Directed by Kane Parsons — known online as Kane Pixels, who was just 16 when he began uploading his Backrooms found footage series in January 2022 — and produced by A24 alongside James Wan and Shawn Levy, Backrooms is one of the most anticipated horror films of 2026. It stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, runs 110 minutes, and opened to $81.5 million on its debut weekend. For a film made for under $10 million, that is a remarkable number. For a film directed by a 20-year-old making his feature debut, it is almost unbelievable.

I find that origin story as fascinating as the film itself. And it matters — because understanding where Backrooms came from is the only way to fully appreciate what Kane Parsons was trying to do with it.

The Backrooms Phenomenon — Where It All Started

Before there was a film, there was a creepypasta.

In May 2019, an anonymous user posted a single image on 4chan — a photograph of a yellowed, fluorescent-lit corridor that felt simultaneously familiar and deeply wrong. The kind of space you might find behind a shopping mall or inside an office building that has been empty for too long. The caption described it as an image of the Backrooms: a place you could accidentally “noclip” out of reality into, leaving you stranded in an endless maze of identical rooms with humming fluorescent lights, damp yellow wallpaper, and the faint smell of carpet. No exits. No explanation. No other people.

The image spread. The legend grew. The internet, as it tends to do with liminal spaces and unexplained dread, became obsessed.

Then, in January 2022, a teenager from California named Kane Parsons uploaded a short found footage video to YouTube. It showed a person stumbling into the Backrooms through a construction site, shot with the grainy, disorienting aesthetic of old camcorder footage. The video went viral almost immediately — and kept going. By the time Parsons graduated high school, his Backrooms series had accumulated over 190 million views and attracted the attention of multiple major studios.

A24, 21 Laps Entertainment, and Atomic Monster announced a full-length feature adaptation in February 2023, with Parsons attached to direct. He was 17 years old. The film that resulted — shot on a $10 million budget in Vancouver with a cast including an Academy Award nominee — is in direct continuity with his YouTube series. Not a reboot. Not a reimagining. The same world, expanded to feature length, by the person who built it.

What Backrooms Is About

A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom.

Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a failed architect turned struggling furniture store owner — recently separated from his wife, quietly unravelling, spending his nights sleeping in the back of his own shop. When electrical disturbances lead him to a crack in the basement wall, he phases through it and finds himself somewhere that shouldn’t exist: an endless, fluorescent-lit labyrinth of yellow corridors and malformed rooms with no apparent exits and no logical architecture.

He keeps going back.

His therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), watches her patient disappear deeper into an obsession she can’t explain — until she has no choice but to follow him in herself.

What lies inside the Backrooms — what it is, what lives there, and what it wants — is the film’s central mystery. One that Backrooms unravels with considerable patience and, if the critics are to be believed, considerable nerve.

The Backrooms Trailer

Review: Backrooms (Spoiler-Free)

There is a scene in Backrooms — somewhere in the first hour — where Clark moves through a corridor that looks exactly like every other corridor, and the camera holds on him just long enough for you to feel what he feels: the particular dread of a space that has no memory of you having passed through it. No landmarks. No logic. Just yellow wallpaper and fluorescent hum, stretching in every direction, forever.

That scene alone is worth the price of admission.

Kane Parsons understands something that most horror directors take years to learn — that atmosphere is not decoration, it is architecture. The Backrooms in this film are not a backdrop. They are the film’s central character, and Parsons treats them with the same obsessive care he brought to his YouTube shorts. The decision to build thirty thousand square feet of practical sets rather than rely on CGI pays off in every frame. You can feel the wrongness of the space in a way that no green screen could replicate. The floors slope slightly. The doorways are set at the wrong height. The furniture appears to be sinking. Nothing is quite right, and nothing lets you look away.

