At found-footage.com, it’s basically Halloween 365 days a year — so when the actual holiday rolls around, we take it seriously! These ten found footage movies for Halloween are grouped by mood: films literally set on Halloween, haunted locations you won’t want to visit again, the mythology behind the masks trick-or-treaters wear tonight, and two lighter picks if your group wants laughs alongside the scares. Enjoy!
The Holiday Itself
These four aren’t just horror movies you could watch any night of the year — they’re built around Halloween specifically, which makes them the obvious place to start.
The Houses October Built (2014)
Five friends spend the weeks before Halloween road-tripping across the country in a beat-up RV, chasing rumors of underground haunted attractions more extreme than anything you’d find at a mall parking lot.
OUR OPINIONThis is the one to actually watch on the night itself! It’s not a perfect film, some of the scares lean predictable by the back half, but it’s fun, it nails the seasonal atmosphere better than almost anything found footage has produced, and that counts for a lot when you’re picking something for the actual holiday. See our review →
Watch it:
Ghostwatch (1992)
A BBC crew broadcasts a live Halloween-night investigation into Britain’s most notoriously haunted house, hosted by a genuine, trusted television personality alongside his real co-hosts.
OUR OPINIONPeople really believed it when it aired live in 1992, genuinely thinking they were watching real events unfold in real time, and that reaction is exactly what caused the panic that followed. It’s the closest television ever came to recreating what Orson Welles did with War of the Worlds on the radio decades earlier. If you want a piece of real Halloween broadcast history alongside your scares, start here.
Watch it:
Late Night with the Devil (2023)
A struggling 1977 late-night talk show attempts a ratings-saving Halloween special with a live séance, and unleashes something into the broadcast that never leaves the screen.
OUR OPINIONI love the feel-good atmosphere of these old late-night shows, and this film captures it perfectly before slowly unraveling it into genuine dread. David Dastmalchian’s performance as the host anchors the whole thing. Since the broadcast itself is set on Halloween night, this one feels almost custom-built for tonight specifically.
Watch it:
V/H/S/Halloween (2025)
Six found-footage tapes, six different directors, one shared thread: every single story unfolds on the night of October 31st, from a decaying costume shop to a Halloween house party gone very wrong.
OUR OPINIONExactly what it says on the tape — the whole anthology is built entirely around tonight, so there’s no better night to actually press play. Like every V/H/S entry, quality swings segment to segment, but with Paco Plaza (director of [Rec]) among the contributors, there’s real horror pedigree behind this one. Perfect for a group where everyone wants a different flavor of scare!
Watch it:
Haunted Locations
Nothing about these three is Halloween-specific on paper, but “lights off, don’t check your phone” is exactly the mood the holiday calls for, and these three deliver it as well as found footage ever has.
Hell House LLC (2015)
Five years after fifteen people died on opening night of a Halloween haunted-house tour, a documentary crew returns to the scene to find out what the official story left out.
OUR OPINIONI know this one has a big reputation, and I get why. The investigation and buildup are genuinely well done, and there are individual images from the final act that have stuck with me. I wasn’t as completely overwhelmed as most people seem to be, but it’s a good film, maybe even a very good one, and its haunted-attraction setting makes it about as fitting for tonight as this genre gets.
Watch it:
Grave Encounters (2011)
A ghost-hunting reality show crew locks themselves inside an abandoned psychiatric hospital for what’s supposed to be another fake haunting. It isn’t.
OUR OPINIONA ghost-hunting TV show going wrong, or right, depending on how you look at it 🙂 This one commits fully to that premise, and honestly, it’s a lot better than you’d expect for such a cheesy storyline. Turn the lights off, this is the kind of haunted-building dread Halloween night was made for!
Watch it:
Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)
A horror web-series crew travels to a real, abandoned Korean asylum to livestream a night exploring it for their audience, and finds a lot more waiting for them than viewers.
OUR OPINIONFound footage from Korea. What starts as a fairly standard livestream setup turns into something genuinely tense once the location’s real history starts bleeding into the fiction. The last half hour is genuinely worth the wait, and it’s exactly the kind of “watch with friends, someone will scream” pick a Halloween gathering needs.
Watch it:
Masks & Mythology
Halloween is built on the same masked-killer mythology that made Jason, Michael, and Freddy household names. This one goes straight to the source of that fandom.
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
A documentary crew gets exclusive access to an aspiring slasher icon as he meticulously plans his first killing spree, in a world where Jason, Michael, and Freddy were all real.
OUR OPINIONThis was a complete surprise for me the first time I watched it. If you know your slasher tropes, the inside jokes land constantly, and this is basically the mythology behind every mask you’ll see on the street tonight, taken apart and put back together with real affection. Genuinely funny for most of the runtime, then genuinely unsettling once it shifts into real found footage for the climax.
Watch it:
For a Group, Not Just a Solo Scare
If you’re hosting a mixed crowd tonight, not everyone wants pure dread. These two bring the laughs without leaving the genre behind.
What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
A documentary crew follows a household of centuries-old vampire roommates in modern-day Wellington, capturing exactly how badly a shared living situation can go, immortal or not.
OUR OPINIONFound footage meets The Office, basically, and I honestly didn’t expect it to work as well as it does. The werewolf encounters especially had me laughing out loud. If your Halloween crowd wants costumes and vampire jokes rather than nightmares, this is your pick — nobody leaves this one actually scared, and that’s the point.
Watch it:
Deadstream (2022)
A disgraced internet personality tries to rebuild his following by livestreaming a solo night inside a haunted house, and gets a lot more content than he bargained for.
OUR OPINIONChaotic, funny, and unexpectedly gnarly with its practical effects — this one genuinely understands livestreamer culture without sneering at it. It’s the rare pick that works whether your group wants to laugh or scream, which makes it a strong closer for a Halloween night that’s already had its share of dread earlier in the evening.
Watch it:
That’s ten to get you through the night, but if none of these quite hit the mark, or you’re already planning next Halloween, our full list of the 66 best found footage movies of all time has plenty more where these came from.
