However, now that this once-niche creepypasta has escaped the online bubble and permeated all of popular culture, several of these developers have decided to rework and rerelease some of their old titles in order to reach a new audience. Puppet Combo did this with their interpretation of The Backrooms last month (originally released in 2019 as Day Seven), and now Cortez Productions is doing the same with the console release of The Backrooms: Lost Tape.

However, Lost Tape is more than just a cleverly timed rerelease, with Vini Cortez having taken the time to completely overhaul the 2022 game’s graphics and transfer the project over to Unreal Engine 5.6 – complete with bug fixes, exclusive new content, and a brand new visual style that’s a little too impressive when compared to what the original version of the game was trying to do. In fact, I’d argue that this is more of a remake than anything else, though it’s still built over the skeleton of that original game.

In the updated title, which is presented as a found footage anthology where each “tape” tells a self-contained story, players initially take control of a movie theater usher named Josh as he no-clips into the titular Backrooms and tries to find his way out of a liminal labyrinth. The second (and final) tape follows Josh’s brother Nikolas as he attempts to track down the missing usher and ends up embarking on his own journey through infinite hallways and not-so-empty pools.

What follows is a highly atmospheric first-person walking simulator with the occasional light puzzle and a handful of thrilling chase sequences. While the liminal environment is obviously the star of the show here, the rooms are actually populated by monsters in this game, and our characters have plenty to say about the situation they find themselves in.

Unlike Parsons’ more introspective take on the Backrooms mythology, Cortez has decided to incorporate the multiple levels of the Backrooms wiki as well as several crossovers with the SCP “franchise”. While I personally don’t mind this inclusion due to the creepypasta’s collective origins, die-hard fans might be bothered by the fact that you can run into SCP-173 (affectionately referred to as Peanut by some fans) while wandering around the yellow hallways.

However, the real problem here is the fact that the game is simply presenting imagery and ideas made by other people without adding anything new to these familiar elements. There is an undeniable novelty to exploring these beautiful renditions of classic liminal environments, but Lost Tape offers little in the way of originality in both narrative and presentation. This extends to the unfortunate use of generative AI in some of the new textures and audio files – issues that weren’t present in the 2022 version of the title.

Though Cortez has promised that he’s working on bringing back the VHS filter that made the original experience so grungy and atmospheric, the glossy new visuals make the game feel a lot less scary while also consuming way more computing power than can be reasonably expected from an indie title. Sure, the game is pretty in a “tech-demo” sort of way, but there’s no reason for it to be hogging resources like a blockbuster AAA title.

This is made even more frustrating by the fact that this found footage anthology is technically still incomplete. The two existing tapes only scratch the surface of the setting’s narrative potential, and Cortez has announced that the next ones will only be available as (likely paid) DLC. Josh and Nikolas’ tapes are self-contained yarns that’ll each get you about a feature film’s worth of entertainment, though a lot of that runtime is taken up by very slowly walking from one point to another. But it’s a shame that there isn’t a concrete promise of more content to come.

At the end of the day, Backrooms: Lost Tape isn’t a bad game. Cortez really nails the liminal atmosphere and even breathes new life into tired SCP tropes, and the upcoming VHS filter will likely resolve most of my gripes with the revamped visuals. That being said, I find it hard to recommend a project that took a completely functional experience and spoiled it with AI-generated assets and poorly-optimized “upgrades” that no one was really asking for – especially since it doesn’t give existing owners the chance to roll back to a previous version of the game.

So, if you’re looking for more Backrooms-related thrills after enjoying the A24 adaptation, Lost Tape isn’t necessarily a bad place to start, but there are certainly better and more original options out there.

Backrooms: Lost Tape is available now on Steam and PS5.

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Join Michael Roffman, Justin Gerber, and Rachel Reeves as they discuss director Stephen Cognetti’s found footage gem that has since spawned multiple sequels and spinoffs. But, as with anything, nothing is ever quite as good as the original.

Note: This episode was originally released to our patrons in October 2025.

Stream the whole conversation below or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, RadioPublic, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS. New to the Halloweenies? Catch up with the gang by revisiting their essential episodes on past franchises such as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Scream, The Evil Dead, Chucky, Alien, and Universal Monsters.

This year? Hellraiser AND The Omen.

You can also become a member of their Patreon, The Rewind, for hilariously irreverent commentaries (e.g. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Gremlins, Child’s Play) and one-off deep dives on your favorite rentals (e.g. Saw, 28 Days Later, Manhunter, Near Dark). Each month promises something new and unexpected from the wildest corners of the genre.

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For instance, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation makes genius use of the analog gimmick in order to trap us in the titular rooms alongside our main characters before effortlessly switching back to a more cinematic language. In honor of these dynamic films that manage to combine the best of both worlds, today I’d like to share six other hybrid horror movies that successfully incorporate found footage into their scares!

For the purposes of this list, “hybrid” horror movies are defined as any flick that shifts between diegetic recordings and traditional filming techniques for a significant amount of time (or at least for pivotal scenes).

As usual, don’t forget to comment below with your own hybrid favorites if you think a particularly freaky one was missed.

With that out of the way, onto the list!

5. The Last Broadcast (1998)

Internet critics may have overstated the influence that Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s The Last Broadcast had on The Blair Witch Project, but the found footage subgenre still owes a huge debt to this underrated piece of avant-garde filmmaking. However, while the movie sets itself up as a documentary about the disappearance of a group of cryptid-hunters attempting to track down the Jersey Devil, things take a darker and much more grounded turn towards the final act.

I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that the jarring shift in perspective actually helps to sell the idea that everything we’ve seen before the finale was an attempt at using filmmaking to manipulate the public perception of a “real” incident.

Not bad for a movie with a $900 budget!

4. Cam (2018)

When you consider just how much the internet affects our daily lives, it’s strange that we don’t see Screenlife elements pop up in more movies these days. For instance, Isa Mazzei & Daniel Goldhaber’s highly underrated Cam only works as a freaky parable about online sex-work because it masterfully balances Madeline Brewer’s intimate moments with highly immersive segments within cyberspace.

While one might argue that the entire film could have been produced as a Screenlife experience, the hybrid approach allows the filmmakers to explore our main character’s life beyond the screens – with the duality of modern human existence actually becoming a recurring theme in the story.

3. Banshee Chapter (2013)

Most of H.P. Lovecraft’s popular stories were told in the epistolary format (where the text is presented as an in-universe compilation of letters or personal notes), so it makes sense that a spiritually faithful adaptation of his work would incorporate elements from the modern-day equivalent to epistolary fiction – found footage!

That’s why Blair Erickson’s Banshee Chapter is such an effective scare-fest, as this hybrid adaptation of From Beyond -retold through a conspiratorial lens as it references MK-Ultra and even secretive numbers stations- immerses viewers in a mind-bending tapestry of Cosmic Horror that blurs the line between fiction and reality.

2. The Deep House (2019)

The underwater setting does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Deep House, with the film being especially uncomfortable if you’re already scared of tight spaces and being deprived of oxygen. However, even the universally unsettling elements of the flick only work because the POV often shifts into claustrophobic footage courtesy of our main characters’ GoPro cameras.

Telling the story of a couple of YouTubers who encounter a haunted house at the bottom of an artificial lake while vacationing in France, The Deep House’s first-person exploration sequences contain some of the film’s scariest moments. In fact, I’d argue that the movie didn’t even need ghosts, as becoming trapped in the titular House already sounds like a fate worse than death.

1. Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

My personal favorite instance of filmmakers successfully managing to combine traditional cinematography with POV filmmaking, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, is proof that the two formats can co-exist if the right story comes along.

After all, what better way to conclude a mockumentary all about reality getting increasingly more cinematic than by ditching the found footage gimmick altogether during the finale? Not only does this shift in presentation work on a conceptual level, but it also elevates Behind The Mask into a proper Slasher, which is probably why we’re so excited for that long-overdue sequel!

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Director Jason Zink and writer Nolan Mihail return for the sequel to last year’s found footage horror film Looky-loo.

Continuing where the first film left off, the looky-loo killer’s newfound infamy encourages him to push his crimes to further extremes as he documents his sadistic ventures, adding a new metatextual element to the film.

Julie Kashmanian, Kansas Bowling (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Jessa Flux (Murdercise), Kali Malia Michaels (Never Hike Alone 2), and Siane Wilson star.

Zink’s Weird on Top Pictures produces along with Erin Mathew and Bobby Chastain.

“From the beginning, Looky-loo was intended as a trilogy,” Zink tells Bloody Disgusting. “So, everything we withheld in part one, we deliver on with part two. He thinks this is his opus… but he’s still just getting started.”

Fresh off its Best Director win at Crimson Screen, Looky-loo: Part II‘s upcoming festival screenings include Recovered Reels in Quakertown, PA, on May 29 and Hysteria Fest in St. Louis, MO, on July 9.

While you wait for the sequel, the original Looky-loo is streaming for free on Found TV.

The post ‘Looky-loo: Part II’ Trailer – Found Footage Horror Sequel Gets Bigger & Bloodier [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

However, with A24’s The Backrooms set to be released in theaters later this month after years of development (with Kane having even been secretly mentored by Longlegs director Osgood Perkins during production), plenty of fans have been left wondering if the movie is meant to be a continuation of the original YouTube series or a complete remake of the same story.

Newcomers have also been asking online if they need to catch up with the ARG in order to fully enjoy the movie, especially since it looks like it may very well be the horror event of the Summer.

Thankfully, we’ve got answers for you!

During a Discord chat with fans from a couple of months ago, Kane sneakily revealed that the upcoming film is 100% in-canon with the YouTube series and even appears to take place during the same time frame in the 1990s. It’s also not exactly a sequel to the ARG, as the project was developed as a standalone story that could entertain audiences that weren’t yet familiar with the concept of The Backrooms.

In short: no, you don’t need to watch the YouTube series in order to understand the movie, though it certainly takes place within the same universe as those original “tapes”.

That being said, I’d still recommend checking out Kane’s channel as it’ll likely help viewers to recognize eerie little clues and Easter Eggs in the upcoming film.

It’s also a completely free source of Found Footage frights, so what’s not to love?

The Backrooms will be available in theaters starting May 29.

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Paul Syre Lee, Mark Anthony Williams, and Danielle Kennedy star in the film from director Nicholas Pineda.

Infirmary follows “a young security guard begins his first night at the Wilshire Infirmary, a crumbling, long-abandoned mental asylum with a history that refuses to die. Paired with Lester, a retiring guard whose unusual behavior only adds to the unease, Edward quickly realizes this isn’t just another job.

“An intruder shatters the silence, but vanishes before Edward and Lester can act. Lester, his only ally in this forsaken place, disappears into the bowels of the asylum without a trace, leaving Edward to fend for himself. As the hospital’s dark history closes in on him, the line between reality and madness blurs. Edward becomes the prey of forces he cannot understand, trapped in a labyrinth of horrors that seem intent on breaking his mind.

“Haunted by visions, stalked by unseen entities, and tortured by his own unraveling psyche, Edward must face his fears and escape the infirmary’s clutches… or lose himself in its twisted depths forever.”

An abandoned psychiatric hospital tends to make for one of horror’s creepiest settings, so this premise already intrigues.

The horror movie made its world premiere earlier this year at the Dances With Films NY festival.

“We’re always looking for films that create a strong sense of atmosphere and psychological unease, and Infirmary immediately stood out,” said Michael Paszt of Raven Banner. “Nick has crafted a film that is deeply unsettling, visually confident, and rooted in a kind of dread that travels well internationally.”

With Infirmary heading to Cannes this week, expect to hear more about the film’s release soon.

The post Raven Banner Boards Psychological Found Footage Horror ‘Infirmary’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

From analog horror ARGs to Adult Swim’s patented style of over-the-top satire, these entertaining blasts from the past have been proven to work in short form, but few creators dare to experiment with the format when it comes to feature films. However, Simon Glassman’s retro oddity Buffet Infinity aims to change that with a Lovecraftian homage to Second City Television (an underrated comedy sketch show where heavy hitters like John Candy, Eugene Levy, Harold Ramis, and even Catherine O’Hara poked fun at TV tropes).

Originally meant to be a YouTube short produced during the Covid-19 pandemic before Glassman realized that the idea had the potential to become a full-length movie, Buffet Infinity is presented as a series of recordings depicting local commercials from the fictional Canadian town of Westridge County, Alberta. As we comb through the VHS-style footage, a bizarre rivalry between two neighboring restaurants soon expands into a cosmic nightmare as a mysterious sinkhole threatens to consume the entire community – one local business at a time.

What follows is a delightfully absurd exploration of capitalist excess and low-budget advertising combined with a healthy mix of Analog Horror that would make Local 58 blush. The best part is that you don’t actually have to be versed in any of the media that Glassman is referencing to enjoy the show.

The commercials themselves are fantastic, with such attention to detail and authentic period-accurate charm that you could easily mistake them for real ads if the filmmakers removed some of the more obvious nods to the underlying horror of it all. Not only that, but all of this simulated low-budget marketing never repeats itself with similar jokes or formats. From intentionally crappy musical numbers to sinister infomercials backed by sci-fi death cults (as well as local super-heroes that keep the public safe from unfair pricing), there’s genuinely never a dull moment here.

That being said, the real genius of Buffet Infinity lies in the way that the filmmakers manage to establish an ensemble of memorable characters with actual story arcs between individual commercials. You end up becoming just as interested in the fate of quirky figures like Ahmed Ahmed, the music-loving pawn shop owner (not to mention the unfortunate Babbacock Insurance Lady) as you are in the cosmic horror that’s slowly taking over Westridge County.

These solid characters and the charming performances behind them keep the experience grounded enough for viewers to remain invested even as the flick switches between conflicting different styles and formats. In fact, while some of these segments could work as standalone sketches, the overall context connecting them makes them even more entertaining, which is why the movie never feels like the loosely-connected anthology I was expecting.

This avant-garde style of comedy results in a unique experience unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the realm of genre filmmaking. In fact, the only movie I can really compare it to is Chris LaMartina and company’s WNUF Halloween Special (as well as its spiritual sequel, Out There Halloween Mega Tape). However, that film still benefits from a much more traditional story than Buffet Infinity’s narrative puzzle pieces that slowly come together to form an absurdist satire of capitalism that’s usually reserved for exaggerated internet humor.

While the film is first and foremost a comedy, the cosmic horror elements are so well executed that it’s easy to imagine a project shot in the exact same style but replacing the humorous bits with more disturbing examples of supernatural anomalies slowly sneaking into day-to-day life. In fact, plenty of the footage in the latter half of the flick is legitimately creepy even within the comedic context, especially once you realize that this entire community has been so utterly dominated by eldritch forces that they can’t help but normalize the insanity surrounding them. I’m also a sucker for emergency broadcasts with a paranormal twist, so this movie was right up my alley.

Of course, breaking new ground in any art form will always unearth new and exciting challenges, so it’s not that surprising that Buffet Infinity stumbles from some minor pacing issues during its final act as the overarching story struggles to tie up all of its loose ends. I’d actually argue that removing about 10 minutes of footage from the project would have helped the experience to flow more smoothly and would guarantee that audiences never get a chance to become bored with the constant deluge of bizarre visuals. That being said, fans of meta ARGs might actually enjoy the batshit insanity of the finale so much that they’ll be left wanting more, so your mileage may vary depending on your personal media diet.

As it stands, Buffet Infinity is one of the most rewarding genre productions of the past few years and a must-watch for fans of absurdist humor and Lovecraftian terror. The internet-inspired rapid-fire humor may not appeal to everyone, but I was thoroughly impressed with what may very well be the very first instance of a true analog horror comedy.

Buffet Infinity will be available on VOD starting May 8.

The post ‘Buffet Infinity’ Is The Analog Horror Comedy We Didn’t Know We Needed [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Louie La Vella and Monica La Vella, the husband-and-wife duo behind the streamer, produced the project for $10,000, with Louie directing from a script by Monica.

The found footage horror film follows a man as he documents his wife’s cancer — until a terminal diagnosis leads him to an ancient ceremony to make a deal with the Devil. His footage spirals into a chilling record of kidnapping, demonic rituals, and the price of desperation.

Matt Gallagher stars as Jake, a desperate husband pushed beyond moral limits, with Sabrina Knappett as Juliet, the ailing wife at the center of his unraveling.

The cast also includes Hannah Brennen as Rebecca, Juliet’s nurse who becomes a victim of Jake’s escalating actions, and JoAnn Bundock as the psychic who introduces Jake to a dangerous ritual.

“This film was about proving what’s possible within the genre,” said Louie La Vella. “We wanted to make something that felt true to indie found footage at its core. Something made with limited resources, but a clear vision. We believe that with the right skills, anyone can be a filmmaker.”

A Possession in Lincoln County will premiere on Found TV later this year, signaling the platform’s expansion from streaming service to original content studio. Stay tuned for more.

The post ‘A Possession in Lincoln County’ Teaser – The Devil Is Always Listening in Found Footage Horror [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Consumer-grade drones now come with a “hands-free” setting that automatically directs the camera to follow you – in case you’re a surfer taking your next wave, a snowboarder back-flipping off a half-pipe, or a serial killer stalking your next victim.

When a group of teens knock this drone out of the sky, they discover that it contains home movies of the killer’s brutal crimes. Now, they must race to expose the killer before becoming his next victims.

Leonberg and his Good Boy writing partner Alex Cannon penned the script.

Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, John Fischer, Hal Sadoff, & Ben Levine of Temple Hill Entertainment (Smile, Clown in a Cornfield) produce. Dave Bishop, James Pugh, and George Hamilton of Protagonist Pictures (The Lobster, Bronson) serve as executive producers.

Protagonist will launch international sales at the upcoming Cannes film market. Temple Hill and Verve Ventures are co-repping domestic rights.