Chiwetel Ejiofor carries the film’s first half with a performance of quiet, accumulating desperation. Clark is not a likeable protagonist in any conventional sense — he is a man in the process of losing everything, making increasingly bad decisions, and finding in the Backrooms something that his real life has stopped offering him. I find that psychological dimension the film’s most interesting choice. This is not a film about a man trying to escape a nightmare. It is, at least partly, a film about a man who prefers the nightmare to what’s waiting for him outside.

Renate Reinsve is extraordinary in the second half. Where Ejiofor disappears into the obsession, Reinsve brings the film back to something human — a woman trying to make sense of a patient who has stopped making sense, and then finding herself in a place that makes sense of nothing. Her scenes in the Backrooms are the film’s most purely frightening.

The found footage elements are used sparingly and precisely — the opening tape of Naren Warne, the camera feeds Clark sets up as he maps the space — and they hit harder for being rationed. The hybrid format will frustrate purists, but I think it’s the right call. Full found footage for 110 minutes would have been exhausting. The conventional cinematography gives the audience air to breathe between the suffocating sequences that made Kane Pixels famous.

Where Backrooms stumbles slightly is in its third act. The film introduces narrative threads — the Async organisation, the mythology of the Backrooms, what the creatures actually are — that it doesn’t entirely resolve with the confidence of what came before. The first hour is essentially flawless. The final thirty minutes asks more questions than it answers, and not always in a way that feels deliberate rather than unfinished.

That is a real complaint. It is also a minor one relative to everything the film gets right.

I find Backrooms one of the most genuinely unsettling cinema experiences of recent years — not because of what it shows, but because of what it makes you feel. The wrongness of those spaces lodges somewhere in the back of the brain and stays there. Two days after watching it, I noticed the fluorescent lights in a supermarket and felt briefly, inexplicably uneasy.

That is the mark of a horror film that has done its job.

Closing Shot

Kane Parsons made his first YouTube video at 16. He made his first feature film at 20, for A24, with a cast that includes an Academy Award nominee, and a budget he spent building one of the most convincing alternate dimensions in recent horror cinema.

The third act leaves questions unanswered. The atmosphere leaves marks.

If you only see one horror film this year, make it Backrooms — and see it in the dark, with the sound up, and nothing else demanding your attention.

Where to Watch Backrooms

Is Backrooms (2026) Found Footage?

Partly — and deliberately so.

Backrooms opens with pure found footage: a recovered VHS tape shot by an Async scientist named Naren Warne, documenting his final moments lost inside the Backrooms in 1990. It’s grainy, disorienting, and immediately recognisable to anyone familiar with Kane Parsons’ YouTube series. That tape is found footage in the strictest sense — recovered evidence of something that went wrong.

From there, the film shifts into conventional cinematography for the main narrative. Clark’s story is not shot handheld. There is no character holding a camera and justifying its presence. Parsons uses a traditional cinematic language — composed shots, controlled lighting, a score — to tell the furniture store half of the story.

The found footage elements return inside the Backrooms itself. Clark sets up cameras to document his explorations and map the space. The footage from those cameras — surveillance feeds, handheld recordings — is woven into the film at key moments, creating a hybrid format that moves between the two modes depending on where the story needs to go.

I find this the right creative decision. A full 110-minute found footage film set in the Backrooms would have been exhausting — and the contrast between the conventional world outside and the recorded, documented world inside actually reinforces the film’s central idea: that the Backrooms exist in a different relationship to reality, one where the camera is the only tool that makes sense of the space.

So — found footage? Yes, in part. Hybrid? Absolutely. And in the same tradition as Late Night with the Devil and Trollhunter — films that use the format selectively and are stronger for it.

If you came to Backrooms purely for found footage, you’ll find it. Just not all the way through. And what you find in between is worth the detour.

Similar Films to Backrooms

Backrooms is a rare thing — a horror film with no obvious direct predecessor. Instead, it sits at a very specific intersection of found footage horror, liminal space dread, and corporate conspiracy — and its closest relatives come from several different directions.

We’ve put together a full guide to the 11 best films that share its particular brand of dread — split by type of wrongness, with a comparison table and a “which one to watch first” guide.

