10 Best Found-Footage Horror Movies Of All Time, Ranked

Cloverfield

The found - footage subgenre is an interesting part of the horror genre ’s inherited makeup . It began as a creative way for main filmmakers with a small budget to get around having a cheap camera and no money for special upshot . However , it has since been adopted by Hollywood as the cheapest and gentle way to make a hit repugnance movie .

plainly , with this form of mindset going into a lot of them , there are n’t going to be many masterpiece . But there have been the few occasions on which this subgenre has work wonders . So , here are 10 Best Found - Footage Horror Movies Of All Time , Ranked .

The Blair Witch Project

While it ’s not the greatest moving-picture show ever made , The Blair Witch Projectdoes get point for being the first launch - footage horror film ever made ( except forCannibal Holocaust , but this was the one that position the template for the genre ) . There may have been a bunch of better ones made in the years since , but this was the original , and so it can be forgiven for its defect .

The tropes have been utilized more effectively and in more imaginative way sinceBlair Witchhit dramaturgy , but it was this movie that create those image . Without this , those tropes would n’t exist . It ’s a fine good example of low - budget filmmaking done well by thinking outside the boxwood and using the lack of money creatively .

Willow Creek

Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait , well known for directing black comedy likeSleeping Dogs LieandGod Bless America , decided to try his hand at a found - footage horror movie with the story of a distich who go out into the woods to try and capture the first literal footage of Bigfoot .

Goldthwait ’s piercing composition manner brings a bracing wit to a well - worn formula and the result is one of the repugnance genre ’s most underrated gems in late years . The moving picture even has some of Goldthwait ’s signature sick humor for good step . Just sit down back and enjoy the ride .

Diary of the Dead

George A. Romero made a bunch of movies about the zombi Revelation during his life . Hecreated the modern snake god – the flesh - eating undead who junket on brains and taint the bread and butter with their virus – withNight of the Living Dead , and he somehow always found fresh ways to look at the same story everyone was ripping off during his fifty - class vocation .

WithDiary of the Dead , he takes a look at the zombie uprising through the found - footage musical style . The motion picture ponders an interesting question about its premise that digs deep than Romero ’s previous zombie films : is the human race worth save ?

Creep

Mark Duplass , best know for being at the forefront of the “ mumblecore ” movement of main cinema , co - wrote and stars inCreep , a institute - footage repulsion movie about a videographer who is hired to watch over a full creep around with a tv camera .

What makes this pic particular is that it is character - driven . The panic do naturally from the characters and their tense relationship , as opposed to cheap jump scares and set slice . The dialogue was mostly improvised from a story thatDuplass mapped out with his theatre director and carbon monoxide - star Patrick Brice , which add a level of genuineness to the legal proceeding .

The Last Exorcism

At a certain point , there ’d been enough found - footage movies about a haunted house , so movie maker resolve to furcate out into the other subgenres of horror : zombies , kaiju , slasher etc . This one consecrate the dispossession genre a found - footage makeover , as it follows a fraudulent non-Christian priest who pretends to exorcise the devil from hoi polloi who think they ’re possessed .

He decides to do one last fake exorcism , only to discover that the female child he ’s seeing actually is possessed and he comes cheek - to - face with a actual monster . The movie calm down a little in the middle , but be certain to stick around for the gut - wrenching finish .

Paranormal Activity

Paranormal Activitywas such a big hit back in 2007 that it made producer Jason Blum the godfather of advanced horror cinema and inspired a wave of increasingly groan - worthy clone . Despite the innumerable tide rip - offs that keep an eye on , this remains the most effective tale of a mates document the haunting of their house , scare off priests with the forbidding unseen comportment in their domicile .

The humble budget is compensated for with dedicated acting – you ca n’t see the demons , but you know they ’re there . The night - cam episode have been parodied so much in the year since that you ’d reckon their panic attack factor had been lost , but they ’re still just a chilling now as they were back then .

The Visit

Before his big found - footage counter withThe Visit , M. Night Shyamalan ’s vocation was call back to be over . Not only had his repulsion moving picture fallen from the Oscar - nominated acme ofThe Sixth Senseto the Razzie - nominated lows ofThe Happening , he ’d made his foray into big - budget blockbusters with the all - around flopThe Last Airbender .

But thenThe Visitcame along , a miserable - budget found - footage hair-raiser about a yoke of kids give way to spend a hebdomad alone with their grandparents , who they ’d never met , where creepy things start to happen . Shyamalan is known for plot twistsand they usually induct groans rather than pant , but this one is genuinely surprising .

The Gallows

The found - footage genre is often used by horror film producer as an excuse to slow off . If the pic is supposed to be shoot by teenagers on the fly , then there ’s no pauperization to moot the use of frame and light and color , because the kids would n’t do that . But there ’s also an opportunity to take that one step further and imbue the cinematic techniques into the recreational take trend .

This movie dally around with the color red in a fascinating way . repulsion film often need medicine to make tension , and found - footage movies ca n’t do that , but this one plays around with the silence in a really eerie way that makes your heart pound in your chest . It ends with a harrowing plot twist and has one of the most redoubtable last prospect in recent storage .

REC

This Spanish fright - fest bring the zombie musical style and the chance - footage music genre together for an familiar and horrendous moviegoing experience . It tells a modest - scale story comprise within an apartment building as a fistful of people – including a news newsperson and her camera crew – are quarantined inside while a living dead virus spreads .

The dire affair is that it ’s essentially been decided by the authorities that whoever is inner will easy die out , but at least it wo n’t scatter to the outside earth . Long - term , this vocalize like a fairish program . But short - term , the hoi polloi left alive inside the building are cheat – and we ’re inside the construction , mount on a cameraman ’s shoulder .

Matt Reeves nailed it . He and producer J.J. Abrams managed to rack up the earth running just one year afterParanormal Activitybrought on a wave of hacky found - footage repulsion movies when everyone with an iPhone was trying to make one . The formatting is used brilliantly to draw scare out of the assumption of a elephantine lusus naturae round New York , and it ’s full of Easter orchis – but most significantly , it tells an engaging taradiddle .

The last - minute hint at the colossus landing place in the ocean is the ice on the bar . They ’d hooked us and reeled us in , but just for good bill , they decided to gut us , too . This is observe - footage repugnance filmmaking at its very unspoilt .