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7 Underrated Found Footage Horror Movies That Deserve to Become Cult Classics
Found footage horror movies are a popular horror movie sub-genre, but some get less acclaim than they should. The popularity of found footage horror movies is eminently easy to grasp from both an audience and a studio perspective. For audiences, found footage is the ultimate embodiment of a POV narrative, placing them in the protagonist’s shoes as the scares intensify and they flee their monstrous pursuer, with the found footage format making it all feel that much more real for viewers. For studios, found footage movies can be produced for near pennies on the dollar, with even a “flop” by what would be normal box office standards earning a brisk profit due to the inherently cheap nature of found footage productions.
The found footage format has produced many popular horror movie hits and even cult classics, including The Blair Witch Project, the Paranormal Activity movies, and the V/H/S franchise. Other found footage movies have been greeted with a more lackluster reception, though quite a few of these are better than they have gotten credit for. Here are seven of the most underrated found footage horror movies.
7) Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
The Paranormal Activity franchise reached its arguable (and quantifiably financial) peak with 2011’s Paranormal Activity 3, but the series still had some solid scares in its toolbox, the most effective of which were found in the 2014 spin-off Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. Set after the high school graduation of Jesse (Andrew Jacobs), The Marked Ones follows its young protagonist as he seemingly gains supernatural abilities after an occult ritual with his friends, only to gradually come to realize he is being transformed into a demonic entity. The Marked Ones does some effective world-building with the return of Paranormal Activity 2‘s Ali Rey (Molly Ephraim), who has become a demonology expert since he own family’s hauntings, with the movie also delivering plenty of spooky atmosphere and found footage jump scares, including an unexpected blast from the past in its final scene.
6) Apollo 18
2011’s Apollo 18 boldly went where no found footage movie had gone before with a spooky tale on the top secret last mission to the moon by NASA. Apollo 18 is a splendid exercise in paranoia as astronauts Ben Anderson (Warren Christie) and Nate Walker (Lloyd Owen) uncover a creepy, predatory menace hiding in the very lunar rocks of the moon’s surface. The sheer isolation of the astronaut’s lunar module and the eerily silent moon environment itself makes Apollo 18 is a consistently suspenseful tale. The movie also builds towards the exact kind of crescendo common in found footage horror movies with the added power of its lunar environment making escaping to safety far more difficult, all adding up to one chilling found footage experience in Apollo 18.
5) Quarantine
2008’s Quarantine acts as an English-language remake of the 2007 Spanish found footage horror movie REC, and while it has often been viewed in the shadow its its predecessor, it is an all-around worthy remake of its fellow found footage ancestor. Quarantine follows journalist Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) on a night life ride-along with the Los Angeles Fire Department, only for all of them to find themselves trapped in an apartment complex during a zombie outbreak. While Quarantine doesn’t add much new to the template established in REC, the remake nonetheless keeps the scares fast-paced and plentiful with a chillingly strong recreation of the latter’s final night-vision scare.
4) Paranormal Activity 4
2010’s Paranormal Activity 2 left quite a few loose ends in its finale, and 2012’s Paranormal Activity 4 does a decent job in tying some of them up with some good scares along the way. Set in November 2011, Paranormal Activity 4 centers on Nelson family experiencing hauntings that their oldest daughter Alex (Kathryn Newton) tries to get to the bottom of, all while her younger brother Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp) becomes a particular target of the demon’s hauntings.
Paranormal Activity 4 is decidedly not of the same caliber as the original Paranormal Activity trilogy, particularly in its surprisingly rushed finale, but it’s nonetheless better than it gets credit. An extended bit of suspense with a kitchen knife is one of the most effective jump scares in the Paranormal Activity series, with Paranormal Activity 4 also bringing the demonically turned Katie Featherston in as a real antagonist like no other entry in the series, presenting the OG Paranormal Activity star as a genuine horror movie icon.
3) The Gallows
2015’s The Gallows arrived in theaters during the arguable decline of the found footage craze (and before its V/H/S-sparked resurgence), which did it no favors despite the movie’s genuine found footage strengths. The Gallows takes place in a high school in which a play of the same name ended in on-stage tragedy 20 years earlier. When a group of kids tries to vandalize the re-created set of the original play, only to suddenly find themselves in a terrifying game for their lives. The Gallows unfolds like a pitch-perfect stage play captured in the found footage format, with great scares throughout and a delightfully effective twist ending.
2) V/H/S/85
It might seem counterintuitive to call any recent V/H/S movie underrated, with V/H/S on such an epic roll, solidifying it as the definitive found footage horror series. However, 2023’s V/H/S/85 seems to have curiously slipped through the cracks since its release. Despite that, V/H/S/85 keeps the V/H/S-assance running strong with plenty of superb horror shorts packaged in a larger framing story, all set in the year 1985 as part of the V/H/S franchise’s newly established trademark of tying each new movie into an overarching theme. The arguable highlight segments of V/H/S/85 include the Scott Derrickson-directed “Dreamkill” along with David Bruckner’s framing story “Total Copy”, but there’ an abundance of frightening fun to be had throughout the found footage blast that is V/H/S/85.
1) Blair Witch (2016)
1999’s The Blair Witch Project may have set the bar impossibly high for any sequel to match, but 2016’s belated follow-up, Blair Witch, gives its all to surprisingly strong results. Set in 2014, Blair Witch zeroes in on James Donahue (James Allen McCune), who enters the Black Hills Woods along with his girlfriend Ashley (Corbin Reid) and friends Lisa (Callie Hernandez) and Peter (Brandon Scott) in search of the answer to what became of his sister Heather.
Blair Witch unfolds in the vein of a remake-sequel hybrid, with the movie following a largely similar template to The Blair Witch Project, but that doesn’t mean the spooky trip into the woods isn’t worth going on again. Blair Witch‘s finale in particular is a jump scare-packed roller-coaster, and for what many would call horror movie heresy in Blair Witch‘s decision to show the actual Blair Witch on-screen, the villainess’s terrifying look and aggressive pursuit of her prey is surprisingly effective for the once entirely off-screen menace of the Black Hills woods.
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