→ Movies Like Backrooms (2026): 11 Films That Share Its Liminal Dread

In the meantime, if you want a quick starting point:

• Corporate horror → The Borderlands (2013). The most underrated film in this space.
• Found footage → Kane Pixels’ original YouTube series. Free, essential, more unsettling than the film in some ways.
• Liminal atmosphere → Annihilation (2018) or Skinamarink (2022) depending on your tolerance for demanding cinema.

Der Beitrag Backrooms (2026): A24’s Most Unsettling Horror Film of the Year erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

What V/H/S: Viral Is About

Unlike the previous two films, V/H/S: Viral doesn’t use the found tapes as a framing device in the traditional sense. Instead, the segments are intercut into the wraparound story as if everything was shot on the same camera — a structural choice that, as we’ll get to, creates as many problems as it solves.

The V/H/S: Viral Trailer

The Segments

Vicious Circles

Director: Marcel Sarmiento

Strange scenes are unfolding on the streets of Los Angeles as an old ice cream truck is chased across the city by police. Dozens of teenagers flood the streets with their phones and cameras, desperate to film the chase and land the next viral hit. What they don’t know is that something far more dangerous than a police pursuit is waiting for them on those streets. Their fame-obsessed quest for content is about to become the starring role in their own personal nightmare.

Dante the Great

Director & Writer: Gregg Bishop

Dante is a talentless magician with none of the qualities required to become famous. Then fate intervenes — he comes across a mysterious cloak that appears to grant him real magical powers. The cloak, however, seems to have a life of its own. It changes its wearer’s behaviour. And every so often, it needs to be fed.

Parallel Monsters

Director & Writer: Nacho Vigalondo

Inventor Alfonso is overjoyed when he tests his life’s work — a dimensional portal — and it actually functions. On the other side, he comes face to face with himself. His other self appears to have been working on the same idea. After a cautious greeting, they agree to explore each other’s dimensions. Alfonso quickly notices that things work rather differently on the other side. His wife there is watching snuff pornography with two strangers while performing some kind of ritual. And when the people of this parallel world realise that Alfonso isn’t quite who he appears to be, they start behaving very differently too.

Bonestorm

Directors: Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead

Three friends live for skateboarding — pulling stunts and filming everything for the internet. When their neighbourhood stops offering enough material, they head to Tijuana. They find a perfect spot to skate. Yes, there are strange pentagrams and symbols painted everywhere, but that’s hardly a reason to stop. It’s only when one of them injures himself and his blood begins to boil on one of the pentagrams that things get truly frightening. Very strange figures appear, and they have no friendly intentions. By the time the boys understand where they’ve stumbled into, it’s already far too late.

Review: V/H/S: Viral (Spoiler-Free)

Vicious Circles is the wraparound segment and the film’s biggest structural problem. Unlike the previous two films, the segments aren’t discovered and watched — they’re simply cut into the middle of the main story, as if everything was shot on one continuous camera. The result is a wraparound that keeps getting interrupted just as it’s building momentum, forcing you to reorient yourself every time a new segment begins. There’s tension, mystery, horror and even humour in Vicious Circles — but the constant interruptions drain it of energy and push it toward confusion and, at times, outright tedium.

Dante the Great is a decent segment with a genuinely interesting concept — the cloak with a life of its own fits naturally into the V/H/S universe. The performances are convincing throughout. The problem is that the found footage format isn’t maintained consistently. The opening works, but by the final minutes the camera is floating around without any logical operator. I also found myself occasionally wondering why someone would still be filming in certain situations. Minor complaints, but noticeable ones.

Parallel Monsters is consistently shot in found footage style and the concept is strong — but the spark never quite reached me. By the time the segment really got going, it was already over. Nacho Vigalondo spent too much time on the setup and not enough on the payoff. It’s a mysterious, well-acted segment with a good idea at its centre — but one that could have been so much more.