“The rise of hands-free drone technology has introduced a chilling new vulnerability to everyday life — anyone with a drone can become a peeping tom, a stalker, or worse,” commented Leonberg. “That anxiety drives Follow Mode. We’re so thrilled to be partnered with Temple Hill, whose track record in the genre makes them a perfect fit for this unsettling new take on found footage.”

“We were blown away by Ben’s first film Good Boy and its original approach to perspective in the horror space and sought him out to find something to do together,” added Temple Hill. “We see Follow Mode as the next evolution of the found footage movie – playing on the terrifying reality that any of us could be followed and watched by store-bought technology. With Ben’s tremendous vision and expertise in POV filmmaking, we couldn’t be more excited to share this spine-chilling project with audiences around the world.”

“Follow Mode is the kind of bold, high-concept horror that stops you in your tracks – propulsive, original and viscerally thrilling from its first frame to its last,” said Bishop. “In Good Boy, Ben proved he is a filmmaker both comfortable pushing boundaries and mastering tension. Shot entirely with drones, delivering a strikingly cinematic experience, Follow Mode offers a new perspective on terror audiences have simply never seen before. Ben has crafted a rare, diabolical treat that feels both groundbreaking and deeply unsettling.”

Leonberg also recently signed on to direct an adaption of Grady Hendrix’s Ankle Snatcher for Sony.

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The indie film follows a high-profile social media influencer who discovers a mysterious deck of battle-style collectible cards. What begins as a curious find turns his local sanctuary into a hunting ground.

Trapped in a hellish game where every draw summons a grotesque new creature into reality, he must document his own potential demise for an audience that can’t look away.

The film includes cameos from real influences as well as The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sanchez.

A.J. Bennett makes his feature directorial debut on the project. Eric Martinez and Curt Fulster produce for Floating Rock Productions.

“We wanted to capture that childhood sense of wonder found in games like Jumanji and twist it into something unrecognizable and terrifying,” said Bennett. “The audience will feel the same dread as our protagonist — waiting to see what nightmare crawls out of the next card.”

Last Look is coming soon. Stay tuned for updates.

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Fangoria reports that the horror film is now in production, with The Butcher Brothers’ Mitchell Altieri (The Hamiltons, April Fool’s Day 2008) directing from a script he co-wrote with Jacquelin D. Hayner.

It follows a nursing student assigned to document an elderly dementia patient whose rare moments of clarity begin to suggest unsettling recollections tied to an infamous serial killer. As her investigation intensifies, so does her obsession, drawing her closer to a truth that may put her in danger.

Robert Donavan (Attack of the Unknown) and Sadie Scheufler also star.

“This is my first foray into found-footage filmmaking, and it’s a completely different beast,” says Shepis. “I used to think this style might be easier, but the reality is quite the opposite — limited camera angles often mean limited coverage. That puts a premium on performance; you have to get it right from the very first take, because it might be the only one you have.”

Frequent Altieri collaborator Jeffrey Allard (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003) produces alongside Shepis, Alex Newberry, and Ricardo J. Santos.

“Bringing love — and filmmaking — back to Northern California feels like a homecoming,” adds Altieri. “This is where we shot The Hamiltons and The Violent Kind, and now it’s the backdrop for The Case of Walter Briggs. There’s an incredible depth of locations and talent here. Working with Tiffany Shepis and Jeff Allard, I’ve developed a creative shorthand that makes even the most challenging projects feel seamless.”

“The Case of Walter Briggs is an ambitious found-footage horror thriller that also plays like a dark drama, which is a combination that really drew me in,” says Allard. “Tiffany Shepis always delivers, and working with Mitch again is always a great time. This marks our seventh film together, and each one has been vastly different from the last—yet all have found their own kind of success. When I first read the script and saw the vision for the cast, I knew Walter Briggs would be something special.”

The Case Study of Walter Briggs marks Shepis’ fourth collaboration with Altieri and Allard, following 2010’s The Violent Kind, 2017’s The Night Watchmen, and 2020’s Star Light.

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That’s why films like Rec opt for a different kind of horror experience altogether despite the familiar setup, and more recent projects like Butterfly Kisses choose to confront the stick-figure-shaped elephant in the room directly by acknowledging their cinematic inspirations in the narrative itself.

Markian Tarasiuk’s Hunting Matthew Nichols is a great example of this latter strategy, with the Canadian mockumentary (which was a big hit at this year’s edition of San Francisco’s Unnamed Footage Festival) actively questioning what it means to be a modern-day successor to The Blair Witch Project while also managing to incorporate these decidedly meta anxieties into a story about loss and grief.

In this authentic-looking feature, we follow a documentary crew led by Tarasiuk himself as they investigate the 2001 disappearance of amateur filmmaker Matthew Nichols in an attempt to bring closure to Mathew’s sister Tara (Miranda MacDougall). Unfortunately, this true crime investigation leads to Tara discovering more than she bargained for when the team realizes that this cold case may very well be connected to a terrible force lurking deep within the eerie woods of Vancouver Island.

Presentation-wise, Tarasiuk really knocked it out of the park with the film’s Netflix-like visuals and structure, as well as a series of surprisingly convincing interviews with an assortment of memorable locals. From creepy time-lapse footage to the occasional use of animation in lieu of boring exposition, Hunting Matthew Nichols feels like a genuine attempt at a high-profile documentary throughout most of its runtime – especially when interviewees are allowed to be a little idiosyncratic.

Things get a little less authentic once we get to the more traditional found footage portions of the flick, however, as some of the trope-heavy scripted moments (which are mostly relegated to conversations within the crew) are far less believable than the familiar deluge of talking heads conveying pieces of a larger narrative puzzle. Thankfully, these more over-the-top moments are easy to forgive when you realize that they exist in service of the film’s metatextual layer as a story about the very nature of found footage.

Not only does a big part of the plot involve Tara coming across a lost tape shot by her brother, but the film also establishes that Matthew himself was a huge fan of The Blair Witch Project. The young man’s love of the film and his creative desire to produce something equally spooky is what ultimately led him and his native friend Jordan to venture off into the woods, never to be seen again.

While Hunting Matthew Nichols doesn’t quite explore this idea of unfiction having real-life consequences as deeply as I would have liked, especially now that we know how even the silliest of creepypastas can lead to real-world tragedies, I appreciate how the filmmakers made a point of explaining that the movie takes place in our reality where most people are aware of the concept of a found footage production.

On that note, you could even consider the flick to be something of an unofficial sequel to Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s lo-fi opus, though it’s a shame that the main characters here aren’t quite as iconic as Heather and company from the 1999 film. That being said, Miranda MacDougall does a great job of selling her character’s long-gestating grief and obsession.

There are plenty of original scares to be found here as well, and I’m always in favor of Canadian storytellers incorporating more native folklore into scary movies. While I’m fairly certain that the local legend of a cannibal pioneer was made up for the film in much the same way that Kedward was invented for The Blair Witch Project, the bizarre VHS footage and the climactic “encounter” in the woods still feel terrifyingly real.

I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoiling the experience, but suffice to say that Tarasiuk makes great use of light and shadow during the flick’s final moments, and I love how he shies away from showing too much of Mathew’s tapes and focuses instead on our main character’s horrified reactions.

Hunting Matthew Nichols likely won’t enjoy the same staying power as its retro inspirations, but it doesn’t really have to. Despite some iffy performances and a general sense of deja vu, the film works well enough as a meta commentary on why we still insist on searching for answers in the woods even after so many other scary movies have explained to us why that’s a bad idea. That’s why I’d recommend this indie gem to fans of slow-burning supernatural terror everywhere – as well as true crime enthusiasts who wish that missing persons cases could come with a side of paranormal frights.

Hunting Matthew Nichols releases in theaters on April 10.

The post ‘Hunting Matthew Nichols’ Review – A Familiar Yet Effective Homage to ‘The Blair Witch Project’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The tongue-in-cheek found footage horror film will be released on VOD later this spring via Indie Rights.

Henry and Haley are a rising content creator couple who’ve just moved into Oak Bridge, a Los Angeles neighborhood marketed as the safest place to live. They’re ready to film every ‘spontaneous’ moment of their new life, unaware that Oak Bridge isn’t interested in being part of their brand.

When a theatrical scarecrow appears behind their backyard hedge, Henry, whose life is a carefully crafted lie, assumes it’s a viral prank. Haley, who often finds herself going along with Henry’s nonsense, continues filming.

Then the footage changes. A local warns them that the creature hunts those who aren’t what they seem. In Oak Bridge, the land has a long memory, the neighbors are always watching, and the camera never stops rolling.

George Henry Horton (Project Dorothy) writes and directs. Dark Atlantic Studios produces.

Horton also stars alongside Branika Scott, Vincent Ranola, Dallas Steinback, Emily Rafala, and Gary Kasper (“Supergirl”) as the Strawstalker.

“I’ve always been fascinated by Los Angeles, and especially the San Fernando Valley,” said Horton. “Not that long ago, it was all farmland. Now it’s this strange mix of suburbia, aspiration, and performance. You can’t help but wonder what the land remembers… and what it might say about us now.

“Out of those ideas, and with a bit of tongue-in-cheek eye-rolling at how performative life in LA can be, Strawstalker was born. We set it in our own imagined neighborhood, Oak Bridge — a place that feels just real enough, but slightly off, like something isn’t quite telling the truth.”

The post ‘Strawstalker’ Trailer – A Scarecrow Attacks Influencers in Found Footage Horror Movie [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Watch the new trailer for the found footage creature feature below.

It follows Cole Harrington, the host of a popular outdoor series, who sets out to track down the predator responsible for a series of cattle attacks in rural Nevada. The mystery deepens when he uncovers footage depicting the final moments of two missing university employees.

Dillon Brown (Tahoe Joe) writes and directs, citing The Blair Witch Project and Bone Tomahawk as inspirations.

Brown also appears in the movie alongside Blake Hyer, Maxwell Golden, Dustin Tamplen, and Michael Rock.

Blending raw, immersive storytelling with an unflinching tone and a unique adversary, Primal Darkness aims to deliver an experience that is both intimate and terrifying.

“I’ve always wondered why this type of being has been forgotten about as a horror movie antagonist, and I felt like it was the scariest thing I could come up with lurking out there in the dark,” Brown commented.

Primal Darkness is produced by Horror Dadz Productions and executive produced by Louie La Vella.

RELATED: 13 Upcoming Found Footage Horror Movies Releasing in 2026 and Beyond

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Vir Das will star in the film in addition to directing.

Zazu Productions previews, “Positioned as a found footage horror narrative, the project aims to move beyond conventional tropes, blending psychological depth with atmospheric storytelling.”

“The film has been in development for some time and is expected to offer a nuanced take on fear, exploring both external tension and internal human emotions,” the outfit continues.

“Vir Das further expands his creative repertoire, transitioning from comedy to horror while maintaining a strong focus on narrative innovation.”

Variety notes, “Vir Das, one of India’s most renowned comedians, took home the 2023 International Emmy Award for best comedy for his Netflix special Vir Das: Landing.”

Co-director Kavi Shastri will re-team with Vir Das for Baara Number. Shastri previously co-directed the action comedy Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos alongside Vir Das.

A handful of great horror movies in recent years have been directed by creators previously known for their comedic work, including Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Us, and Nope, and Zach Cregger’s Barbarian and Weapons. Cregger told us in 2022, “It’s all about subverting expectations. It’s all about being a step ahead of the audience, zigging when they expect you to zag, and timing. Timing and tone. That’s the anatomy of a joke; that’s the anatomy of a scare. I do feel like I’ve been working that muscle group out for a long time through comedy.”

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With a brand new installment in the Paranormal Activity franchise headed our way next year, and early pseudo found footage cult classic Faces of Death getting a brand new remake this year, it would seem found footage is once again having a bit of a moment. In fact, there are AT LEAST thirteen new found footage nightmares headed our way here in 2026 and beyond.

Here are 13 upcoming found footage horror movies we’re looking forward to.

Rabisu: Curse of the Demon – Releasing April 3

In December ’25, a group of ghost hunters entered a warehouse in Salt Lake City. They were searching for views, but what they found was an ancient evil from Mesopotamian mythology.

That footage is now being released. Found footage horror film Rabisu: Curse of the Demon will be available on VOD outlets at home on April 3 via DeskPop Entertainment.

The horror film follows a rising paranormal investigation team that acts on an anonymous tip, leading them to a remote warehouse rumored to contain the sealed remains of an ancient Assyrian djinn. Once inside, the group encounters a labyrinth of curated mannequins, toys, and costumes — until the lights fail.

When power returns, one member begins exhibiting signs of possession, revealing the entity’s chilling ability to manipulate minds and incite violence. With exits sealed and the building itself seemingly shifting, the team uncovers remnants of a failed prior investigation and races to contain the demon before it destroys them from within.

Hunter King (“The Young and the Restless”), Chase Ramsey (Horizon: An American Saga), Austin Archer (Horizon: An American Saga), Lindsay Foster (Horizon: An American Saga), Tariq Brown, and Wes Brown (“True Blood”) star in Rabisu: Curse of the Demon. Writer-director Chris Copier makes his feature debut on the project.

“Rabisu: Curse of the Demon taps into a very old mythology while delivering the kind of relentless, pressure-cooker experience that plays incredibly well on streaming,” said DeskPop president Steve Bulzoni. He calls the film “intense, unsettling, and deeply atmospheric.”

Watch the official trailer for Rabisu: Curse of the Demon below.

Hunting Matthew Nichols – Releasing April 10

Set on Halloween 2001, Hunting Matthew Nichols is one of the rare found footage horror movies that will actually debut in theaters. It’s releasing April 10, and tickets are on sale now.

Here’s the synopsis: “On Halloween 2001, Matthew Nichols and Jordan Reimer went into the forests of northern Vancouver Island near Port Rupert with a VHS camcorder — and vanished without a trace. Their camera was later recovered, but the boys were never found. Two decades later, Matthew’s sister, Tara, has hired a film crew to document her search for answers.”

Markian Tarasiuk makes his directorial debut on the Canadian indie horror film. He also stars alongside Miranda MacDougall and Ryan Alexander McDonald.

“A sneaky, simmering take on the true crime folk horror genre that boils over and becomes truly unnerving,” praised Steven Soderbergh (Contagion, Ocean’s Eleven). “Given the shocks, I would bet audience participation is guaranteed. And stay for the credits.”

Watch the official trailer for Hunting Matthew Nichols below.

Loner – Releasing April 24

An ancient force haunts a survival vlogger in Loner, an upcoming character-driven found footage film that blends folk horror and psychological tension with a dash of dark humor.

Loner will stream for free April 24 exclusively on Found TV.

The found footage film follows aspiring vlogger Angus Mattock, who ventures to a remote wilderness retreat to create nature and survival videos. His idyllic getaway descends into a nightmarish fight for his life as he is held captive by a mysterious, natural force.

Charlie Robb and Douglas Tawn co-direct in their feature debut.

Loner has won several awards, including Best Feature at the British Horror Film Festival, Best Film and Best Actor at the Black Sunday Film Festival, and Best Director at Nòt Film Fest.

Watch the trailer for found footage movie Loner below.

A Sea of Trees – Coming Soon

What happened to Elliott Cornell in the summer of 2007? We’ll find out in A Sea of Trees, a true crime-inspired found footage film directed by Scott Lyus (Walking Against the Rain).

The upcoming horror movie follows a documentary crew into England’s Epping Forest as they try to uncover the mysterious disappearance of a vlogger almost two decades ago.

“I want to create a film that feels disturbingly real, a story that taps into our collective obsession with missing-person cases and the addictive pull of viral true crime,” said Lyus. “This film dives headfirst into that phenomenon, exploring the volatile collision of grief, spectacle, and belief, asking what happens when the camera stops observing and starts influencing events.”

He continues, “Set within the shadowed depths of Epping Forest, a landscape rich with folklore, disappearances, and centuries of whispered history, the film uses its very real atmosphere to anchor an escalating supernatural mystery. By fusing the immediacy of documentary storytelling with creeping paranormal dread, A Sea of Trees blurs the boundary between fact and myth.”

“This is a story designed to grip true crime devotees, thrill horror fans, and immerse viewers in an experience that feels less like watching a film and more like uncovering something they were never meant to see,” Lyus further previews in an official statement.

Stay tuned for the official trailer for A Sea of Trees.

Looky-loo: Part II – Coming Soon

Director Jason Zink and writer Nolan Mihail return for the sequel to their found footage film Looky-loo, and Looky-loo: Part II debuted this week at Unnamed Footage Festival.

Continuing where the first film left off, the looky-loo killer’s newfound infamy encourages him to push his crimes to further extremes as he documents his sadistic ventures in the upcoming found footage sequel, adding a new metatextual element to the film.

“Expanding his world while ensuring Part II stands firmly on its own, Zink welcomes newcomers into a nightmare of voyeurism, obsession, and the commodification of human suffering,” Unnamed Footage Festival previews. “Looky-loo: Part II doesn’t simply ask you to watch. It asks what it means that you want to.”

Julie Kashmanian, Kansas Bowling (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Kali Malia Michaels (Never Hike Alone 2), and Jessa Flux (Murdercise) star in the horror sequel.

Stay tuned for the Looky-loo: Part 2 official trailer.

Night Terror – Coming Soon

An estimated 30% of people experience at least one sleep paralysis episode within their lifetime. Most resolve themselves over time. Upcoming found footage horror movie Night Terror, however, documents a case that continues to worsen — until it’s too late.

The upcoming found footage horror film is co-directed by Joshua Brucker (The Fairfield County Four) and Hunter Nino from a script by Joshua Brucker.

