WATCHknownAs Above, So Below
2014 · USA · 93m
A descent into the Paris catacombs that becomes a descent into hell, shot for real under the city.
1980 onward · 25 films
Found Footage
The camera is a character and it will be dropped. Cheap, exhausted, occasionally perfect.
Found footage presents the film as recovered material. It is the cheapest format in horror, which is why there is so much of it and why most of it is bad.
The rules it has to obey
Somebody has to keep holding the camera when a reasonable person would run. Every film in the format either solves this or ignores it, and the good ones solve it. The other constraint is that the ending is fixed in advance: if this is recovered footage, the people who shot it are not around to hand it in.
Deodato first
Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is the first fully worked example: a rescue party recovers a missing crew's film, and a broadcaster decides whether to air it. The framing is more rigorous than most of what followed.
Blair Witch
The Blair Witch Project (1999) cost about 60,000 dollars and grossed nearly 250 million. Its marketing campaign, one of the first built entirely on the web, presented the actors as missing persons, and a real number of people believed it. Nothing is shown at any point. The final shot is a man facing a corner, which works because of a piece of folklore established forty minutes earlier.
The best of them
Lake Mungo (2008) is an Australian mock documentary about a drowned girl and it is the most devastating film in this category. It is barely a horror film for an hour. Then there is a shot on a mobile phone that people do not forget.
REC (2007) is the opposite approach: a Barcelona apartment block, a news crew, and eighty minutes of escalation with no let-up.
Why it stalled
Paranormal Activity (2007) made 193 million dollars on a 15,000 dollar budget and triggered a decade of imitators. The format now signals cheapness before the film has started, which is unfair to the twenty or so good ones.
Discuss with AI
Open a chatbot with a question about this already typed out. Useful for a second opinion, a plot detail, or working out which cut you are holding.
The whole shelf
Filter these →WATCHknown
WATCHcanonCloverfield
2008 · USA · 85m
A monster attacks New York, filmed on a camcorder from street level, and the marketing invented a genre of mystery.
WATCHknownCreep
2014 · USA · 77m
Two actors, a cabin and a camera. Mark Duplass is the most unsettling thing in modern horror.
WATCHcultDeadstream
2022 · USA · 87m
A disgraced livestreamer broadcasts himself alone in a haunted house for the clout, and gets exactly what he deserves.
WATCHcultGonjiam: Haunted Asylum
2018 · South Korea · 94m
A web-streaming crew live-broadcast from a real abandoned Korean hospital for the views.
WATCHobscureHell House LLC
2015 · USA · 93m
A team building a Halloween haunted attraction in a real abandoned hotel, and the footage is all that is left.
WATCHknownHost
2020 · UK · 56m
Shot over lockdown on Zoom in twelve weeks, runs 56 minutes, and is better than it has any right to be.
WATCHcultIncantation
2022 · TW · 111m
A Taiwanese found-footage film built around a curse the film itself tries to pass to you.
WATCHknownLate Night with the Devil
2023 · Australia/AE · 92m
A 1977 Halloween talk show broadcast, live, going wrong. David Dastmalchian finally gets a lead.
WATCHknownMan Bites Dog
1992 · BE · 95m
A Belgian film crew follow a serial killer and gradually start holding the equipment for him.
WATCHcultNoroi: The Curse
2005 · Japan · 115m
A documentary film-maker investigates a demon called Kagutaba and does not come back.
WATCHknownOne Cut of the Dead
2017 · Japan · 96m
Sit through the rough first 37 minutes. That instruction is the whole review and it is worth obeying.
WATCHknownREC 2
2009 · Spain · 85m
The sequel picks up minutes after the first, sends a SWAT team into the sealed building, and reframes the whole outbreak.
WATCHknownShutter
2004 · Thailand · 92m
A photographer starts finding a figure in his negatives. The reveal about the neck pain is the best in Asian horror.
WATCHcanonSinister
2012 · USA/UK · 105m
The super-8 reels are the film. Everything between them is a man in an office not turning the lights on.
WATCHcultSkinamarink
2022 · Canada · 100m
Ninety minutes of ceilings and corners at 4am. Either the scariest thing you have seen or nothing at all.
WATCHknownThe Bay
2012 · USA · 85m
Barry Levinson made a found-footage eco-horror about a Chesapeake town and parasitic isopods.
WATCHknownThe Medium
2021 · Thailand/South Korea · 131m
Thai-Korean, a documentary crew following a shaman, and the last twenty minutes are relentless.
WATCHknownTroll Hunter
2010 · Norway · 103m
Norwegian students follow a poacher who turns out to hunt state-secret trolls. Deadpan and enormous.
WATCHknownWhat We Do in the Shadows
2014 · New Zealand · 86m
The funniest vampire film ever made, and the flatmate politics are observed perfectly.