Bonestorm is the strongest segment in V/H/S: Viral and the one that feels most at home in the franchise. The premise is simultaneously mad, creepy and mysterious. The always-on camera problem is handled more cleverly than most — the skaters wear action cameras on their helmets that simply run continuously, which grounds the found footage logic better than almost anything else in this film. The ending reminded me of The Borderlands, but I’ll say no more than that. Not the strongest segment in the entire V/H/S series, but the best this instalment has to offer.

One final note: I haven’t mentioned Gorgeous Vortex in this review — it only appears in the bonus material of the mediabook edition and abandons the found footage format entirely. That said, it’s surprisingly good as a standalone short. A pleasant bonus if you have the physical release.

Verdict

Overall, I came away slightly disappointed. None of the segments here match the highs of the first two films. I don’t regret watching it — and with the franchise continuing well beyond this instalment, Viral is worth seeing as part of the series. Just don’t go in expecting Safe Haven.

If you’ve made it through V/H/S and V/H/S/2, you’ll want to complete the set. Just lower your expectations slightly before pressing play.

Where to Watch V/H/S: Viral

Similar Movies to V/H/S: Viral

V/H/S: Viral sits at the same crossroads as its predecessors — found footage horror meets anthology format. Here’s where to go next depending on which side drew you in.

If it was the anthology format:

V/H/S (2012) — The original and still the strongest entry in the franchise. Raw, uneven in the best possible way, and with a wraparound that actually works. Essential viewing before anything else in the series.

V/H/S/2 (2013) — The high point of the franchise. More inventive, more consistent, and with Safe Haven — one of the best short horror films ever made in the format. Read our full review.

V/H/S/94 (2021) — The franchise returns after a hiatus and delivers its most consistent instalment since V/H/S/2. Set in 1994, with a strong wraparound and several genuinely unsettling segments. A significant step up from Viral.

If it was the found footage horror:

Afflicted (2013) — Two friends filming their world trip discover that one of them has been infected with something that’s changing him. Shares Dante the Great‘s DNA — a man transforming into something he can’t control, caught on camera throughout. Considerably better executed.

Alien Abduction (2014) — A family on a camping trip in the Brown Mountain area of North Carolina encounters something in the woods. Shares the alien horror energy of Slumber Party Alien Abduction but with more sustained dread and a stronger emotional core.

Cloverfield (2008) — No anthology, no segments — just one continuous nightmare through the streets of New York. If Bonestorm‘s chaotic energy was what got you, Cloverfield delivers that same overwhelming, disorienting found footage spectacle at full scale. Read our full review.

Der Beitrag V/H/S: Viral (2014): The Weakest Entry — But Still Worth a Watch erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

What V/H/S/2 Is About

Like the first film, a collection of VHS tapes is discovered — each one revealing something disturbing. This time, two private investigators find the tapes while searching for a missing student. As they work through the videos, each one more horrifying than the last, a creeping suspicion begins to form: the missing boy may be connected to what they’re watching. The deeper they go, the harder it becomes to look away.

The V/H/S/2 Trailer

The Segments

Clinical Trials

A man receives an artificial eye implant. His doctor warns him of possible side effects. What he begins to see through that digital eye, however, goes well beyond anything the medical literature prepared him for.

A Ride in the Park

A mountain biker is enjoying a peaceful ride through the woods when he is attacked by a hungry zombie. Shortly afterwards, he is one himself — still wearing the GoPro camera mounted to his helmet, still recording everything. What follows is a zombie’s-eye-view of the undead experience, and one of the most inventive segment concepts in the anthology genre.

Safe Haven

A television crew is filming a documentary about a reclusive and secretive cult. At first they’re sceptical, even slightly amused. Then everything goes wrong at once, and hell — quite literally — breaks loose.

Slumber Party Alien Abduction

The parents are away. A group of kids decide to spend the evening playing pranks on each other. Then strange lights appear outside. Then the noise starts. Something has landed near the house, and it hasn’t come for a friendly visit.nt.