Night Terror follows Shelly, a young woman plagued by sleep paralysis and night terrors who becomes the subject of a documentary after her call for help catches the attention of two college students. Things take a dark turn, prompting Shelly to seek the help of a team of paranormal investigators to help stop the malevolent force that has consumed her.

Marleigh Arnold, Madelynn Wierda, Berkeley Slightom, and Samuel J. Howard star.

Filmed in the small town of Watseka, Illinois, Night Terror captures the rural feel Brucker grew up with. “When I was a child, my family and I lived on a farm, no neighbors for miles,” Brucker said. “The isolation can be very terrifying, so my goal was to capture that feeling. No one can hear you, no one is going to rescue you if something goes wrong. You’re on your own.”

Watch the trailer for found footage film Night Terror below.

The Last Footprint – Coming Soon

A found footage take on Bigfoot that’s based on purportedly true encounters, The Last Footprint aims to make you think twice before ever heading out into the woods again.

A documentary crew investigates a wave of animal attacks and missing persons in South Carolina. Teaming up with a local hunting party, they soon discover that some legends are true.

“I’ve always loved cryptids, especially the Wendigo and Bigfoot,” writer-director T.J. Robinson tells Bloody Disgusting. “I’ve grown tired of seeing Bigfoot movies treating him as a joke. There are a few exceptions, but I wanted to make Bigfoot scary again.”

Christiaan Voldstad, T.J. Campbell, Hunter Redfern, Daniel John Kearney, Lucas Dunaway, Brandon O’Hanley, and Jon Vira Mundo star in The Last Footprint.

Watch the trailer for Bigfoot movie The Last Footprint below.

Primal Darkness – Coming Soon

A found footage creature feature described as The Blair Witch Project meets Bone Tomahawk, Primal Darkness is expected to be released sometime in Spring 2026.

The film follows Cole Harrington, the host of a popular outdoor series, who sets out to track down the predator responsible for a series of cattle attacks in Nevada. The mystery deepens when he uncovers footage depicting the final moments of two missing university employees.

“With this film, I wanted to push myself into uncomfortable places,” says writer-director Dillon Brown (Tahoe Joe). “Primal Darkness is meant to unsettle you.”

Blake Hyer, Maxwell Golden, Dustin Tamplen, and Michael Rock star.

Watch the trailer for Primal Darkness below.

Heritage – Coming Soon

Heritage has the unique distinction of being the first horror feature from Corsica, an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 18 regions of France.

Also of note, the upcoming found footage folk horror film was shot on a early-2000s camcorder with the goal of immersing viewers in realistic archival material.

Made independently for under €5,000 ($5,800), it was shot in five days with small cast and a six-person crew led by writer-director Baptist Agostini-Croce in his feature debut.

In Heritage, Marie and Daniel return to Corsica to visit their elderly grandfather 15 years after leaving the island. Looking to capture the reunion, they film their trip with the family’s old video camera — but what they uncover is far from what they expected.

Marie Bolbenes, Daniel Di Grazia, Luca Lavallette, and Philippe Ambrosini star. The actors were given significant freedom, helping to reinforce verisimilitude.

Watch the trailer for found footage movie Heritage below.

Frogman Returns – Coming Soon

The legend of the Frogman continues in the upcoming found footage sequel Frogman Returns, once again being directed by Anthony Cousins. In the sequel to 2023’s Frogman, there’s unfinished business in Loveland. Dallas, Amy, and Frogman are back to settle the score.

Nathan Tymoshuk, Chelsey Grant, Natalie Tran and Alexis Alotta star.

In the original Frogman, 12-year-old Dallas captured footage of the mythical Frogman in the summer of 1999, but no one believed it was real. 20 years later, Dallas returns to Loveland, Ohio with his friends, determined to obtain irrefutable proof that the creature exists.

Frogman Returns will continue leaping through the festival circuit here in 2026, while director Anthony Cousins plans to expand the universe with other cryptids in the coming years.

Stay tuned for the Frogman Returns trailer, expected soon.

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Dooba Dooba – Coming Soon

Buzzy found footage horror film Dooba Dooba was originally scheduled for release back in January, but Bloody Disgusting exclusively told you that its release had been pushed back.

A new release date has not yet been set, but distributor Dark Sky Films assures us the delay is “for a good reason” that will be announced soon. Stay tuned for more on Dooba Dooba.

Told through in-home security camera footage, Dooba Dooba is rooted in the analog horror aesthetic popularized by YouTube creators. Here’s the official plot synopsis:

Nearly a decade after her brother’s murder, 16-year-old Monroe still needs a babysitter. Amna comes to babysit Monroe and learns that not only is she being watched by security cameras, but she needs to say ‘dooba dooba’ whenever she moves throughout the house to let Monroe know that it’s her. Amna becomes increasingly unnerved and Monroe increasingly attached.

Amna Vegha, Betsy Sligh, Winston Haynes, Erin O’Meara, and Billy Hulsey star. Ehrland Hollingsworth writes and directs in addition to producing.

Dooba Dooba won Best Feature at Nightmares Film Festival and Best Horror Film at Midwest WeirdFest, with additional honors from Panic Fest, Unnamed Footage Festival, Another Hole in the Head, and Central Florida Film Festival. “The final act of this film is one of the more upsetting things I’ve seen in years,” Matthew Jackson wrote in his review. “This is one of the year’s must-see indie horror releases, a skin-crawling watch that’ll leave you squirming.”

Watch the Dooba Dooba official trailer below.

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The Willowbrook Tapes – Coming Soon

You might have come across a mysterious found footage project titled The Willowbrook Tapes in your travels around your social media feeds the past year, but what exactly is it?

From director Michael Costa, The Willowbrook Tapes is an upcoming found footage horror movie that was filmed on both VHS and Digital, and it’s coming soon.

Most know Willowbrook, Staten Island, as a haunt for restless youth and the rotting shell of Seaview Hospital—fewer speak of what lies beneath.

The silence is shattered by fragments of vanished lives stitched together with panic, ritual, and the shadow of something older than fear…

Erica Crawford, Devin Bonomo, Elyse Robin and Dagmara Bragiel star.

“Honestly, I just wanted to create the kind of horror I was craving—something that really got under my skin in the best way,” director Michael Costa tells Bloody Disgusting. “The stuff hitting theaters wasn’t quite tapping into that strange corner of my brain that loves to be disturbed, surprised, and a little haunted. So I figured—why not make it myself?”

Watch the teaser trailer for The Willowbrook Tapes below.

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Paranormal Activity 8 – In Theaters May 21, 2027

‘Paranormal Activity’ (2007)

The most high profile upcoming found footage horror movie is of course Paranormal Activity 8, the next installment in the biggest found footage franchise of them all.

Ian Tuason (Undertone) will direct the eighth installment in the Paranormal Activity film franchise, and the new footage will be unleashed in theaters on May 21, 2027.

The new installment comes from Paramount and Blumhouse, with James Wan on board to produce alongside Jason Blum and franchise creator/original director Oren Peli.

“I’ve been a huge admirer of Paranormal Activity since the brilliant first movie, with its creeping slow burn and subtle ability to make the unseen terrifying. I’m looking forward to expanding on its legacy and helping shape the next evolution of this scary found-footage franchise,” James Wan told THR when the news recently broke about his involvement.

Stay tuned for much more on Paranormal Activity 8.

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Which of these found footage movies are you excited for?

Comment below and let’s talk!

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Find the answers when the found footage horror film opens in theaters April 10. Tickets are on sale now.

On Halloween 2001, Matthew Nichols and Jordan Reimer went into the forests of northern Vancouver Island near Port Rupert with a VHS camcorder — and vanished without a trace. Their camera was later recovered, but the boys were never found.

Two decades later, Matthew’s sister, Tara, has hired a film crew to document her search for answers.

Markian Tarasiuk makes his directorial debut on the Canadian indie film. He also stars alongside Miranda MacDougall and Ryan Alexander McDonald.

Hunting Matthew Nichols is rated R for “language and some violent content/bloody images.”

Producers Dropshock Pictures and Moon7 Films have partnered with former National Association of Theater Owners president John Fithian’s Attend platform to self-distribute on 1,500 screens nationwide.

“A sneaky, simmering take on the true crime folk horror genre that boils over and becomes truly unnerving,” praised Steven Soderbergh (Contagion, Ocean’s Eleven). “Given the shocks, I would bet audience participation is guaranteed. And stay for the credits.”

Watch the Hunting Matthew Nichols trailer below, where you’ll also see the poster by Creepy Duck Design. You can also attempt to unravel the mystery yourself by exploring the ARG website.

The post ‘Hunting Matthew Nichols’ Trailer Unravels a Found Footage Mystery [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The Australian found footage horror movie incorporates elements of true crime, Celtic mythology, and folk tales associated with rural New South Wales.

When several people inexplicably vanish after wading into a lake, a paranormal investigator, an actor, and their camerawoman set out to document their search for the truth. The investigator suspects this may have something to do with her mother’s disappearance years earlier.

Determined to find answers, their investigation leads them to the mysterious Lake Mungo and brings them face-to-face with an unspeakable evil.

Writer-director Jennifer Van Gessel makes her feature directorial debut on the project, which she also produces via Far From Everything Films.

Lauren Grimson (Beast of War) and Dean Kyrwood (Wyrmwood: Apocalypse) star with Jessica Tovey (“Wolf Creek”), Barbara Bingham (Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan), Rob Flanagan, and Socratis Otto (I, Frankenstein).

“Water Horse is a heart-pounding thriller that immediately engages viewers with its true-crime storytelling,” said Vision Films CEO Lise Romanoff. “Although one may draw their own conclusion, the ending will startle and surprise you.”

Watch Horse is available on VOD today via Vision Films. Watch the trailer below.

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The Australian production follows three high school graduates who become stranded on a remote stretch of highway after a fatal car accident. In a desperate bid to conceal their unintentional crime, they fabricate a found footage film.

19-year-old writer-director Nick Annas makes his feature debut on the project, which explores themes of self-preservation and narrative control through a contemporary youth perspective.

Helen Tuck & Enzo Tedeschi of Deadhouse Films produce. Executive producers are Deanne Weir of WeirAnderson Films and Bobby Romia & Tianna Roberts of the newly formed Atypical Originals.

Crashout is slated to begin production later this month. Blue Finch Films is handling worldwide sales rights, excluding Australia and New Zealand.

Bird can next be seen in the supernatural horror film Leviticus, in theaters June 19 via Neon.

Catherine Laga’aia in Disney’s ‘Moana’

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Find out in A Sea of Trees, a true crime-inspired found footage horror film written and directed by Scott Lyus (Walking Against the Rain).

It follows a documentary crew into England’s Epping Forest as they try to uncover the mysterious disappearance of a vlogger almost two decades ago.

“With A Sea of Trees, I want to create a film that feels disturbingly real, a story that taps into our collective obsession with missing-person cases and the addictive pull of viral true crime,” said Lyus. “This film dives headfirst into that phenomenon, exploring the volatile collision of grief, spectacle, and belief, asking what happens when the camera stops observing and starts influencing events.”

He continued, “Set within the shadowed depths of Epping Forest, a landscape rich with folklore, disappearances, and centuries of whispered history, the film uses its very real atmosphere to anchor an escalating supernatural mystery. By fusing the immediacy of documentary storytelling with creeping paranormal dread, A Sea of Trees blurs the boundary between fact and myth.”

Former Dread Central editor-in-chief Mary Beth McAndrews produces alongside Lyus and Chris Nials under their Crossroad Pictures banner.

“This is a story designed to grip true crime devotees, thrill horror fans, and immerse viewers in an experience that feels less like watching a film and more like uncovering something they were never meant to see,” Lyus added.

Further details are being kept tightly under wraps, but stay tuned for more as we learn it.

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The found footage cryptid horror film is set to screen at Unnamed Footage Festival in San Francisco later this month and Panic Fest in Kansas City next month.

In the sequel to 2023’s Frogman, there’s unfinished business in Loveland, Ohio. Dallas, Amy, and Frogman are back to settle the score.

Nathan Tymoshuk and Chelsey Grant reprise their roles, joined by Natalie Tran and Alexis Alotta.

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Horror’s found footage subgenre is designed to be an intimate portrayal of reality. It wants the audience to forget that they’re watching a movie, and the very best found footage horror movies manage to accomplish this magic trick, if only for brief moments. It’s been rewarding to watch the escalating nature of found footage’s evolution as it’s pushed to ambitious new places that find creative ways to use technology as an immersive storytelling tool. The genre has grown increasingly subversive with ambitious titles like One Cut of the Dead, The Taking of Deborah Logan, “screenlife” films like Unfriended and Searching, or any entry in the V/H/S franchise.

Found footage’s intent may be to create the illusion of reality. However, we’re entering an age where “reality” has become increasingly fluid and obfuscated. Real life is now immediately couched in challenging skepticism due to the power and prevalence of deepfake technology and other forms of media manipulation. These developments present some fascinating opportunities for found footage, especially when the alleged truth is filtered through trusted norms that are meant to be seen as safety nets. 

The most successful found footage movies condition the audience to question what they see and what’s real, but this has now become a necessary component of media dissemination. Bodycam takes advantage of the truth’s murky nature in a subversive horror film that simultaneously provokes a raw wound in society and unleashes a surreal, supernatural threat.

Brandon Christensen‘s latest begins in a harrowing place that presents an uncomfortably real situation. Two police officers, Officer Bryce (Sean Rogerson) and Officer Jackson (Jaime M. Callica), respond to a domestic dispute where an intense situation and a trigger-happy mentality result in a tragic shooting. The cops’ efforts to erase the incriminating bodycam footage suddenly become the least of their problems when a paranormal presence seeks retribution. Bodycam separates itself from other found footage ventures by having something to say on the topic of police brutality and the “ACAB” narrative. It’s an inspired combination of medium and theme.

Christensen has delivered increasingly impressive and ambitious work between Night of the Reaper, Still/Born, and The Puppetman. Bodycam takes the biggest swings yet and kicks off with a harrowing prologue that could work as its own short film or V/H/S/ segment. In fact, the closest reference point is an ahead-of-its-time X-Files episode, “X-Cops,” that’s a COPS crossover. A run-of-the-mill COPS episode suddenly begins to chase after supernatural entities, which is not dissimilar to Bodycam’s genre-blending stylistic structure.

Its most successful moments are born out of its skewed buddy cop dynamic and the contrasting ways in which Bryce and Jackson respond to the film’s catalyst. These officers have clashing points of view that lead to extreme behavior. It’s a powerful examination of grief, responsibility, and ego.

The film transforms into a moving character study as these two officers are put in an impossible situation at two in the morning and then are left to spiral and panic. These officers’ descent into darkness also functions as a commentary on belief, religion, and redemption, while also digging into the generational pain that’s linked to parenthood and legacy. There’s no doubt that Jackosn and Bryce are under attack by actual demonic forces, but they’d still be haunted even if they weren’t.

Bodycam is such an effective subversion of the found footage genre because it gradually eases into progressively paranormal material as it goes on. Some of these setpieces work better and feel more natural than others, but they’re implemented with the right pacing. The film’s second half is shaggier than the first, but it still conjures dread that occasionally feels like the characters have wandered into hell itself. It actually feels like it could be a stealth Silent Hill film with how it taps into the same sense of existential, suffocating anxiety. The audience is bombarded with alarming visuals that feel lost between reality and the surreal.

The film’s central stylistic conceit may not work for everyone, but Bodycam doesn’t overstay its welcome at only 75 minutes long. That being said, it still occasionally grows repetitive and falls into a pattern. The middle section, in particular, gets lost in unnecessary chaos. Bodycam could stand to be 10 minutes tighter and develop a whole new set piece that breaks up the rhythm once it starts to drag on. Nevertheless, there’s a propulsive story that barrels ahead like a bullet from a gun.

Bryce and Jackson’s saga concludes with a captivating and chaotic ending that bookends Christensen’s latest with its strongest material. Bodycam has its share of concessions, and it doesn’t always work. However, the sequences in which everything comes together are sublime. This uncomfortable found footage film finds the perfect story to tell that pushes the audience to live in touchy territory while they’re left to reckon with what they’re seeing and where the truth lies.

The film’s twisted lens creates plausible deniability so that the viewer is just as lost in doubtful uncertainty as the leading players in this paranormal parable. It’s a powerful project that implicates the audience in something that’s much bigger than a found footage horror film, yet some viewers may prefer better scares and storytelling than poignant, reflective messaging.

Bodycam begins streaming on Shudder on Friday, March 13.

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Funnily enough, despite these puzzle-like narratives already sharing quite a few similarities with gaming, few storytellers have opted to fully lean into the interactive elements of ergodic literature. One recent exception happens to be Backwards Tabletop’s viral sensation SPINE – also known as Siderius Plug’s Immortality in Ninety-Nine Endnotes.

A challenging experience that blends the solo thrills of a role-playing gamebook with the multi-layered narrative of novels like Danielewski’s aforementioned opus, SPINE has been slowly spreading across the internet like a haunted chain-letter– and with good reason.

In this unique gamebook, you play/read as a version of yourself with severe grandma issues as you find yourself inheriting a rare book from her collection. Unfortunately, this unexpected “gift” features a dangerous side effect, with the strange tome appearing to trap its readers’ lifeforce in a cursed portrait the further they dive into the story and the stories within the story. As you follow along the main text and the accompanying interactive endnotes (which will force you to manipulate the book itself and even add your own hastily scribbled notes in the margins), you’ll slowly unearth a traumatic family history that threatens your very soul.

While this insanely creative premise would already make SPINE worth reading purely because of the novelty of the setup, what really caught me off guard is “Siderius Plug’s” genuinely heartfelt exploration of intergenerational trauma, from the backstory implying minor abuse by Grandma to the idea that grooming you for a sinister destiny, the book more or less gaslights you into believing that you truly had this terrible and confusing relationship with a mysterious (yet entirely believable) old lady with a supernatural secret.

