities conducted by the American state. Made by the British director Peter Watkins, following his inspired pseudo-documentaries Culloden (1964) and The War Game (1966), Punishment Park revolves around an alternative sentence for political offenders: the prisoners must reach a checkpoint in the California desert in three days, while being pursued by armed law enforcement.

Moving between the interrogation room and the desert chase, Watkins’ film offers many insights into systemic brutality. While later found-footage films strive for a sense of naturalism by including minimal dialogue in their snatched moments of reality, Punishment Park is comparatively talky. The political views of the protestors are contrasted with the language of the armed forces, which is equally revealing of their indoctrinated minds. The use of amateur actors and the improvised line delivery bring an air of documentary realism to Watkins’ dystopian vision that remains chilling more than 50 years later.

Director: Ruggero Deodato

One of the most controversial films ever made, Cannibal Holocaust is one of the foundational found-footage horrors, setting an ambitious template for what could be achieved with a small budget and limited cast. In Ruggero Deodato’s film, footage of anthropologist Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman) leading a rescue mission into the Amazon rainforest is combined with sequences from the salvaged film shot by filmmakers who’ve gone missing after setting out to document indigenous cannibal tribes. We also see the footage being debated back in the studio on US soil, as the disturbing truth about the expedition is slowly revealed.

Deodato provocatively contrasts the taboo traditional practices of the tribespeople with the behaviour of the explorers, who use their fact-finding expedition as an excuse to enact savagery themselves. Cannibal Holocaust’s graphic depictions of animal cruelty and sexual violence still make for stomach-churning viewing today, while the cannibalism depicted is a far cry from the trendy gastronomy that has become popular in modern media’s romanticised versions of the taboo. But it would be wrong to write Deodato’s film off as sensationalist, given its confronting exploration of accountability.

Director: Dean Alioto

Given the blurry nature of much supposed evidence of alien existence, it’s surprising that more found-footage films haven’t been dedicated to the subject. In this 1989 film, hobbyist filmmaker Michael (Dean Alioto) decides to document his nephew’s birthday party but ends up capturing much more than cake-cutting. After seeing something strange in the back garden, he and his brothers go to investigate the flashing lights and stumble upon extraterrestrial activity.

The McPherson Tape features much of the improvised domestic drama that is common to this subgenre, with each panicking family member taking it in turns to attempt to rationalise away their alarming predicament. As in The Blair Witch Project, most of the fear comes from the chaotic dynamic of the soon-to-be victims, who retaliate in the violent manner you might expect from a family unit in the grip of UFO panic. Thankfully, the amateur filmmaker’s shaking, unfocused shots save us from seeing too clearly the clichéd extraterrestrials targeting the family.

Director: Lesley Manning

While some found-footage films have cleverly used pre-release marketing to convince audiences of their film’s authenticity, the BBC’s infamous Ghostwatch was simply broadcast without warning in the middle of an evening’s programming. The British mockumentary aired on Halloween night in 1992, featuring well-known TV hosts including Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith and Craig Charles playing themselves. As viewers stressed over the safety of their favourite presenters, more than a million phone calls are said to have been made to the studio offering a mixture of concern and praise. 

The show focuses on Britain’s most notorious haunted house, moving between Sarah Greene’s live reporting of the house’s hauntings and experts back in the studio deliberating over their veracity. It’s the steady pacing and the balance between pranks and supposed supernatural occurrences that keep us viewers fluctuating between scepticism and belief right up until the end.

Directors: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez

Not since Ruggero Deodato instructed the Cannibal Holocaust actors to hide from public life in order to encourage speculation around the film’s authenticity has a horror film been so expertly promoted. The release of this smash-hit indie from 1999 was similarly preceded by fake news reports claiming the actors were missing.

Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s film sees a trio of amateur documentarians set out on a mission to disprove a local myth about the Blair Witch. But as they find themselves lost in the woods, adrift from modern society, their certainty begins to wane. The Blair Witch Project’s stubborn refusal to show the witch plays a key part in this film’s enduring power to unnerve. Fear is summoned via the whimpering performances and the actors’ raw breakdowns. We may sense the witch’s presence, but her visual absence is a coup of low-budget horror, filling us with dread without the need for extensive visual effects.