Review: V/H/S/2 (Spoiler-Free)

V/H/S/2 delivers exactly what the anthology format promises and so rarely achieves: genuine variety. Each segment has its own tone, its own logic, its own brand of horror — and together they cover enough ground to offer something for almost every kind of horror fan. Scares, splatter, tension, and even the occasional dark laugh. The mix is what makes it work.

The standout for me is Safe Haven — a segment that builds an extraordinary amount of tension in a very short time and then commits to its apocalyptic finale with a commitment that borders on reckless. It could have functioned as a standalone splatter film. As a short, it’s remarkable.

Slumber Party Alien Abduction and A Ride in the Park also deserve their flowers. The GoPro-on-the-helmet concept in A Ride in the Park is one of those ideas that sounds gimmicky on paper and turns out to be genuinely inspired — there’s something darkly comic about a zombie continuing to film himself, and the segment leans into that with confidence.

Clinical Trials is the weakest link for me personally. The concept is strong — a digital eye that sees things it shouldn’t — but the execution didn’t quite land. Not bad, but noticeably weaker than the others.

One honest complaint about Safe Haven, without getting into spoilers: the final shot features a visual effect that doesn’t quite convince. You’ll know it when you see it. For a segment that is otherwise brilliantly constructed, it’s a frustrating stumble at the finish line.

Verdict

V/H/S/2 won’t top my all-time found footage list — but it sits comfortably in the top five. Whatever you’re looking for — scares, tension, splatter, or inventive format experimentation — V/H/S/2 has it.

If you loved the first V/H/S, you’ll love this one more.

Where to Watch V/H/S/2

Similar Movies to V/H/S/2

V/H/S/2 sits at the intersection of found footage horror and anthology filmmaking — two formats that work surprisingly well together. Here’s where to go next depending on which side drew you in.

If it was the anthology format:

V/H/S (2012) — The original. Less polished, less consistent, but with the same wild energy and the same willingness to go places mainstream horror wouldn’t dare. Start here if you haven’t already.

V/H/S: Viral (2014) — The third instalment and the weakest of the three — but worth watching to complete the set. Bonestorm is the standout segment. Read our full review for V/H/S Viral.

V/H/S/94 (2021) — The third instalment, set in 1994, and arguably the most consistently strong entry in the franchise. A significant step up in quality from V/H/S/3 and well worth your time.

Southbound (2015) — A found footage anthology set on a desolate desert highway, where five interlocking stories bleed into each other in ways that gradually reveal a larger, darker picture. More atmospheric than V/H/S/2, less frantic, but quietly unsettling.

If it was the found footage horror:

REC (2007) — The gold standard. A TV crew follows firefighters into a Barcelona apartment building and can’t get out. Relentless, terrifying, and still the benchmark for found footage horror done right.

Deadstream (2022) — A disgraced YouTuber locks himself in a haunted house and livestreams the whole thing. Found footage horror comedy at its best — funny, inventive, and genuinely scary. Read our full review.

Der Beitrag V/H/S/2 (2013): More Segments, More Scares, More Splatter erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

In Darkness We Fall — original title La Cueva, directed by Alfredo Montero — premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January 2014 and won the Silver Biznaga for Best Film at the Málaga Spanish Film Festival the same year. It’s a film that had genuine potential, a strong setting, and a deliberate choice to go for survival horror over supernatural scares. The comparisons to The Descent and As Above So Below write themselves.

Whether it delivers on that potential is a more complicated question.

What In Darkness We Fall Is About

Five Spanish friends — not teenagers, though they occasionally behave like them — are on holiday on Formentera, one of the Balearic Islands. The opening scenes establish their dynamic: drinking, fooling around, the kind of holiday energy that makes questionable decisions feel like good ones.

On one of their outings, they spot a cave entrance in a cliff near the beach. Someone suggests going in to explore. Nobody objects. Nobody thinks to mark their route. Nobody considers that caves, by their nature, look the same in every direction once you’re deep enough inside.