The interactive portions also boast a ritualistic element that makes them feel like more than mere gimmicks. The endnotes often require permanent alterations to the pages in ways that will have you pondering the very meaning of art, as well as the story’s proposal that immortality can be achieved through writing. Of course, this also means that handling a hard copy of the book is an essential part of the experience, which is why even the official e-book encourages you to print the file out as an ink-friendly booklet (though I’d recommend simply purchasing the print copy and saving yourself the trouble if you’re within mailing distance).

Unlike most interactive storybooks, the “activities” here are so interesting and diverse that your second time around might actually be a more fulfilling experience than the first, especially since you’re encouraged to only look up the endnotes that really speak to you during that initial read-through. I also really appreciate the suggestion to give the book away once you’re done with it, as encountering a pre-read/played edition of SPINE out in the wild sounds like the ideal way to experience such a cryptic yet thought-provoking story where marginalia is part of the appeal.

Unfortunately, the format has its limitations when it comes to proper narrative build-up. The inherent idea of letting readers pick and choose what elements to focus on means that you’ll likely miss essential information during your first read-through, with the author’s attempts to make up for this resulting in some redundant sections meant to help those who skipped previous mentions of certain important story beats.

There’s also the issue of reader immersion, as some of the endnote instructions are so “out there” and inconvenient that they can’t help but remind you that this is more of a game than a real collection of pre-owned literary mysteries. However, I’d argue that putting yourself in the right headspace for this kind of simulated reality solves most of these diegetic problems, especially if you’re already a fan of found footage films and epistolary horror.

This is also why the horror elements of SPINE will haunt some readers for a very long time, while others might find the suggestion that the book is trapping your soul to be silly and uninteresting. It all depends on how you’re willing to approach the material. In my case, I was more than willing to play along with Siderius’ proposed kayfabe, so I found myself thoroughly thrilled by the experience and wanting more.

While some of the more sensitive subject matter concerning grief and abusive family dynamics brought up in the text meant that I had to tackle it a couple of endnotes at a time, really taking my time and absorbing the meaning of each little note and ritual, I feel that SPINE would be just as engaging if I had simply sped through the whole thing throughout the course of a single inspired afternoon.

In the end, what SPINE really gamifies isn’t the detective work involved in deconstructing a multi-layered mystery, but the indescribable joy of willingly jumping into a rabbit hole when you become so engaged with a story that you can no longer separate it from yourself. So if that sounds like the kind of experience you might want to have on a dark and lonely night, I’d highly recommend picking this one up.

Just be careful not to lose yourself among the pages.

SPINE is available now on Mixam as a physical book and on Itch.io as a PDF.

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Found footage horror film Rabisu: Curse of the Demon will be released on VOD April 3 via DeskPop Entertainment. Watch the trailer below.

It follows a rising paranormal investigation team that acts on an anonymous tip, leading them to a remote warehouse rumored to contain the sealed remains of an ancient Assyrian djinn. Once inside, the group encounters a labyrinth of curated mannequins, toys, and costumes — until the lights fail.

When power returns, one member begins exhibiting signs of possession, revealing the entity’s chilling ability to manipulate minds and incite violence. With exits sealed and the building itself seemingly shifting, the team uncovers remnants of a failed prior investigation and races to contain the demon before it destroys them from within.

Hunter King (“The Young and the Restless”), Chase Ramsey (Horizon: An American Saga), Austin Archer (Horizon: An American Saga), Lindsay Foster (Horizon: An American Saga), Tariq Brown, and Wes Brown (“True Blood”) star.

Writer-director Chris Copier makes his feature debut on the project. Douglass Kaufman and Jennifer Ricci produce.

“Rabisu: Curse of the Demon taps into a very old mythology while delivering the kind of relentless, pressure-cooker experience that plays incredibly well on streaming,” said DeskPop president Steve Bulzoni. “Chris Copier has crafted something that’s intense, unsettling, and deeply atmospheric.”

The post ‘Rabisu: Curse of the Demon’ Trailer – Ghost Hunters Unleash a Djinn in Found Footage Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The found footage folk horror film was shot on a early-2000s camcorder with the goal of immersing viewers in realistic archival material.

Made independently for under €5,000 ($5,800), it was shot in five days with small cast and a six-person crew led by writer-director Baptist Agostini-Croce in his feature debut.

In the film, Marie and Daniel return to Corsica to visit their elderly grandfather 15 years after leaving the island. Looking to capture the reunion, they film their trip with the family’s old video camera — but what they uncover is far from what they expected.

“The choice of found footage, built around the idea of archival images, naturally came as theist way to explore memory, something that still connects family members separated by difficult life choices,” said Agostini-Croce. “The story follows two people who feel out of place within their own family and in relation not their island, raising the question of whether Corsica is somehow detained to push its own children away.”

Marie Bolbenes, Daniel Di Grazia, Luca Lavallette, and Philippe Ambrosini star. The actors were given significant freedom, helping to reinforce verisimilitude.

Heritage will premiere at Unnamed Footage Festival in San Francisco on March 26. It will also screen at Light Till Dark in Sweden in March, Toronto Indie Fest in Canada in April, and Fantasy Day Film Festival in Italy in June.

The post ‘Heritage’ Trailer – Corsica’s First Horror Film Is a Found Footage Folk Horror Nightmare [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

If you need proof that the internet is a living, breathing entity, look no further than the ever-evolving collection of viral myths and online folktales that seem to organically spread across the world as if promoted by a singular intelligence. It just so happens that one of these ideas has finally blossomed into popular culture outside the internet, with The Backrooms – a Creepypasta dating all the way back to 2011 – finally being turned into a fully-fledged studio horror film courtesy of A24 and YouTube prodigy Kane Parsons.

In honor of the first teaser promising that the upcoming adaptation is a faithful retelling of the internet legend that conquered the world, we thought that this might be a good moment to refresh readers’ memories about what the Backrooms actually are and where this story originally came from. So strap in because we’re about noclip into layers of reality that the human mind was never meant to comprehend…

The Rise of a New Creepypasta

The original Backrooms.

For the uninitiated, Creepyastas are the horror form of “Copypastas”, a term meant to refer to frequently reposted stories that were “copy-pasted” and shared across numerous forums, websites, and even viral e-mails. As these bite-sized horror yarns became more popular, online communities soon gathered to collect and collaborate on them. The Backrooms mythos was actually the result of a single photograph, which sparked users’ imaginations and led to a form of collaborative fiction.

The original image that began the story was later revealed to be a HobbyTown store under renovation, but the uniform carpets, bizarre wallpaper, and seemingly never-ending hallways somehow lent themselves to storycrafting about a place that looked both utterly alien and eerily familiar at the same time. This is where we get into liminal horror, a topic that we’ve previously covered due to the genre’s inspirations in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (itself a book about an infinitely expanding house that’s larger on the inside).

Though I argued in that article that liminal horror can be traced back to Danielewski’s 2000 novel and possibly even further in media like The Shining (with the genre being best described as architectural terror derived from uncanny spaces), I don’t think anyone can deny that The Backrooms really popularized the concept. Liminal horror became a household name as users attempted to classify this collection of seemingly innocuous and “empty” images that made them feel uncomfortable.

The Backrooms Game

Of course, the Backrooms ball only really started rolling in 2019 when an anonymous 4Chan user answered a repost of the original picture in a thread about disquieting images. This is where we got the now-iconic nano-horror story that serves as the first example of Backrooms lore:

“If you’re not careful and you noclip* out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in.

“God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”

*A term used to describe exiting the designated play-area in videogames in a way that wasn’t intended by the developers.

The Backrooms Leads to New Wave of Liminal Horror

This brief little piece of existential terror was enough to kickstart the liminal horror movement into overdrive, with other users creating their own liminal hellscapes (such as the liminal pools) and some even choosing to expand the existing mythology with additional “levels” to the Backrooms – each featuring their own collection of photoshopped images depicting all manners of monsters and oddities.

The popularity of these stories also led to adaptations in the form of several video games and even a bizarre episode of the American Horror Stories anthology show. However, the biggest addition to the mythology would only come in early 2022 when High Schooler and YouTuber extraordinaire Kane Parsons (then going by the online moniker Kane Pixels) uploaded the iconic first entry in his incredibly popular Backrooms webseries.

The short film served as a perfect introduction to the concept of a terrifying alternate world layered underneath our own, with its found footage elements and retro aesthetics turning the video into something of a viral phenomenon even outside of the Creepypasta community. Parsons wasn’t a one-trick pony, however, with the YouTuber soon expanding on his (ongoing) series and coming up with his own mythology surrounding an institute named Async and the challenges that they face in attempting to study the Backrooms Complex.

With the web-series becoming a worldwide hit, it’s only natural that Hollywood soon came knocking as several studios were interested in bringing Parsons’ vision of liminal terror to the big screen. A24 was ultimately the one to convince the young filmmaker to adapt his ideas into a feature film, though Parsons wisely decided to finish High School before committing to directing such a massive project.

That’s how we get to the long-awaited release of the first trailer for Parsons’ and A24’s Backrooms film. A nightmarish dream come true for fans of liminal horror, the adaptation stars heavyweights like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve and is set to come out in May of this year.

From what we’ve seen from the trailer so far, it looks like the movie will incorporate aspects from the entire history of the Backrooms, not just the series. That’s why I can’t wait to check it out – so long as there’s a way to noclip back out of the experience once the credits roll!

The post What Exactly Are The ‘Backrooms’ and Where Did They Come From? appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The teaser trailer for Night Terror, however, shows a case that continues to worsen — until it’s too late.

The found footage horror film is co-directed by Joshua Brucker (The Fairfield County Four) and Hunter Nino from a script by Brucker.

It follows Shelly, a young woman plagued by sleep paralysis and night terrors who becomes the subject of a documentary after her call for help catches the attention of two college students.

Things take a dark turn, prompting Shelly to seek the help of a team of paranormal investigators to help stop the malevolent force that has consumed her.

Marleigh Arnold, Nino, Madelynn Wierda, Berkeley Slightom, and Samuel J. Howard star.

Filmed in the small town of Watseka, Illinois, Night Terror captures the rural feel Brucker grew up with. “When I was a child, my family and I lived on a farm, no neighbors for miles,” Brucker said. “The isolation can be very terrifying, so my goal was to capture that feeling. No one can hear you, no one is going to rescue you if something goes wrong. You’re on your own.”

Produced by Horror Dadz Productions, Gray Sky Pictures, and N15 Media, Night Terror is coming soon.

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Yet, we still see the occasional brave filmmaker who’s willing to try and turn these overly familiar tropes on their collective heads by either defying audience expectations or delivering uniquely chilling retellings of tried-and-true scares. In the case of Ximena García Lecuona and Eduardo Lecuona’s No Me Sigas (Don’t Follow Me), a Blumhouse-produced haunted apartment thriller from Mexico, the creative duo opted to combine Lovecraftian lore with internet-inspired flair in order to make their debut thriller stand out.

Quietly released last month, No Me Sigas tells the story of up-and-coming influencer Carla (Carla Coronado) and her unhealthy fascination with the paranormal while living in an old apartment building with a dark past. When Carla’s videos about the increasingly freaky supernatural occurrences within her home start going viral, she soon realizes that there’s a dark side to becoming the center of attention.

On the technical side of things, No Me Sigas combines found footage scares with screenlife recordings and traditional filmmaking, with the film constantly jumping from in-world camera sources and smartphone screens to surprisingly atmospheric cinematography.

This unusual mix of styles is likely to divide audiences, as the hybrid format is something of a controversial choice among fans of found footage cinema. Personally, I’m of the opinion that the most important aspect of found footage is viewer immersion, with this immersion often becoming diluted when filmmakers add non-diegetic recordings to the mix (as the combination tends to remind audiences that they’re watching a fictional movie and not a real source of scares caught on tape). And even I have to admit that the Lecuona duo makes the most of this unorthodox blend of techniques when crafting jump-scares that feel like they were lifted straight out of an especially terrifying YouTube compilation of “Real Ghost Sightings”.

It’s really the film’s style that won me over in this regard, with the directors making the most of dilapidated urban environments and moody lighting to make the haunted apartment feel like a living, breathing space regardless of the filming style. The textures are so grimy and the rooms so lived-in that it’s often hard to tell exactly what was crafted by the art department and what was the result of a fortunately gloomy location.

The scares themselves are also pretty memorable, and I especially enjoyed the use of hidden figures in the background of pictures and videos that could only be seen when our main character messed with the image settings after the fact. While some of these scares are ultimately sabotaged by an unfortunate lack of subtlety, the “ghost” appearances are consistently frightening and always make sense within the story.

It’s also during these moments that you really understand why the Lecuonas opted to include found footage elements here in the first place, as the added grit and believability of low-fi video and POV angles add a lot to the scare-factor while also fitting with the subject matter. That being said, I still think it would have been possible (and maybe preferable) to tell this same story as a completely diegetic found footage movie, especially since the flick boasts such a strong lead with a clear motivation for filming.

In fact, Karla Coronado’s performance holds the entire movie together, with her believable take on a flawed yet fascinating influencer grounding the ghosts and goblins in something palpable. You may not always agree with Carla’s obsessive methods or the way she deals with her influencer best friend Sam (charmingly played by Julia Maqueo), but she’s compelling enough of a protagonist that it’s easy to sympathize with her deteriorating mental state even when she tells a story about killing small animals in a microwave.

While genre movies tend to get a bit heavy-handed with their depictions of online culture and characters obsessed with likes and followers, I’d argue that No Me Sigas offers a refreshingly grounded take on the paranormal side of YouTube that won’t make younger viewers groan at any blatant inaccuracies or cringeworthy dialogue.

My only real gripe with the experience is that the Lovecraftian spin on the story (which is mostly explored during the final act) could have benefited from further build-up earlier in the movie. That’s not to say that the twist is ineffective, but the story ideas presented here are so interesting that it’s a shame the film doesn’t explore them further before that gut-wrenching finale.

No Me Sigas may not completely reinvent the haunted house wheel, with the film suffering from its fair share of familiar tropes and the occasional missed narrative opportunity, but there’s enough creativity here to keep even veteran horror hounds entertained. So if you’re in the mood for an urban ghost story with plenty of atmosphere and a charismatic lead, Blumhouse’s first foray into Mexican-based productions should definitely be on your radar!

No Me Sigas is currently available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu.

The post Blumhouse’s Now Streaming ‘No Me Sigas’ Is a Surprisingly Effective Found Footage Hybrid [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Told from the perspective of police body cameras, the found footage horror thriller will stream on March 13 on Shudder and AMC+.

When two police officers show up to investigate a domestic dispute, a startling escalation leads to a tragic accident. Not wanting to be crucified by the public, the officers attempt to cover it up — only to reveal that their body cameras aren’t the only things watching them.

Brandon Christensen (Night of the Reaper, Z) directs from a script he co-wrote with brother Ryan Christensen (Night of the Reaper).

Jaime Callica (Wayward Pines), Sean Rogerson (Grave Encounters), Catherine Lough Haggquist (“Supernatural”), Angel Prater (The Puppetman), and Keegan Connor Tracy (Final Destination 2) star.

Brandon Christensen, Chris Ball, and Kurtis David Harder produce, with Kerry Cooper, Ty Sivertsen, Andy Thompson, James Norrie, and Nina Kolokouri serving as executive producers.

The post ‘Bodycam’ Trailer – Shudder’s New Found Footage Horror Looks Like a Feature-Length ‘V/H/S’ Segment appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The Canadian indie will be released on Digital February 24 via Filmhub. The line between reality and fiction blurs in the trailer below.

The story follows a group of friends who travel for a weekend away to an isolated cabin in the woods to shoot an experimental horror movie. Slowly the film begins to unravel, and we see the true monster appear from the shadows.

Antonia Thomas (“Misfits”), Jeremy Schuetze (Jennifer’s Body), Matt Visser (“Fellow Travelers”), and Jesse Stanley (“Van Helsing”) star.

Schuetze makes his feature directorial debut from a script he co-wrote with Visser. Thomas and Stanley produce, with Visser serving as executive producer.

Anacoreta screened at the Heartland International Film Festival, where it was awarded Best Horror, and the Manchester Film Festival, where it won Best International Feature.

The post ‘Anacoreta’ Trailer – Meta Found Footage Horror Releases Next Week appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The indie film will premiere at the Unnamed Footage Festival in San Francisco next month before streaming exclusively on Found TV beginning April 7.

It follows Cole Harrington, the host of a popular outdoor series, who sets out to track down the predator responsible for a series of cattle attacks in rural Nevada. The mystery deepens when he uncovers footage depicting the final moments of two missing university employees.

Dillon Brown (Tahoe Joe) writes and directs. He also appears in the movie alongside Blake Hyer, Maxwell Golden, Dustin Tamplen, and Michael Rock.

Shot in the Nevada high desert, the production was as intense behind the camera as the story depicted on screen. The shoot was plagued by real-world hazards, including treacherous terrain, extreme conditions, and an on-set accident that resulted in Brown suffered multiple broken bones.

“I’ve always had a love for ‘fun’ horror movies, and that’s why I’ve injected humor into a lot of my previous efforts,” explained Brown. “But with Primal Darkness, I really wanted to tackle a darker subject matter and play it serious, which has resulted in filming my most intense and scary scenes I’ve ever crafted as a filmmaker.”

“Found was built for filmmakers like Dillon,” added Found TV CEO Louie La Vella. “Bringing Primal Darkness to Found as an Original and celebrating his wider creative circle is exactly the kind of partnership we want to keep building.”