Director: Koji Shiraishi

Instead of committing to one footage style or the form of a mockumentary, this creepy J-horror from director Koji Shiraishi incorporates a number of hybrid formats. Shiraishi’s film revolves around the findings of ​​Kobayashi (Jin Muraki), a supernatural researcher who’s gone missing while shooting a documentary called ‘The Curse’. But this footage is interjected with clips from a Japanese game show featuring a girl with psychic abilities, and talking-head interviews with neighbours sharing what they’ve seen.

Each interviewee has their own strange sighting to share, including dead pigeons, cannibalising babies and possession by ectoplasmic worms. Around the film’s central mystery, many other strange occurrences remain unexplained. While most found-footage horrors mine gothic aesthetics for their chills, Noroi: The Curse offers a useful reminder that sometimes the downright absurd can be equally horrifying.

Directors: Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza

Instead of the slow-building horror that The Blair Witch Project and its copycats led us to expect from found-footage horror, [Rec] offers a rapid slide into violent chaos. When a reporter (Manuela Velasco) and cameraman (Pablo Rosso) commit to spending the evening following firefighters for an exclusive feature, they are unaware of the horrors that will ensue. Within minutes of arriving at the emergency site, it’s clear they’re not the only ones who are ill-equipped. Over the course of a night the news crew, first responders and inhabitants of the apartment building are locked inside until the armed forces have assessed the apparent danger. 

Taking the shaky camera angles of the found-footage movie to an intense extreme, the rapid movement in [Rec] adds to the film’s air of fraught uncertainty. What’s actually going on here is a terrifying and violent mystery, and every clue we glean through the eyewitness interviews is a cleverly planted mislead.

Director: Joel Anderson

This pseudo-documentary about a young Australian girl’s disappearance borrows elements from Twin Peaks in blending the crime thriller with the supernatural. In New South Wales, Alice Palmer goes missing at Lake Mungo, but her body is found after a long frantic search. Yet the horror doesn’t end here for the Palmer family. As their house becomes the site of paranormal activity, eldest son Mathew sets up cameras to determine whether Alice’s spirit has returned home. 

Alongside talking-head interviews, Lake Mungo shows us security camera footage that may have captured Alice’s ghost, but whether this is the family’s manifestation or a real spectre is left for the viewer to decide. Turning the story of a drowned girl into a mockumentary film examining the supernatural events following her death, Lake Mungo questions why we are fascinated by the suffering of others, bringing us uncomfortably close to a family’s grief and forcing us to question our voyeuristic impulses.

Director: Patrick Brice

When videographer Aaron (Patrick Brice) answers a Craigslist call-out from Josef (Mark Duplass), he has no idea what the stranger wants except for a day on camera. So begins a fraught, filmed descent into Josef’s warped psyche – but it is not out of wicked curiosity that Aaron continues filming but rather a sincere yet possibly naive empathy with his strange subject. Avoiding many of the charismatic-killer clichés of films dealing with the criminally insane, Duplass portrays Josef as grimly unhinged but also sometimes pitiable, in a way that is deeply unflattering.

It makes for unpredictable viewing, as we viewers are unable to anticipate the next mood shift or action that will overwhelm Josef. Through this insular, turbulent set-up, Aaron’s home movie distorts into an amateur funhouse in which you can never be certain just how much danger he’s in.

Director: Kevin Ko

As technology has changed, so has the look of found-footage movies, as the quality of cameras and lenses has improved. This Taiwanese horror film from 2022 incorporates both webcam and the phone cameras that are now so ubiquitous, in order to expose an ancient curse. As Li Ronan (Hsuan-yen Tsai) documents the early life of her daughter, she fears something has possessed the child. By sharing this footage through her online video channel, she hopes she can encourage her followers to take part in a ritual, repeat the prayer and save her daughter.

The rightful heir to the cursed-videotape J-horror Ringu (1998), Incantation links the ancient horrors of folklore with the modern tools of the internet, where digital dissemination incites the kind of religious fear that is often left behind as scientific logic dispels superstition. As Li Ronan’s viewership grows, how can this ancestral deity be denied? Is she weakening the curse’s hold on her daughter or is she strengthening it? In its final moments, Incantation descends into a hell of physical effects and disturbing imagery, breaking step with found-footage predecessors like The Blair Witch Project, which choose to limit their on-screen horrors.