They get lost almost immediately.

What follows is 80 minutes of five people trying to find their way out of a cave with no map, no plan, and dwindling flashlight batteries — as thirst, hunger, exhaustion, and the particular cruelty of genuine desperation begin to do what no monster could.

The In Darkness We Fall Trailer

Review: In Darkness We Fall / La Cueva (Spoiler-Free)

Review: In Darkness We Fall (Spoiler-Free)

Around the 48-minute mark, I noticed I was thinking about what I was going to write in this review. That is never a good sign. When a film has me, time disappears. When it doesn’t, the clock becomes very visible.

Which is a shame — because In Darkness We Fall starts well.

The setting is genuinely effective. A real cave system on a real island creates an authenticity that no studio set could replicate, and director Alfredo Montero uses the darkness intelligently. The claustrophobia is real. The disorientation is real. There are moments, especially early on, where the sheer physical confinement of the location does exactly what it should — it makes you uncomfortable in a way that no jump scare could manufacture.

The cast also deserves credit. Five unknown Spanish actors, performing in genuinely difficult conditions, delivering naturalistic performances that never feel staged. I believed these people. Which, in found footage, is half the battle.

And then there are the decisions.

I understand that horror films require their characters to make bad choices — that’s the genre’s oldest convention. But In Darkness We Fall asks quite a lot of its audience in this department. Going into an unexplored cave with no equipment, no map, and no system is one thing. Trying to find the way out by running randomly in every direction, without any logic or method, is another. At a certain point I found myself less frightened than frustrated — not by the situation, but by the people in it.

The first act spends a little too long on holiday antics before anything interesting happens. The nudity is present — both male and female — and while it’s not excessive, it doesn’t always feel necessary either. And then there is a close-up in the early scenes that I genuinely did not see coming. You’ll know it when you see it. A close-up that has no obvious narrative purpose but will certainly stick in the memory. Consider yourself warned.

And then – of course after 49 minutes – a twist arrived.

I won’t describe it here — but it shifts the film’s tone in a direction that made the last thirty minutes considerably more engaging than what came before. It’s the moment the film stops being a survival exercise and becomes something with a darker, more human edge. I found myself leaning forward again. Not fully convinced, but back in the room.

The comparison to The Descent and As Above So Below is inevitable — caves, found footage, a group slowly falling apart in the dark. But where those films opted for monster horror and supernatural menace, In Darkness We Fall goes for pure survival and human behaviour. It’s a legitimate creative choice. The problem is that human behaviour, in this case, isn’t quite compelling enough to carry the weight the film places on it. Something is missing — a character worth truly caring about, a relationship with enough depth to make the deterioration feel genuinely tragic rather than merely unpleasant.

Verdict

In Darkness We Fall is a film I wanted to like more than I did. The setting is strong, the performances are solid, and the third act twist is quite good and saves the movie. But a slow middle act, characters making decisions that strain credibility, and a survival premise that never quite generates the dread it’s aiming for leave it feeling like a missed opportunity.

Spanish horror has given us masterpieces. This isn’t one of them — but if you make it to the hour mark, the last thirty minutes might just change your mind.

Where to Watch In Darkness We Fall / La Cueva

Similar Movies to In Darkness We Fall / La Cueva

In Darkness We Fall belongs to a specific corner of horror — confined spaces, no way out, and the creeping dread of what darkness does to people. Some of the films below keep it purely human, others add monsters or the supernatural. All of them share the same essential nightmare: going somewhere you shouldn’t, and not being able to leave. And all of them are better…

The Descent (2005) — The obvious reference point, and the better film. Six women explore an uncharted cave system and encounter something that shouldn’t be there. Where In Darkness We Fall keeps its horror purely human, The Descent adds a creature layer that takes the claustrophobia to another level entirely. One of the best British horror films ever made.