The post Found Footage Creature Feature ‘Primal Darkness’ to Premiere at Unnamed Footage Festival, Stream on Found TV appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

That’s why I was curious about Sam Freeman’s experimental debut feature Don’t Look in the Dark, as the marketing behind this micro-budget horror picture promised to deliver a new kind of genre experience even more understated than the original Blair Witch Project. You see, unlike most found footage movies where the recordings are intentional, Don’t Look in the Dark presents us with footage from ordinary cellphones that began recording on their own during a camping trip in New Jersey – complete with black screens and extended moments of eerie ambient sound.

In the finished film, which was envisioned as a scare-driven Rorschach test where no two viewings are the same, we accompany a loving couple on an ill-fated trek through New Jersey’s Pinelands National Reserve (also known as the infamous Pine Barrens). When Maya (Rebi Paganini) sees a mysterious child in the woods, she and Golan (Dennis Puglisi) end up caught in a possibly supernatural web of terror orchestrated by an entity that wants to be seen.

Of course, the story here is little more than an excuse to conduct Freeman’s aesthetic experiment. If you think about it, real found footage tends to be full of holes and unintelligible images/sounds. Most people don’t really focus on filming things as cinematically as possible while under duress, so it makes sense that recordings of a real horrific event would be messy and incomplete.

Unfortunately, while other found footage films have found ways to incorporate different sources of scattered evidence into a larger narrative whole (such as Savageland or even Lake Mungo), Don’t Look in the Dark ultimately falls victim to its own minimalist gimmick.

Credit: Courtesy of Don’t Look In The Dark / Sam Freeman

Despite being marketed as a novel experience, the film doesn’t actually invent anything new. What Freeman is really doing is recontextualizing the existing format of an audio drama as something that can be experienced in theaters, accompanied by the occasional snippets of freaky imagery containing exposition and subliminal scares. While this works to an extent, as we’re immersed in an event that feels like it really happened (at least during the first half of the film), the gimmick simply can’t sustain itself throughout a feature-length story that you’ve seen before in countless other found footage movies. The presentation here may be unusual, but the core of the movie is no different from your garden-variety retread of The Blair Witch Project, to the point where you start to wonder why the filmmakers didn’t also resort to borrowing the mockumentary format in order to further flesh out the story and characters.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some legitimately thrilling moments scattered throughout the film (with many of them owing to the location’s naturally eerie vibes), but it’s hard to justify paying for a ticket to see something with so little effort behind it. That’s why I keep thinking about how much better this footage would have been as part of a larger mockumentary, as this format would have allowed us to really get to know Maya and Golan as people while also skipping the unbearably repetitive segments where the couple despairs about being lost in the woods. Hell, you could even expand on the existing recordings with instant replays and zoom-ins as experts dissect specific frames, Noroi-style.

Alas, the film we ultimately got is much less interested in telling a scary story than setting up a spooky atmosphere. I’m not totally against this style of filmmaking, but it’s hard to endure a feature-length presentation when there’s barely anything onscreen and most of the dialogue can be summed up as our main characters screaming each other’s names.

Ultimately, Don’t Look in the Dark didn’t really work for me, but I’ll concede that I watched the movie at home by myself rather than inside a packed theater filled with horror fans willing to engage with its minimalist gimmick. While I still doubt that the theatrical experience would have added more narrative value to the flick, which was ultimately my biggest gripe, it could be that this is one of those movies that needs to be seen (and heard) on the big screen in order to be properly understood.

So if you happen to be a fan of cinematic Rorschach tests fueled by moments of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it terror, you might enjoy Freeman’s daring debut. However, fans of story-focused found footage productions should probably take the film’s advice and steer clear of the dark while they still can.

Don’t Look in the Dark screened at the New Jersey Film Fest. Release info TBA.

The post ‘Don’t Look in the Dark’ Is a Victim of its Own Found Footage Gimmick [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

But Hollingsworth’s film is about much more than capturing a mood. Yes, the analog horror fans out there will immediately come out to play with this one, and they’ll be satisfied, but the longer you watch this 75-minute found footage nightmare, the more you see both a haunting parable about America and one of the most chilling psychological dramas of the year.

It starts as so many horror films do, with a babysitter arriving at a secluded home for a night of work. The babysitter’s name is Amna (Amna Vegha), and she’s been hired for an overnight stay with Monroe (Betsy Sligh), a 16-year-old girl who, due to her brother’s violent death a decade earlier, suffers from certain post-traumatic tendencies. Monroe keeps mostly to her room, doesn’t trust newcomers, and has developed a routine with her parents, Taylor and Wilson (Erin O’Meara and Winston Haynes), in which they say “Dooba Dooba” when moving through the house, just as a password to let the girl know trusted people are there.

Monroe’s issues are also the reason for the security cameras peppering the home, mounted everywhere from ceilings to the dining room table. Though Monroe’s parents explain that it’s a security blanket for their daughter, on a closed-circuit system, the cameras only add to Amna’s stress. She’s unsettled by this odd house and the somewhat standoffish way the parents interact with her, but she also wants to be a good babysitter, and she wants to honor Monroe’s particular needs in the best way possible. So, when Monroe’s parents leave, Amna makes an effort to reach out to the girl, only to find something much stranger and more frightening lurking in the house.

Going with an analog horror style – the film takes place in 2022, but the security cameras were clearly installed in the house well before that – adds an instant visual identifier to the film, but as with all the best analog horror, it’s more than an aesthetic choice. Yes, Hollingsworth’s cameras pick things up at strange angles, giving us partial faces, deeply unsettling compositions bordering on the abstract expressive, and uncanny close-ups, but that’s not the entire point. As with so much found footage, the goal is also to add a layer of verisimilitude to the proceedings, backed up by the often deliberately awkward dialogue between characters. We are meant to feel stuck in this uncomfortable situation, just as Amna is, and Dooba Dooba achieves that almost immediately through its camera placement and its often never-jangling sound design.

Every room’s tone is different in this house, and together they build into a symphony of buzzes and hums and clicks that keep the viewer constantly on edge. It doesn’t just feel like a stylized choice made by a filmmaker. It feels like we’re watching something forbidden, something that belongs in an evidence locker rather than on a movie screen.

Dooba Dooba is the kind of film that benefits from going in somewhat blind, so I won’t spill too much about the plot. What I will tell you is that it’s no accident that Amna is a woman of color, and Monroe’s family is a trio of white people all named for US presidents. What begins as a chilling tale about a strange family and the secrets they hide soon turns into a piece of jaw-dropping social horror, as Dooba Dooba explores the right that racist conquerors believe they have to the bodies of others.

The final act of this film is one of the more upsetting things I’ve seen in years, for that reason. It starts as House of the Devil and, by the end, morphs into something more akin to Get Out, all within a wonderfully creepy analog aesthetic. This is one of the year’s must-see indie horror releases, a skin-crawling watch that’ll leave you squirming.

Dooba Dooba hits theaters and VOD January 23. 

The post ‘Dooba Dooba’ Review – Security Cam Horror Film is a Slow Burn Nightmare appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The kicker? The 36-minute short film is presented as found footage.

Sanity and reality itself are tested during the interrogation of a murderer with ties to an ancient cult in the trailer below.

Tracking a kidnapper and murderer from France to Louisiana, a young woman and her adopted brother team up with local police and set out into the swamps north of New Orleans. Here the group uncovers much more than they expected, barely succeeding in capturing the fugitive before being forced to flee.

The only surviving record of the event, Dreams of a Dead God is the recovered film recording of the rushed interrogation that occurred shortly after.

“Inspired by the authors appearing in Weird Tales magazine such as Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert Bloch, Dreams of a Dead God represents my own contribution to the cosmic horror mythos,” said writer-director Jim Weter.

Cameron Crawford, Chris Steinmetz, Larshay Watson, Ryan Gilliam, and Jerry Kimble star.

Dreams of a Dead God will have its world premiere at the Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival in Lafayette, LA, on January 24.

The post ‘Dreams of a Dead God’ Trailer – H.P. Lovecraft Goes Found Footage in Cosmic Horror Short appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Could it be the next found footage breakout? Find out when the film hits select theaters and Digital on January 23.

Nearly a decade after her brother’s murder, 16-year-old Monroe still needs a babysitter. Amna comes to babysit Monroe and learns that not only is she being watched by security cameras, but she needs to say ‘dooba dooba’ whenever she moves throughout the house to let Monroe know that it’s her.

The night goes on, and Amna becomes increasingly unnerved and Monroe increasingly attached.

Amna Vegha, Betsy Sligh, Winston Haynes, Erin O’Meara, and Billy Hulsey star.

Ehrland Hollingsworth writes and directs in addition to producing alongside Vegha, Sligh, and Josh Harris.

Dooba Dooba won Best Feature at Nightmares Film Festival and Best Horror Film at Midwest WeirdFest, with additional honors from Panic Fest, Unnamed Footage Festival, Another Hole in the Head, and Central Florida Film Festival.

The post ‘Dooba Dooba’ Trailer – Unsettling Found Footage Horror Releases This Month appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Shot entirely on in-home security cameras, the found footage horror film opens in select theaters and on Digital January 23 via Dark Sky Films.

Nearly a decade after her brother’s murder, 16-year-old Monroe still needs a babysitter. Amna comes to babysit Monroe and learns that not only is she being watched by security cameras, but she needs to say ‘dooba dooba’ whenever she moves throughout the house to let Monroe know that it’s her.

The night goes on, and Amna becomes increasingly unnerved and Monroe increasingly attached.

Amna Vegha, Betsy Sligh, Winston Haynes, Erin O’Meara, and Billy Hulsey star.

Ehrland Hollingsworth writes and directs in addition to producing alongside Sligh, Vegha, and Josh Harris.

Dooba Dooba won Best Overall Feature at Nightmares Film Festival and Best Horror Film at Midwest WeirdFest, with additional honors from Panic Fest, Unnamed Footage Festival, Another Hole in the Head, and Central Florida Film Festival.

The post ‘Dooba Dooba’ Poster Turns Housebound Horrors Upside Down appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Dark Sky Films releases Dooba Dooba on January 23, 2026.

The found footage horror movie follows “Amna as she arrives for what she assumes will be a typical babysitting gig. She realizes she’s very mistaken when she learns that Monroe, the girl she’s babysitting, is not only sixteen, but suffers from severe anxiety after having watched her brother get murdered when she was a child. Monroe’s behavior becomes increasingly unbearable until Amna questions whether she wants to stay, not realizing she has no choice.”

Ehrland Hollingsworth writes and directs. 

Amna Vegha, Betsy Sligh, Winston Haynes, Erin O’Meara, and Billy Hulsey star. Producers include Michelle Sligh, Amna Vegha, Hollingsworth, and Josh Harris.

Dooba Dooba was shot entirely on an in-home security camera and draws on elements of analog horror popularized on YouTube.

Check out the new teaser below.

The post Babysitting Gets Uncomfortable in Found Footage ‘Dooba Dooba’ Teaser appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

To close out the first quarter of this century, the Halloweenies hit the archives and revisit all the horror movies released between 2000 to 2025. After careful consideration, the gang has made their lists, checked them twice, and given them to Santa Gerber to collate them all into a bonafide top 25. Did your favorites make the cut?

Find out by streaming the first of two episodes below. This installment covers their picks from No. 25 to No. 11, and as you’ll see, their choices are as varied as they’re scary. Let us know what we’ve missed so far in the comments below, and return next Monday when we close out the entire run with the 10 best slices to see what else survived the cutting room floor.

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and RSS. New to the Halloweenies? Catch up with the gang by revisiting their essential episodes on past franchises such as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Scream, The Evil Dead, Chucky, Alien, and the Universal Monsters. Next year? Hellraiser!

You can also become a member of their Patreon, The Rewind, for hilariously irreverent commentaries (e.g. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Re-Animator, Darkman), one-off deep dives on your favorite rentals (e.g. Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Manhunter), and even spinoffs like their recent run Fortune & Glory: An Indiana Jones Podcast.

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The last few weeks have been dominated by older texts: from 1975’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (listen) to Misery on its 35th anniversary (listen) to the 1977 religious chiller The Sentinel (listen). And while 2012 is quickly creeping up on 15 years, there’s still a lot that feels modern about Josh Trank‘s found footage superhero film, Chronicle.

In the Max Landis-scripted film (ugh), three teenage boys – Andrew (Dane DeHaan), his cousin Matt (Alex Russell), and Matt’s popular friend Steve (Michael B. Jordan) – discover an alien artefact buried in the ground. After touching it, they gain mysterious telekinetic powers that quickly (re)shape their destinies.

But as their abilities grow, so too does their power to destroy. As Matt reconnects with childhood girlfriend Casey (Ashley Hinshaw), Andrew’s troubled relationship with his abusive father (Michael Kelly) prompts the fragile young man to turn down a dark and dangerous path.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.

Episode 364: Chronicle (2012)

Touch that alien rock and film yourself doing *everything* because we are talking about Josh Trank’s superhero (villain?) film, Chronicle (2012).

This found footage film features strong performances by Dane DeHaan and a charismatic Michael B. Jordan, as well as a clever explanation for the usual “why/how are they filming everything” issue.

Plus: shitty teen boys, aborted sequels, and Trace’s worst performance on a game to date!

Cross out Chronicle!

Coming Up Next: We’re celebrating one of Trace’s fave childhood gateway horror titles, Jumanji (1995) for its 30th anniversary.

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 446 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Hannibal Season 2, Episodes 11-13, Paul Feig’s The Housemaid, sequels Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 and Wake Up Dead Man and, to tie in with that last one, an audio commentary on the original Knives Out.

And as a special holiday treat, we’re also dropping our audio commentary from this year’s Soho Horror fest on Scream 3.

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Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty, the surprise-release fourth entry, spotlights returning local Dolly Broadbent (Laurie Felix Bass), who brings news that her husband has recently recovered key evidence after a fire on Majesty Ranch, her inherited family property. The sequel is ultimately a tension-laden investigation of Dolly’s family history, curious characters in the region, and the connective evidence presented in the three previous films, now pointing to a high-strangeness conspiracy decades in the making.

Following the cliffhanger ending from the third installment, Firewatch (2024), Majesty kicks off with confirmation that Dolly recovered a box of documents and media belonging to her father, Beau Hayden (John Davis Walker, giving a notably endearing vocal performance). With the help of the returning High Desert documentary team — including reporter Gal Roberts (Suziey Block), private eye Bill Salerno (David Morales), and filmmaker Daniel Prince (Marich) — Dolly shares the discovered evidence in an attempt to make sense of the years of inexplicable occurrences on her family homestead. Via eerie childhood photos, transcripts of covert communications, and analog footage of Beau progressively growing more obsessed with the area’s strange entities, Majesty ultimately tells a story of a family that never had a choice but to accept the presence of terrifying and unknown forces in their lives.

Structurally, Marich maintains the horror mockumentary format in Majesty, with talking head interviews intercut with recovered footage from Beau’s evidence archive. Despite being the fourth trip to the high desert, Marich continues to serve up well-crafted scares that play with viewer expectations and found footage tropes in ways that still feel fresh. To this end, the focus on Beau’s vintage film footage, seemingly captured around the late ’70s, is especially chilling this go-round.

The grainy, often handheld sequences in which Beau attempts to commune with the phenomenon in and around his vast property are anxiety-inducing and unsettling, recalling some of the scariest sequences in the franchise to date (e.g., the basement sequences in Minerva). As Beau’s footage is set in a time when technology and means of staying connected with others were far more limited, Majesty‘s set pieces are tinged with a heavy air of isolation and paranoia, effectively reflecting Beau’s devolving mental state.

The visual style in some of the found footage sequences in Majesty is at times reminiscent of Scott Derrickson’s grainy home video footage from Sinister (2012) or the cold, isolated tone of more recent liminal horror films, like Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink (2022). Even still, Marich’s style feels unique to him, and he doesn’t rely on just one way to scare his audience. As a found footage director, cinematographer, and editor, Marich continues to adeptly execute multiple nail-biting sequences and surprising scares with a confidence and polish that are often lacking in the broader found footage archive. It’s worth noting that if you didn’t warm up to Marich’s more measured approach to scares and fake-outs in 2024’s Firewatch, you’ll likely find Majesty to be refreshing with its more confronting scare sequences.

Fans will no doubt welcome the return of familiar faces like Block and Morales, who again serve as narrative guides to the film as they attempt to make sense of each new piece introduced in this high-strangeness puzzle. Their presence is certainly welcome as anchors to this series, though at this point, I’d appreciate a chance to see these characters become more directly engaged in the strangeness in the planned finale and not just provide exposition.

Elsewhere, Bass’s turn as the salt-of-the-earth Dolly is a notable highlight. Her performance manages to hit a sweet spot that’s often difficult to access for found footage actors — the space where naturalism and emotional nuance are so in harmony that you forget you’re actually watching a performance. Her tender reading of the final letter her mother wrote to her father is especially moving, further highlighting that this series is most effective when we experience not just the terrifying moments, but also the far-reaching impacts the phenomenon has had on the people caught in its web.

Ultimately, what makes Majesty a successful series entry, and found footage films in general, is its rooting in the Hayden family’s story. In the previous films, High Desert victims like Gary Hinge (Eric Mencis), Minerva Sound (Solveig Helene), and Oscar Mendoza (Marco Antonio Parra) have often been curious investigators or unwitting passers-through seeking new opportunities. They were outsiders drawn to the area, whether by chance or the allure of dark tourism, but the high desert wasn’t their home. Yet in Majesty, the tragic realization is that Dolly’s family has always been inexorably tied to the phenomenon.

As ranch living is often underscored by family pride and a drive to leave something of substance behind for future generations, it’s clear that the Hayden family was always going to be in a double bind when faced with highly strange threats from forces beyond their understanding. Escaping the high desert would likely provide relief from years of conspiratorial or otherworldly attacks, but at what cost? Through this lens, Beau Hayden’s story, and therefore Dolly’s story, is one of generational curses and the fight to salvage one’s legacy and achieve peace after years of inescapable chaos.

Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty ultimately brings a strong emotional grounding to the overarching series mystery and refreshing scare sequences that will leave viewers on edge. It’s difficult to explicitly discuss the series’s lore at this point without getting into the weeds, which is admittedly a major barrier to entry for new viewers hoping to see what the buzz is about. High strangeness nerds may have some theories about where things are going with Marich’s upcoming finale, but there are still many unanswered questions, and anything seems possible in the Horror in the High Desert world at this point.

Suffice it to say, Majesty won’t make a lot of sense until you’ve done your homework with the first three entries. Still, if you can appreciate an evolving mystery in the vein of high strangeness favorites like “Hellier” (2019-present), Banshee Chapter (2013), or The Mothman Prophecies (2002), Marich’s world is a captivating escape into the unknown, and Majesty is a welcome addition to the High Desert saga.

Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty is now available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.

The post ‘Horror in the High Desert 4’ Review – Chilling Vintage Footage Amps Up the Scares in New Sequel appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Found footage and mockumentary horror films remain wildly polarizing and they’re subgenres where only the most successful or maligned releases seem to get any attention. For some horror audiences, there’s just too much of a buy-in and suspension of disbelief to truly get lost in found footage storytelling. The subgenre’s “simplicity” and budgetary freedom means that there are endless found footage films that are completely disposable and don’t have anything new to say or contribute. However, there’s been a growing trend of reflexive found footage and mockumentary horror films, like Found Footage 3D, Something in the Dirt, Butterfly Kisses, and Antrum, that strive to use the subgenre’s storytelling aesthetic to dig deeper into the human condition.

There are many opportunities for clever subversions where the horror film’s lo-fi presentation style feeds into the narrative and themes in order to create something even more powerful. Man Finds Tape is brave, brutal filmmaking that’s an extremely encouraging case of how to breathe new life into evergreen ideas so that they feel more relevant than ever. 

Man Finds Tape shares several things in common with these postmodern found footage predecessors, but it’s undeniably its own entity here. The hybrid horror film explores the rich area of how amateur cryptid photography, and by extension found footage horror and true crime documentaries, force the audience to engage in an exercise where they seek to scrutinize and poke holes in these incredible ideas. There’s a natural tendency to criticize, be skeptical, and assume that found footage and true crime are meant to exploit, rather than educate.

It’s an effective state of mind for Man Finds Tape to set up as the audience acclimates to this world and what they’re about to experience. Viewers should be prepared to rebel and have doubt over what they see and the validity of the film’s narrators. Man Finds Tape is a remarkable debut feature film by Paul Gandersman and Peter S. Hall that takes the audience down one of 2025’s most surprising and disturbing rabbit holes.

A scene from MAN FINDS TAPE, a Magnet release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.

Man Finds Tape seems deceptively simple when it begins, the likes of which make its labyrinthine evolution hit that much harder once the movie really lets loose. The movie masquerades as a faux documentary on a cryptid-like creepypasta creature who has preyed upon a small Texas town, Larkin, for decades. There’s an investigative drive to this homegrown horror story that’s presented by a brother and sister duo, Lynn and Lucas Page (Kelsey Pribilski, William Magnuson), who share a very personal connection to what is afoot in Larkin. The film tackles some big, heady ideas, but none of this works if Lucas and Lynn don’t connect with the audience.

Pribilski and Magnuson provide a naturalistic quality to these siblings whose love for each other quickly becomes the heart of the film and what propels the narrative forward. Lucas is frail, discarded, and really doesn’t have anyone in his life other than Lynn. Their bond is deeply rewarding and makes sure that Man Finds Tape always has a real, raw human element in addition to its percolating dread.

This is a horror film that taps into such a fascinating and terrifying concept wherein a social phenomena overtakes Larkin and collectively impairs judgment. It’s an eerie scenario that’s akin to the psychologically challenging Paranoia Agent in terms of how mob mentality and a shared psychosis, a la folie à deux, can infect a whole community. Man Finds Tape plays out like a very strong X-Files episode, which is meant with the highest of praise. In fact, there is an X-Files episode from the post-Mulder years that tackles essentially the exact same subject matter.

John Gholson in MAN FINDS TAPE, a Magnet release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.

Man Finds Tape still puts its own original stamp on the idea that leans into technology’s artificial eye. One of the film’s several talking heads announces, “We’re the culmination of our choices.” It’s a message that’s applicable to Lucas, but it also speaks to the tragic butterfly effect that spreads through Larkin like a fracture in glass that increasingly applies pressure before it suddenly shatters.

The growing Larkin conspiracy is constructed out of a slew of mixed media that includes surveillance footage, 911 calls, Zoom chats, YouTube videos, and Reddit threads, which help feed into the idea that this monster is an inescapable threat that’s omnipresent. It’s not just an anomaly that was seen once in an isolated incident. There’s a growing social footprint to this monster as it continues to evolve, whether it’s real or not, like a tulpa that gains greater power as it’s increasingly discussed. There’s a haunting feedback loop to all this that injects unease from the jump.

This amounts to a slick presentation package, complete with testimonial talking heads, as if this were a docuseries that you’d stumble upon while browsing Netflix. Man Finds Tape commits to the bit here and embraces these familiar aesthetics to help sell the audience on all this. This also allows the film to operate with a minimalist, janky quality that’s expected of a docuseries of this nature. This works well, even when the film gets a little too comfortable in this mode and occasionally coasts.

However, there’s a deeper layer to everything, particularly in regards to the people who have put this documentary-within-a-documentary together, that makes all this considerably more interesting. Some of the most interesting modern found footage horror movies are the ones that successfully get their audience to be skeptical of what they’re seeing and the way in which it’s being presented to them. There’s a strong story at the core of Man Finds Tape regarding Larkin’s cryptic creepypasta creation, but the context around it and why all this is being documented is the more compelling narrative thread.

A scene from MAN FINDS TAPE, a Magnet Release. Photo courtesy Magnet Releasing.

There are admittedly a few presentation and storytelling elements that are strained. There’s some dissonance regarding whether this fictitious documentary would be televised, traded independently, or if it’s still in the process of being made. However, this is a minor hiccup that doesn’t really impede the experience. Man Finds Tape also gets a little too expository in the final act, which becomes a stark contrast to how the majority of the film shows restraint and trusts its audience. This hardly wrecks the movie’s ending, but it does become an awkward interruption that might pull the viewer out of the film to some extent. Nevertheless, this is another small quibble. These sequences are still filled with some really upsetting images that increasingly push the audience’s limits until things are too far gone and it’s impossible to retreat.

To this point, Man Finds Tape showcases some genuinely disturbing visuals, which can be essential for these types of movies. It presents several videos that feel cursed and like footage that the audience shouldn’t be watching. It’s an element that’s so hard to authentically accomplish and Man Finds Tape repeatedly pulls this off. There’s a lot to chew on as the larger mystery unfurls. The movie’s most intense moments get close to the same level of spectacle as The Poughkeepsie Tapes’ freefloating dread, which is no small feat. Man Finds Tape creates a world in which it feels like anything is possible and that damnation is inevitable. The movie absolutely earns its powerful final setpiece. 

Man Finds Tape is a beautiful modern horror story that reflects the frantic paranoia of the internet’s many conspiracy theory rabbit holes that fuel hundreds of hours of virtual armchair detective work. One tangent segues into another as this increasingly intricate story metastasizes and mutates. It’s such a satisfying slow burn that culminates in something special that’s worth the tropes and theatrics. It’s an ambitious hybrid horror film that provokes and reinforces that seeing isn’t just believing, but that it’s an exercise that can be as fatal as it is informative.

Man Finds Tape releases in select theaters and VOD platforms on December 5, 2025

Editor’s Note: This Tribeca review was originally published on June 8, 2025.

The post ‘Man Finds Tape’ Is Fearless Found Footage That Seeks to Disrupt [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“I think you need to consider more carefully the brand you love and how you represent them.”

The Creep Tapes‘ first season felt like such a monkey’s paw situation of “be careful what you wish for.” After years of waiting for a Creep 3, a six-episode TV series was announced. A full season of television seemed like it would be better suited to tackle the franchise’s subject matter and cover more ground than what would be possible in a singular film. While this is technically true, The Creep Tapes largely spun its wheels and became an unfortunately repetitive experience that was already reaching diminishing returns by the end of the season. The season fell into a very formulaic rut, especially when it’s clear that Mark Duplass’ creepy serial killer will be the one who makes it away alive. It should come as no surprise that the one episode that seemed to be the most successful was the one that slightly broke from form and dug deeper into the serial killer’s family life. 

There’s still plenty to enjoy in The Creep Tapes’ first season, but it did feel like it failed to realize its full potential and wasn’t the return to form that the franchise’s fans were hoping for. Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice seem to have listened to audiences, or felt the same way themselves, about season one. Season two is such a satisfying course correction, yet it still faces some of the same limitations of episodic storytelling that were faced in season one. However, this second season works much harder to create some genuinely inspired situations to put its chameleon-like killer in, so that there’s a lot more to be surprised about. Season two learns from its mistakes to deliver a tenser and more terrifying series that bodes well for the already-confirmed season three. It’s a found footage triumph that smooths out the first season’s playback issues.

The series remains a fascinating deconstruction of the found footage genre, its obsession with unreliable narrators, and the inherently artificial nature of filmmaking in general. This was some of the first season’s most rewarding material, and these new episodes dig even deeper. The Creep Tapes demonstrates these points through harrowing setpieces and a revolving door of victims that take bigger risks with its sickening serial killer story. Season two creates some really clever scenarios that subvert standard serial killer and found footage archetypes. This season even finds space for a twisted Christmas horror story.

One storyline in particular really allows Duplass and Brice to unpack the idea of hollow imitations that embrace style over substance, which can be plentiful in not just the found footage genre, but the many remakes and reboots that flood cinemas. It becomes an enlightening lesson in authenticity, which is the perfect way to kickstart the season and to prove to the audience that it’s not the very thing that it’s criticizing. It’s as if The Creep Tapes wants to get in there first and remake itself before someone else attempts to do so and risks diluting the brand. This season goes one step further and exhibits outright apathy for those who strive for less than excellence and taint horror through mediocrity.

Season two immediately leaves a stronger impression than the first season through brilliant setups that include the filming of a house-flipping TV pilot, an emergency therapy session, and even a brush with a copycat killer who steals “Joseph’s” shtick. To this point, the second season also takes advantage of the series’ non-linear nature and just how long “Joseph” has been claiming lives. 

There’s an especially strong episode that features a Saw-like setup that’s full of sadistic puzzles and a very different version of “Joseph” who works through his “torture porn phase.” The series makes sure to properly unpack this serial killer’s evolution beyond his erratic mental state. Much like in the first season, the finale features a cathartic homecoming that provides illuminating details about the series‘ murderous enigma. It’s an effective approach that will likely carry over into season three as this triptych of family trauma.

There are more engaging and unique premises that are explored in season two. These new episodes also throw repeated curveballs at Duplass’ serial killer that force him to change course and go off script. This is the perfect approach for the second season of a show that was seen as too formulaic. These new episodes keep the audience guessing and unprepared for what is to come, but this also highlights “Joseph’s” improvisation skills as he continues to reinvent himself as the situation sees fit. 

Every episode goes off the rails in a completely different way, which all reinforces the season’s larger themes of authenticity. People will watch The Creep Tapes for its vicious violence and frightening setups. Its character work and examination of a fractured psyche and the complicated feelings that overwhelm “Joseph” and what drives his actions become more interesting than any cutthroat chase sequence.

It becomes a tour de force showpiece for Duplass, who consistently rises to the occasion. The Creep Tapes is also a vehicle that’s designed to be a two-hander, which means that there’s just as much significance on the actors who play against Duplass’ killer. The series hasn’t reached the point where these guest actors are given award-winning material to work with, but they’re all very solid performances. Duplass has plenty of experience with anthology storytelling that celebrates these guest actors. Nobody disappoints in season two, which includes guests like David Dastmalchian, Timm Sharp, Robert Longstreet, Diego Josef, and Katie Aselton, the latter of whom is perfectly cast in a role that should be very satisfying for long-time Duplass followers. They’re all excellent foils, especially Dastmalchian, who does the perfect Duplass imitation and ostensibly remakes the first Creep.

The Creep Tapes’ second season is a solid upgrade from its freshman year. These six new episodes channel the tension and terror of the first season, but through surprising and subversive storytelling that seeks to challenge found footage and horror as a whole, in addition to The Creep Tapes property. Season two works hard to remain true to the series’ core and still manages to tell original stories that push Duplass’ serial killer — and the audience — out of their comfort zones. It includes some of the franchise’s greatest heights. These episodes leave the audience optimistic and excited for another batch of blood-soaked character studies and tone poems that are masterminded by one of modern horror’s greatest monsters. 

The Creep Tapes Season 2 premieres on Shudder on November 14, 2025.

The post ‘The Creep Tapes’ Season 2 Is More Evil and Unpredictable Than Before [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

As a life-long fan of Found Footage, I’ve learned that the genre is usually at its best when divorced from the over-the-top narratives that we tend to see in regular movies. I mean, even when we’re aware that these are Hollywood productions with scripts and actors, it’s that 1% chance that this could be real that makes these films so interesting. That’s why I’d describe the ideal Found Footage movie as a hoax created with the purpose of telling a good story.

With that in mind, we’ve decided to compile a list highlighting six of the most convincing Found Footage movies for your viewing pleasure! After all, in a genre chock-full of stories about ghosts, ghouls, and cryptids, it’s the more down-to-earth scares that tend to stand out.

For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining “convincing movies” as productions that obviously cared about authenticity and overall realism (i.e., no fake digital filters or impossible camera angles). That being said, this is by no means a comprehensive list of every single realistic Found Footage movie, so don’t forget to comment below with your own believable favorites.

With that out of the way, onto the list!

6. Zero Day (2003)

We’ve already featured Zero Day on a previous list highlighting True Crime horror movies, but how could we avoid revisiting one of the most disturbing Found Footage flicks ever made? An extremely realistic depiction of teenagers falling down a violent rabbit hole in the months leading up to a school shooting, Ben Coccio’s debut film manages to terrify without feeling exploitative.

While we do eventually get to see a portion of the climactic shooting, it’s really our main duo’s journey towards the massacre that makes the experience so disturbing. In fact, the film looks so much like a real video diary that you might find yourself feeling guilty for watching it, which I think is exactly the point.

5. Exhibit A (2007)

I was lucky enough to stumble onto Dom Rotheroe’s Exhibit A in the back of a seedy old video store back in the day, and I’m really glad that I did. A slow-burning psychological thriller that gets downright disturbing by the end of the experience, I find it baffling that this British gem isn’t better known among Found Footage fans.

Of course, the obscure nature of the film might even work in its favor, as you’ll definitely enjoy the story a lot more if you go in blind. Just rest assured that even seemingly pleasant moments shared by the King family are building up to a chillingly memorable finale.

4. Out There Halloween Mega-Tape (2022)

The WNUF Halloween Special has become a staple of seasonal movie marathons in my household, and I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one who revisits this retro passion project whenever spooky season rolls around. Unfortunately, the movie’s follow-up doesn’t get the same amount of love simply because it’s a little harder to track down. This is a real shame, as I’d argue that 2022’s Out There Halloween Mega-Tape is just as believable as its predecessor!

A faithfully recreated slice of 90s TV programming (complete with period-accurate commercials), the Mega-Tape is a bootleg masterpiece that you’re sure to enjoy if you liked the filmmakers’ previous retro endeavor. And much like WNUF, some segments of the tape are so realistic that you may find yourself briefly wondering where they found all this absurd footage!

3. Lake Mungo (2009)

Depending on who you ask, Joel Anderson’s Lake Mungo is either one of the scariest films ever made or one of the most boring movies in the entire Found Footage genre. While I can understand why some people don’t appreciate this subtle approach to existential terror, I’d also argue that it’s precisely the film’s realism that makes it so effective.

Think of it this way: if this were a real paranormal documentary, it would easily be considered the scariest one in existence. The problem is that people usually compare it to other horror flicks instead of what Anderson is actually attempting to emulate. Of course, the only way to know if you agree with this assessment or not is by actually watching this slow-burning gem!

2. The Blackwell Ghost (2017)

If Found Footage movies are at their best when telling minimalist stories about down-to-earth perils, it makes sense that indie filmmaker Turner Clay was able to turn a simple mystery into a bona fide cinematic universe. While I’m of the opinion that later entries in the series are a little too over-the-top to be scary, the original Blackwell Ghost remains an eerily convincing favorite.

Not only is Clay a natural-born showman, being able to extract tension from details that would just be background noise in any other movie, but you get the feeling that he’s having just as much fun making these movies as we are watching them. If you like this first film, I’d also recommend checking out its first batch of sequels.

1. Banned From Broadcast: Saiko! The Large Family (2009)

The most obscure film on this list by a wide margin, Saiko! is a feature-length spin-off of Japan’s Banned from Broadcast television series. However, you don’t need to have seen any episodes of the show in order to appreciate Toshikazu Nagae’s puzzle-like mockumentary – and I’d actually recommend that you go into this one knowing as little about it as possible!

In the film, Canadian documentarian Veronica Addison travels to Japan in order to introduce us to the unusually large Ura family. While the Uras initially seem normal enough, strange events and subtle context clues steadily unveil an eerie conspiracy surrounding the disappearance of the family’s previous patriarch. I won’t get into any more details in order to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that this flick is so realistic that you might not even notice that it’s a horror movie the first time you watch it.

Hell, the film’s IMDB page even lists Addison as the director instead of Nagae, proving that the filmmakers knew exactly what they were doing when crafting this grounded little thriller.

The post Six of the Most Convincing Found Footage Horror Movies appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Shelby Oaks follows Mia (Camille Sullivan), a woman who has been obsessively searching for her younger sister Riley (Sarah Durn) for more than a decade. The missing woman was the host of a popular YouTube channel called “Paranormal Paranoids” and disappeared along with her three co-hosts while filming in the titular derelict town.

While the murdered bodies of the other three hosts were eventually discovered, Mia lacks closure because Riley’s disappearance remains unsolved. As her search is captured via a documentary crew, Mia’s marriage to Robert (Brendan Sexton III) begins to buckle under the burden of her obsession. Things only get worse when a new lead thrusts Mia back into investigative mode with renewed – and dangerous – vigour. 

Shelby Oaks played at a variety of festivals last year, including Fantasia Film Festival (where I reviewed it for Bloody Disgusting). Since then, however, the Kickstarter-funded film was acquired for distribution by Neon, picked up a producing credit from Mike Flanagan, and received $1M from Neon for reshoots to help realize Stuckmann’s vision. 

Having watched the new cut, here’s what is different in the version now available to audiences. Warning: Some spoilers to follow.

Face Peel

The film opens with text explaining the circumstances of Riley’s disappearance and the context for how the footage was recovered. We see the young blonde cowering in a cabin bedroom before venturing off-camera into the hall.

Later, this sequence is repeated, but Mia has discovered another tape (courtesy of Charlie Talbert’s Wilson Miles), which includes additional footage that features more graphic shots of Riley’s dead co-hosts. In the original cut of the film, these murders were only briefly glimpsed, and the amount of blood and gore was limited. 

In the new cut, there’s a whole new sequence featuring the film’s supernatural protagonist Tarion (played by Derek Mears, as well as David Greathouse and Jon Michael Simpson) ripping the face off one of the men. The camera lingers on the gory practical effect, which is so forceful that the body is lifted off the floor before falling back to the ground…minus a face.

In a post-screening Q&A, Stuckmann explained that reshoots for this sequence alone took a half day to complete (from set-up to clean-up to resetting for additional takes). That was a luxury (both time and money) that the production simply didn’t have the first time around.

Hellhound Action

Part of the film’s mythology includes hellhounds that protect Tarion and its progeny. While there were dogs in the festival cut of the film, Stuckmann elaborated that the additional funds allowed them to bring the dogs back for more action. Fun fact: the hounds are real, not CGI; they come from Sweden; and they were trained to perform very specific actions in the film.

Mia first spots a dog eying her when she’s out on the porch late at night, watching old videos of her sister. Later, she’s confronted by a dog at the prison outside Wilson Miles’ jail cell. It’s possible that this brief scene has been touched up because the effect of the monster’s hand resting on the dog looks better. Sullivan’s hair is also styled differently in select shots from this sequence, which matches her hair from the reshot climax (see below).

The biggest new addition, however, is the film’s final sequence. After Riley has been rescued from Norma (Robin Bartlett) ‘s cottage, Mia and Riley fight over Riley’s demon seed baby. In the climax, Riley plummets through the cracked bedroom window and, as Mia watches and screams from above, her sister’s still alive body is attacked by *multiple* hellhounds who rip her to shreds. 

My memory is slightly hazy about how much of this carnage was visible in the original cut, but in this new version, Stuckmann treats us to close-up shots of the dogs ripping at Riley’s face and body. Much like the face rip from earlier in the film, this gore is much more explicit, and the camera lingers on the glorious practical FX. 

Sequel Potential?

It appears that these reshoots have helped the modestly budgeted film, which has garnered mostly positive reviews from critics (67% on Rotten Tomatoes). Intriguingly, if audiences embrace the film, Stuckmann has some ideas on how to expand Shelby Oaks. In the post-screening Q&A, he confessed that he has not one, but TWO more ideas set in this world.

The first is a sequel in the vein of the original Halloween 2 that would immediately follow the events of the first film as Mia is forced to explain the brutal death of her sister.

The second pitch is a prequel that would explore Norma’s story, including how she came to worship Tarion, gave birth to Wilson Miles, and became a rapist recluse in the woods.

Shelby Oaks is now playing in theaters.

The post ‘Shelby Oaks’ $1M Reshoots: What Changed From The Festival Cut to the Version Now In Theaters? appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“You wanted to do this.”
“Yeah, because I believe.”

The found footage genre, when properly embraced, can truly be magical. It has the ability to pull the audience in and remove typical cinematic barriers in order to blur the lines between fantasy and reality. This fringe form of filmmaking has become increasingly popular due to it being a format that justifies a low budget and a greater opportunity to drum up a sizable return on investment. This leads to a number of found footage horror films that don’t necessarily need to be told in this manner. One of the biggest reasons that found footage horror falls apart is because it abuses the format and uses it as an excuse for minimalist filmmaking that just wouldn’t cut it in any other form of movie. These should be stories that necessitate the found footage angle, rather than forcing these limitations on a story that doesn’t warrant it. 

Found footage is frequently turned to as a way to better understand and make sense of something, which is usually some supernatural event, urban legend, or unexplainable mystery. Found footage is also an opportunity to look inward and try to make sense of the protagonist and why they’re wielding the camera and looking for answers. This becomes an even more powerful journey when the found footage at hand is heavily composed of home videos and it attempts to unpack one’s own family, which is the case in Tinsman Road. 

Home videos are meant to preserve memories and snapshots of the past. They’re an attempt to own something that’s inherently intangible. Found footage horror is built on many of the same principles, which can make it a fascinating tool when an ordinary family is filtered through this macabre lens. Tinsman Road is an intimate, emotional story that seeks answers over a missing family member. It’s a found footage film that cuts to the core of something very raw and real, yet problematic pacing and a lack of scares often make Tinsman Road feel like a dead end.

Robbie Banfitch first made waves in the indie horror scene with 2023’s The Outwaters, a surrealist found footage feature that genuinely disrupted and provoked the experimental genre. Banfitch returns to found footage in Tinsman Road, but it’s very different from its predecessor. Tinsman Road is less interested in subversion and is a more emotionally mature endeavor. It’s not a scarier film, per se, but it’s arguably the better made movie. A stripped down story attempts to get answers on Robbie’s missing sister, Noelle, and how her disappearance has affected his mother, Leslie (played by Banfitch’s real-life mother, Leslie Banfitch). Tinsman Road repeatedly asks what happens after death and manages to answer this question in its own way. It engages in fleeting discussions about angels and spirits, which can be enlightening territory to explore in horror. This meditation on faith and belief becomes the backbone to Tinsman Road.

Robbie’s investigation for answers about his sister turns into a haunting homecoming that taps into the pain and grief of confronting the past. Tinsman Road understands that there’s a necessity for closure and moving on, both for lingering spirits and those that they leave behind. Leslie survives her missing daughter, but in many ways she’s just as much of a ghost who is resigned to haunting her old life. Robbie’s journey is slow and methodical. It reinforces the power of community and how local tragedies can have ripple effects and become urban legends that reflect the collective weight of a singular human life. Staccato edits between these emotional moments mirror the dissonance in Robbie and Leslie’s lives. Much like the editing, their lives have been abrasively interrupted and plagued with gaps.

Tinsman Road is full of raw, real performances, especially from Leslie, which become the film’s secret weapon. It’s paramount that these characters come across as authentic. Tinsman Road strips all the excess away and offers up such a minimalist, barebones production. It’s truly lo-fi and personal to the point that the cast is all made up of Banfitch’s family and friends. It contributes to a natural chemistry that perpetually shines through. Tinsman Road isn’t afraid to let its actors act. There are long, patient shots that linger on characters while they cry, open up, and lose themselves. It’s a remarkably heavy movie that steeps everything in this melancholy fog before anything sinister occurs.

The horrors and tension in Tinsman Road come from the pain of reality and existence. This creates an intense dread that builds over the course of the film as the audience waits for the other shoe to drop. Unfortunately, there are prolonged periods when Tinsman Road bleeds tension rather than amplifies it. There’s a terror that’s cultivated through absence and the unknown, which gives Tinsman Road many opportunities to play with expectations. The film is most comfortable when it keeps the audience in the dark. That being said, there’s a singular set piece that’s genuinely terrifying and the one moment of true horror. Whether it’s enough for the audience and worth this overwrought journey is another story.

Tinsman Road sticks the landing and accomplishes what it seeks out to do. It just might not be enough for the majority of its audience. Robbie Banfitch creates a film that’s considerably more tender and delicate than his past works. Tinsman Road’s emotional throughline is very powerful and likely to resonate with anyone who prematurely lost a family member. These grounded, lived-in performances are easily the film’s greatest asset. The story’s setpieces and development just need the same level of craftsmanship, rather than getting lost in a shaggy edit. Tricks that worked in The Outwaters are less successful here and Banfitch’s shine may be starting to wear off if he doesn’t start to change up his routine. Tinsman Road stays true to itself and ends with a massive bang – literally – but it’s found footage that’s more lost than found.

Tinsman Road screened at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival; release info TBD.

Screenshot

The post ‘Tinsman Road’ Is Flawed Found Footage That Trades Frights For Feelings [BHFF Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Horror is designed to get under the audience’s skin and challenge societal norms. Perspective and point of view are incredibly powerful tools for horror that can creatively reinvent tired and overdone stories. Haunted house and slasher films are some of the oldest and most reliable horror subgenres, with the former being around for well over a century. Accordingly, it’s always exciting when something original and post-modern can rejuvenate particular horror classics. These movies can effortlessly eschew trope-filled subgenres to tell new stories that play into the audience’s existing expectations, only to then do something radically different with the form. In doing so, these subversive and stylized supernatural and slasher films utilize unconventional points of view to enhance the horror experience and make the viewer feel vulnerable in unprecedented ways. There’s the potential for this to trigger a new movement in horror that could bring forward a radical style of storytelling. Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy, a horror film that’s told through a dog’s perspective, is the most recent example of this. However, Steven Soderbergh’s Presence and Chris Nash’s In A Violent Nature also reinforce this exciting horror renaissance. 

‘Good Boy’

There’s a common superstition that animals are especially susceptible to supernatural influence. Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy becomes a fascinating deconstruction of this theory, rather than coming across as a random and unjustified stylistic experiment. The story that Good Boy tells isn’t exactly remarkable – a man is plagued by supernatural forces after he and his dog move into a new home – but what makes it stand out is the way in which it’s told. By presenting this horror story from a dog’s perspective, Leonberg creates a uniquely disorienting encounter that’s filtered through a creature that perpetually senses peril, yet struggles to make sense of what’s happening. One of Good Boy’s most inspired stylistic choices involves the decision to obscure the face of Indy’s owner so that incident feels even more detached from reality and the standard horror experience.

A human who is caught in a horror film at least has the resources to understand the nature of ghosts and supernatural scenarios. A dog does not have these same frames of reference and media comprehension skills. A dog instead experiences everything through heightened senses, which turn a stressful situation into something that’s almost unbearable for Good Boy’s Indy. There are plenty of horror films that explore the dissolution of an unbreakable bond as loved ones are torn apart. Good Boy endlessly heightens this concept through the conduit of a dog who operates as this eternally loyal companion who does whatever he can to protect his partner. In many ways, Good Boy is a greater risk than Presence and In A Violent Nature. The latter two films are still subversive horror movies, albeit stories that can still rely upon the familiarity of human characters and creative cinematography. Good Boy lives and dies on how well its lead animal sells this story. Indy rises to the occasion, which is surely why he’s the dog who headlines the movie. Good Boy’s risk seems to pay off, although there will still be audiences who are inevitably left unmoved by this “final canine’s” performance.

‘Good Boy’

Steven Soderbergh is a filmmaker who has been directing for four decades and is a name that is practically synonymous with subversion, due to his sophomore film, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which redefined the medium itself. He’s one of cinema’s most exciting innovators and someone who has bucked up against convention through movies like Solaris, Full Frontal, The Girlfriend Experience, and more recent offerings like Unsane and Kimi. Presence, at the surface level, doesn’t seem to be anything extraordinary. Much like Good Boy, the film looks at perturbing paranormal activity that begins when the Payne family moves into their new suburban home. However, Soderbergh is a filmmaker who has disrupted the medium and industry throughout his entire career, so a movie like Presence is incredibly fitting as a late-game project for the unconventional storyteller. 

Presence depicts the Payne family’s plight as they begin to believe that their home is haunted. Presence presents a fairly run-of-the-mill ghost story, but where it excels is that it’s told through the spectre’s perspective. The film’s floaty and dream-like camerawork – which Soderbergh is also responsible for – doubles as the poltergeist’s POV. Presence never feels indulgent in this regard, and it uses its subversive idea to deliver some particularly inspired cinematography. Presence doesn’t feel like the average haunted house story because it’s made up of long, lingering sequences that fade in and out of existence, like a ghost. Presence is more of a visual spectacle than Good Boy and In A Violent Nature, even though they all create unique shots through their original approaches to storytelling. 

‘Presence’

Haunted house stories often rely on jump scares, yet Presence creates horror and tension by the growing unease that each sequence generates until the film’s suffocating finale. Presence is an intricate tightrope walk in tone, pacing, and tension, but it pulls it off and rejuvenates the horror subgenre in the process. Presence filters its story through not just a ghost, but a lost spirit who shares a connection to the family that lives in the house that it’s haunting. The film is just as much an emotional family drama as it is a poltergeist picture. Much like with In A Violent Nature and Good Boy, Presence finds the perfect story for its revolutionary point of view so that the cinematography and visual storytelling match — and strengthen — the movie’s themes.

While Good Boy and Presence use perspective to redefine haunted house stories, In A Violent Nature uses this idea to deconstruct slasher cinema. Horror offers endless versatility when it comes to its slasher icons, but masked murderers like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers have certainly become iconic subgenre archetypes. Horror directors have been making slasher films for over 50 years, and director Chris Nash’s In A Violent Nature wisely pulls from the genre’s biggest cultural touchstones in order to establish a framework and foundation that’s second nature to the audience before it subverts and destroys. 

‘In a Violent Nature’

In A Violent Nature seems as if it will play out like any nature-based slasher movie, only for it to be told entirely from the killer’s perspective, who just so happens to be a resurrected undead slaughter savant. In A Violent Nature gets a lot of mileage out of some of its more obvious subversions, such as shifting the slasher narrative from the prey’s perspective to that of the cold, calculating killer. However, in the case of In A Violent Nature, the killer is an inscrutable, stoic monster who communicates with murder. This allows the movie to play with existing horror constructs, like tension, but through completely original ways. 

The experience has less to do with which sympathetic characters will survive and how they will outsmart the killer, but rather how to make the audience become complicit in this deranged spirit’s deadly ways. There’s a level of unprecedented intimacy with the film’s killer – Johnny (Ry Barrett) – that’s previously been explored in other subversive horror deconstructions, such as Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. In A Violent Nature the audience with the killer, but in this case, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they understand this force of nature any better. It’s a detached, callous experience that evokes the rawness of the early 2000s’ aforementioned “torture porn” fascination where uncomfortable stories would become even more disturbing. 

The way in which In A Violent Nature depicts its vicious kills with a detached impartiality is reminiscent of the unbiased eye of a nature documentary. Nature documentaries play with the audience’s perceptions of safety and danger, predator and prey, which was explicitly part of Nash’s agenda with this experiment. In A Violent Nature makes the audience become a fly on the wall of this deranged experience, yet in a manner that’s unique from how Good Boy or Presence taps into comparable feelings. It’s interesting to see how the “nature documentary” style that’s been cited by Nash has evolved to the point where this concept has become explicit. For instance, Blumhouse’s Nightmares of Nature documentary series turns the natural world into a “serial killer’s” playground. Nightmares of Nature uses perspective to blur these lines. It’s a fascinating companion piece to Nash’s blood-soaked slasher.

‘In a Violent Nature’

This trio of films teases a future for the haunted house and slasher subgenres where their survival depends upon their ability to make tired ideas feel reinvigorated and original again. However, this becomes a problem because the innovation seen in these movies is finite. You can’t have a dozen horror movies from a dog’s perspective. These ideas work because they’re creative, unique, and justify their stylized nature, but endlessly replicating this formula dooms it to become as hollow and pointless as anything else. This is all to say, what’s going on in these movies can’t be copied 1:1, but it can still function as a framework that seeks to disrupt these tried and true horror staples through perspectives that are genuinely fresh, yet still relatable. 

It’s worth pointing out that the latest installment in the Predator franchise, Predator: Badlands, is also embracing this subversive experimentation to some degree. For the first time, a Predator film will be told through the perspective of a Predator — Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) — who operates as the film’s protagonist, rather than a threat. An entire Predator movie that’s told through the Yautjan perspective, without subtitles, would be the truest expression of this recent POV trend. Predator: Badlands seems like it’s slightly restraining itself in this regard through the addition of a Weyland-Yutani synth android (Elle Fanning) who works alongside Dek. Nevertheless, Predator: Badlands continues to reinforce this exciting change of pace in horror, let alone in a mainstream IP.

(L-R) Thia (Elle Fanning) and Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) in 20th Century Studios’ PREDATOR: BADLANDS film. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Curiously, there have also been a handful of films that explore the collective impact of a single object as it moves between different individuals. 2010’s Changing Hands demonstrates this with a gun and the different people who possess it, but the idea has also been explored through a car in 1964’s The Yellow Rolls-Royce and a counterfeit franc in Robert Bresson’s L’Argent. These aren’t horror movies by any stretch, but it’s possible that the experimentation that’s begun in In A Violent Nature, Presence, and Good Boy could carry over to slasher films that are told through the “perspective” of a weapon, like a machete.

Another potentially unexpected side effect of this trend is that the success and creativity of these high-concept horror films make it harder for something more conventional, like a standard Poltergeist, Amityville Horror, or even Paranormal Activity haunted house story, to succeed. These types of projects, while all innovative in their own ways, may now seem even more generic in comparison to these cutting-edge takes on the subgenre. Alternatively, this rejuvenating trend could see the snake eating its own tail and attempt to revive Poltergeist or Amityville through unique POV-based projects that are set from the spirit’s perspective. It’s no different than when the found-footage subgenre was consuming every horror franchise and nearly made its way into Friday the 13th. What films like Presence, Good Boy, and In A Violent Nature are doing with POV isn’t quite “the new found-footage,” at least not yet, but it has the power to make an equally profound impact if it’s properly utilized.

The post Dogs, Spirits and Slashers: The Power Of POV In New Wave Post-Modern Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Films like Someone’s Watching Me (1978), Fright Night (1985), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Disturbia (2007), and The Rental (2020) have underscored this ongoing fascination for decades, with the narrative and stylistic approaches to voyeuristic genre stories also evolving in their own right.

In the last half-century, the found footage subgenre has uniquely established itself as a medium through which voyeuristic stories can take on an even more effective tone of realism. This is especially true in the subset of found footage films told through the first-person perspective of a killer. Entries like The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), the Creep franchise (2014-present), Hangman (2015), and Be My Cat: A Film for Anne (2015) fall into this category, placing consumer-grade cameras directly in the hands of killers as they document their methodical stalking and murders in real-time. Without the sheen and predictability of traditional studio filmmaking approaches, found footage films framed from a villain’s perspective can be especially unsettling in execution–and the disjointed footage, amateur camerawork, and unpredictable narrative turns typical of the subgenre certainly deepen the sense of realistic dread.

Jason Zink‘s Looky-loo takes a page from these particular approaches to found footage horror and voyeurism alike. Written by Nolan Mihail, Looky-loo is a story told solely from the first-person perspective of an amateur filmmaker (credited as ‘Looky-loo,’ Zink himself) who spends his time following and filming women around his city, seemingly in the name of art. However, when the filmmaker sets his eyes on Courtney (Courtney Gray), his voyeuristic curiosity takes a dark turn and he begins murdering his subjects, all in the hope of making Courtney his twisted film’s leading lady.

Following a successful festival run, Looky-loo has since seen a physical release via Scream Team Releasing. After previously only being available as a VOD rental, the film is now officially streaming for all members on FOUND TV, a burgeoning streaming service launched in 2024 that’s solely dedicated to found footage horror and its related subgenres. “Looky-Loo takes you straight into the mind of a monster — and we’re obsessed,” says Louid La Vella, CEO of FOUND TV. “It’s the kind of unsettling film our fans love on FOUND.”

When compared to the aforementioned killer-centric found footage films, Looky-loo takes a notably measured approach. We initially spend time with our killer while he explores his surroundings, pains over the title of his film, and admires the mannequin keeping him company in his work area. When Looky-loo begins casing homes, moving in closer to peer inside even while residents are present, it’s an exercise that feels routine. Zink’s camera work remains steady, suggesting that this killer is calm, seasoned, and confident in his endeavor. This is in large part what makes Looky-loo‘s early voyeuristic scenes effective; the titular killer goes about his practices of spying on unsuspecting residents having phone conversations, doing laundry, watching TV, and showering as if it were just another day at the office.

There’s a minimalist quality to Looky-loo that is echoed not only in the filming style, but also its limited dialogue and relatively simple plot structure. Collectively, Looky-loo himself spends much of the total runtime building up to each murder, methodically stalking his would-be prey and immersing himself in their private spaces before making his move. The murder scenes themselves thus feel unexpectedly brief for a movie of this ilk, yet this isn’t necessarily a negative critique. There’s a sense that this decision is intentional on Zink’s part, as it serves to highlight just how unsettling the precursory steps Looky-loo takes when plotting to close in on victims actually are.

One scene in particular finds the killer casually making and eating a sandwich after breaking into a home, and then seemingly biding his time for hours in a closet as he waits for the resident’s return. Another sees him watching Courtney and her boyfriend share a private living room dance through a window after an apparent date night, just steps away from the couple. It’s these scenes of anonymous, quiet violation that ultimately make Looky-loo so effectively unsettling in execution. It’s difficult to walk away from the film without a paranoid sense that perhaps those fears of being watched while at home alone aren’t always unfounded.

The film’s final moments set up the next chapter of Looky-loo’s killing spree, but based on Zink’s reports, audiences shouldn’t expect more of the same. “[Looky-loo] is a demanding watch, in my opinion,” Zink stated in a recent interview with A&B Horror Movies. “We probably start at a 0 or 1 in part one, and we ratchet all the way up to maybe a 7 or an 8. And part two begins at a 10.” While there is no release date yet slated for the sequel at the time of publication, Zink promises that it will be worth the wait. “What we withhold in part one… we reward the audience for sticking with us in part two.”

Looky-loo is now streaming on FOUND TV and available for purchase on Blu-ray.

The post Found Footage Horror ‘Looky-loo’ Is a Voyeuristic Nightmare — And There’s More to Come appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

That’s why I was intrigued by the trailer for Michael Hurst’s eerie love-letter to late-night TV, Transmission. As someone who used to routinely spend the night watching multiple different channels at once in the old-school equivalent of managing multiple browser tabs on your computer, I was fascinated by the idea of a Found Footage movie using several self-contained vignettes to tell a larger horror narrative.

In the film (which was completed back in 2023 but is only getting released now due to the usual difficulties that plague indie distribution), we follow a mysterious block of late-night programming from the point of view of an unidentified old man as he channel-surfs through the unraveling of a supernatural conspiracy in real time. This is conveyed to us through a series of interconnected scenes from retro movies, breaking news broadcasts and televised documentaries, with the footage having apparently been sourced from what I assume are the old man’s VHS recordings from that particular night.

From sci-fi epics to raunchy ’70s comedies and even the occasional horror host intermission, Transmission’s clever premise allows the film to indulge a wide array of filmmaking styles in order to explore a genuinely compelling meta-narrative about a director who went too far in search of genre thrills. However, while a good script can elevate even the cheapest of productions, things can get a little messy when you’re dealing with a format that relies heavily on authenticity.

Contrary to popular belief, good Found Footage is usually harder to produce than traditional movies (even if it’s often cheaper), as modern audiences instinctively recognize what “real” footage looks like. This means that filmmakers need to be extra careful in order to make their faux media look convincing. Unfortunately for Transmission, low production value combined with sup-par acting and questionable creative decisions keep the experience from ever feeling real enough to be scary.

From cheap digital filters meant to emulate vintage recordings to the annoying use of high-quality stock footage that doesn’t match the rest of the film (as well as modern CGI effects in what’s implied to be a period setting), it’s hard to get invested when the film makes no effort to suspend your disbelief. I usually wouldn’t fret about these budget-related blemishes, but when the entire premise hinges on the movie successfully emulating a specific form of real-world media, it’s hard to justify all of these cut corners. This is especially egregious since many of these issues could have been prevented by either writing a less-ambitious screenplay or investing more time in the post-production process.

However, if you aren’t as much of a Found Footage purist as I am and can put believability aside, there’s still a lot to like about the multilayered world of Transmission. On its own, the script is surprisingly solid, with influences from Robert W. Chambers, films like Antrum and even John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns. I also love the subtle humor peppered throughout the in-universe movies and shows – as well as the recurring hints that the over-arching narrative is a puzzle meant to be assembled piece by piece.

It’s also quite refreshing to see genre veteran Felissa Rose in a more down-to-earth role as a distressed news anchor, though Vernon Wells really steals the show with his intense performance as a mysterious filmmaker willing to sacrifice everything for his art. It’s just a shame that their appearances are so brief (and often relegated to green-screen compositing), though that might also be a budget issue.

When Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan claimed that “the medium is the message,” he was referring to the fact that content and presentation are two sides of the same coin. This is especially true when it comes to Found Footage filmmaking, as the peculiarities of attempting to replicate real world recordings in fiction are precisely what make this the perfect genre to tell stories about media itself and how it affects our lives. Refusing to engage with the visual side of these meta elements misses the point of the genre entirely, and that’s why Transmission doesn’t work despite boasting its fair share of eerie moments.

However, while the film wasn’t exactly a homerun, I can’t help but respect Hurst’s lofty ambitions for its story. The screenplay features quite a few genuinely interesting ideas that could have been better executed in a larger production, and the director clearly has a knack for combining several different narrative threads into a cohesive experience. In fact, I’d like to see Hurst experiment with Found Footage again in the future – especially if he’s given a larger budget to bring his vision to life. In the meantime, a VHS rerelease of Transmission marketed as a bootleg recording might actually fix many of the film’s aesthetic issues, so I’d recommend that readers keep an eye on this one just in case the distributor ever decides to release a more authentic cut of the movie.

The post Channel Surfing Turns Spooky in ‘Transmission’ [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“I already made one shitty horror film in my lifetime. I don’t need to make another.”

Filmmaking has become increasingly accessible and technology has reached a point where someone can deliver exceptional visuals and tell a complete story with something that was filmed on a phone. Not every story lends itself to a low-budget and small-scale setup. However, these elements are not just accepted, but expected in many found footage horror films. There’s something naturally enticing about a low-stakes, low-budget found footage film that’s presented as a social media personality’s standard content. There can be such powerful payoff when these types of movies work, yet it’s become more common to ride on the subgenre’s coattails than to genuinely innovate and do something different with it. 

It’s so easy to mess up this type of movie or deliver diminishing returns. For every Paranormal Activity, The Poughkeepsie Tapes, or Host, there are even more misfires like Bad Ben, Grave Encounters, and The Devil Inside. Kris Collins’ (aka social media personality KallMeKris) directorial debut has glimpses of promise despite its lackluster execution. House on Eden unfortunately proves to be more of the same and it doesn’t do nearly enough with its overdone setup.

House on Eden follows a paranormal investigation team – Kris (Kris Collins), Celina (Celina Myers), and Jay (Jason-Christopher Mayer) – who are ready to tackle their creepiest case yet – a house in the woods that’s been abandoned for years and said to be a hotbed for a rogue and wicked spirit. This is a simple enough premise that doesn’t overcomplicate things. Within the first few minutes, House on Eden has done all the necessary legwork to propel this story forward. Kris, Celina, and Jay fearlessly forge forward, yet it feels as if the movie as a whole has lost its compass and lacks direction.

The film opens on an apprehensive shot of a venus flytrap that functions as a symbolic portent of what’s to come and the dangers that hide in plain sight. There’s nuance during these opening moments that the film fails to sustain once it gets moving. What follows is a super-minimalist DIY production that essentially just has a cast of three. House on Eden understands how crucial it is for the audience to connect with its trio of investigators. Too many films of this nature fall apart before they even get started because their characters aren’t empathetic. There’s a lot of downtime with Kris, Celina, and Jay so that the audience understands their quirks and chemistry before they’re fighting for their lives. A recurring source of tension between Kris and Celina is how Kris seems more concerned about the project and her footage than she is about her team. It’s a plausible source of conflict for these characters, but it’s arguably the most hackneyed source of drama between these two. It’s too bad that none of these characters seem to work in the way that House on Eden intends. They’re an insufferable sort with real Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 vibes, and not in a good way.

Danger begins to tighten its grip around this trio of paranormal investigators when they each begin to exhibit unexplainable and erratic behavior. This is meant to be the big turning point in this saga. It’s another half-baked device that’s creepy in theory, but fails to do enough with the concept. Similarly, there are times when House on Eden has the opportunity to feature scary aberrations, only to instead defer to corrupt footage and blank screens where the absence of answers is meant to be scarier than any actual revelations. The film’s second-half really coasts on the titular location’s mundane-but-off-putting set design and frantic camerawork that’s meant to create a sense of fear, while the actual frightening content is few and far between, and left to the film’s closing minutes.

House on Eden’s most effective scene involves Kris, Celina, and Jay making contact with a spirit, but even this does the bare minimum with this reliable trope. It builds to a more creative version of the same idea that effectively turns to innocuous items like cat balls and music boxes for unnerving tension. This scratches at the surface of something creative and interesting that’s reminiscent of one of the eerier and more iconic scenes from out of the original Conjuring. More moments like this could have turned House on Eden into a worthwhile experience. There’s just not enough meat on these bones. There’s some evocative imagery during the film’s final ten minutes, even though there’s not a strong enough backstory to tie all this together. And by this point, it’s too little, too late.

There’s something to be said for Collins not biting off more than she can chew. She picks a scope and stylistic storytelling tool that can be very generous to debut feature films. But House on Eden routinely plays it safe and amounts to a forgettable film that lacks much of an identity. The found footage and influencer angle is a perspective that Collins understands and connects with on a personal level, there’s just too much monotony and not enough terror on display to justify House on Eden‘s rent.

‘House on Eden’ is exclusively in theaters on July 25.

The post ‘House on Eden’ Is Frustrating Found Footage That Should Have Stayed Lost [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

However, in some rare cases, if a video looks convincing enough, people start to question if it might indeed be a genuine case of real-life Found Footage.

That’s what was on my mind when I first heard about the rumors surrounding Whiteface, an internet mystery that began as a collection of bizarre found in unexpected locations across the United States. And as a lover of both Found Footage and emergent media (some of you may remember my short-lived Viral Horrors column from years back), I couldn’t help but dive further into this online rabbit-hole.

Join me as we investigate the mysteries of Whiteface.

WHAT ARE THE FACTS?

On June 23, Reddit User mrslythe made a strange post on the r/VHS subreddit. In this post, he describes a mysterious VHS tape that he supposedly found while thrifting for old videos in Orlando, Florida. The tape was labeled as “Whiteface” in permanent marker and contained footage of a seemingly deranged man in pale face paint recording himself and the city around him while stalking and harassing unsuspecting victims.

After his initial post asking if anyone had ever heard of this movie before, mrslythe was soon bombarded with comments questioning the eerie nature of the recordings. Soon enough, that original post was also updated with replies from other people who had found identical tapes in at least seven different cities. One user in Nashville found his copy in a bar called Vinyl Tap, with this tape having been wrapped in a plastic bag and covered in fake blood in order to add to the creep-factor. Another user found his copy in an art gallery in Bristol, with more popping up in Hollywood and even Burbank.

In total, seven tapes have been recovered so far, and while there’s little information about who exactly is dropping them off, there are anecdotal stories about groups of professional-looking “agents” being caught on security cameras as they leave these videos in seemingly random locations.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before someone digitized the contents of Whiteface and posted it to YouTube. In the full video (which spans a whopping three hours and forty-two minutes), we follow the aforementioned videographer as he stalks the city streets during what appears to be a psychotic episode, with long stretches of monotonous scenery being interspersed with the occasional moment of gruesome violence – including severed fingers and power-drills to the forehead. Of course, it’s more of a mood piece than anything else, with both the runtime and repetitive nature of some shots giving the video an air of unedited authenticity.

As the uploader (Happy Happy Best Life Video Club) noted in his summary, the footage appears to have been shot a few months ago judging from the Minecraft Movie advertisements that appear in the background. Certain landmarks also suggest that the project was produced in the Los Angeles area. And while all the evidence so far points to this being a fictional experimental film, there’s still no trace of it on either IMDb or Letterboxd.

THE VERDICT

It’s still early to be 100% sure, but Whiteface doesn’t seem to be promoting any larger project or even engaging with common ARG elements. For starters, the creator(s) of Whiteface don’t appear to be backed by a larger studio or marketing firm, and while an experimental Found Footage video isn’t that far-fetched of an idea for a campaign meant to promote a spooky horror flick (think of how DreamWorks planted unlabeled VHS tapes on college campuses in order to promote The Ring back in 2002), a nearly four-hour-long epic feels like marketing overkill.

The video also doesn’t seem to tie back to any other websites or online puzzles like you see in most ARGs, with almost all of the discussion being limited to Reddit and the curious users who originally found the tapes – all of whom have active accounts that were almost certainly not created solely for the purpose of promoting Whiteface.

Additionally, the fact that the one of the tapes was found covered in fake blood, not to mention the violent contents of the video itself, suggest that whoever is behind this stunt is a storyteller attempting to unsettle viewers with the use of fictional horror tropes. In fact, the “real Found Footage” theory comes tumbling down once you realize that Whiteface himself has already been identified as the LA-based actor Frank Mosley. And as one Redditor pointed out, the footage also bares a striking resemblance to video clips featured in an art exhibition at Bristol’s HollerHouse gallery back in mid-June.

That’s why I find it unlikely that the tape is anything more than an elaborate art project.

Regardless, the puzzling nature of Whiteface makes me think that the unusual method of distribution is actually a crucial part of the project’s narrative, with the artist(s) behind the film wanting their audience to examine both the footage and the circumstances of its existence as they search for answers.

This doesn’t mean that the entire thing is fake, however. There are a handful of sequences where the movie appears to blend scripted events with real interactions in much the same way as other experimental productions like Matt Johnson’s Nirvanna the Band the Show or even previous online endeavors like the controversial Surveillance Camera Man – a detail that might very well explain why it’s become such a huge phenomenon online.

While there’s still no solid confirmation about the real nature of the footage from either its creators or the legion of Reddit sleuths looking into its origins, I have a feeling that we’ll be hearing more about Whiteface very soon. However, even if we don’t, I think that this peculiar little bit of Found Footage has already proven to be one of the most interesting horror projects of the past few years.

And while we wait for answers, why don’t you watch the video for yourself and let us know what you think about it in the comments below.

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