As Above So Below (2014) — The closest companion piece in terms of format and setting. A group descends into the Paris catacombs and finds something ancient waiting for them. More supernatural than La Cueva, more chaotic, but the same descent-into-madness energy.

The Pyramid (2014) — Found footage, an ancient Egyptian pyramid, and a team of archaeologists who discover an entrance to a previously unknown structure beneath the desert. Going in seemed like a good idea. Getting out proves considerably more difficult. Shares La Cueva‘s claustrophobic premise but adds a little something that takes it in a different direction. Not a classic, but a solid entry in the underground horror subgenre.

REC (2007) — Because if you’re watching Spanish found footage horror and haven’t seen REC, that needs to change immediately. A different kind of confined space, a different kind of threat, but the same raw energy and the same understanding that the camera doesn’t make you safer — it just makes sure everything gets recorded.

Der Beitrag In Darkness We Fall / La Cueva (2014): Almost Worth Your Time erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

That’s not to say it’s a bad film. It’s a film with a specific vision, a deliberate provocation at its centre, and enough genuine scares to justify its 77-minute runtime. But where Host was lean, precise, and universally effective, Dashcam is chaotic, divisive, and built around a lead character designed to make you deeply uncomfortable — in ways that don’t always serve the horror.

Directed by Savage and produced by Blumhouse, Dashcam premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2021 and received a theatrical release in June 2022. It has a 4.5 on IMDB — which tells you almost everything you need to know about how polarising it is.

The Story: What Dashcam Is About

Annie Hardy (played by a semi-fictionalised version of the real musician of the same name) is a foul-mouthed, anti-mask, MAGA hat-wearing livestreamer who improvises rap songs in her car using viewer comments as lyrics. Sick of COVID restrictions in Los Angeles, she flies to London to surprise her old bandmate Stretch (Amar Chadha-Patel).

Things go sideways quickly. Annie steals Stretch’s car, ends up at a mysteriously empty restaurant, and agrees — for money — to transport an elderly woman named Angela to an undisclosed location. Angela is not well. Angela is, in fact, something considerably worse than unwell.

What follows is a nightmarish drive through the English countryside, filmed entirely through Annie’s iPhone and the car’s dashcam, broadcast live to her online audience.

The Dashcam Trailer

Review: Dashcam (Spoiler-Free)

Let’s start with what Dashcam gets right — because it does get things right. Much of the film was improvised, with a rough outline guiding each day’s shooting, and that guerrilla energy translates to the screen. The horror sequences, when they arrive, are genuinely effective — visceral, fast, and occasionally deeply unsettling. Rob Savage knows how to construct a scare, and there are moments here that hit hard.

The format is also used intelligently. The live chat running alongside Annie’s stream provides a real-time Greek chorus — viewers reacting to events with the predictable mixture of disbelief, excitement, and casual cruelty that characterises online audiences. It’s one of the film’s sharpest observations, and it works.

The problem is Annie herself.

The decision to centre the film on a deliberately obnoxious, politically provocative character is clearly intentional — Savage wanted to make a horror film about a specific type of online personality, and Annie Hardy brings an authenticity to the role that no conventional actress could have replicated. The critical consensus notes that the film is “visually and thematically provocative, although the film’s grating protagonist undercuts its effectiveness.”

I find myself in agreement. I understand the choice. I even respect it as a creative decision. But understanding a choice and being carried along by it are two different things. The problem with an antipathetic protagonist isn’t that they’re unpleasant — horror is full of characters you don’t root for. The problem is that Dashcam gives you so little reason to care what happens to Annie that the stakes dissolve. When terrible things happen to her, the dominant emotion is not dread — it’s a kind of detached observation. The film registers as spectacle rather than experience.

That gap between what the film is trying to do and what it actually achieves is Dashcam‘s central limitation. It’s not a failure of craft. It’s a failure of connection.

Verdict

Man, I really wanted to like Dashcam. The concept is great, the director proved himself with Host, and the follow-up had every reason to work. But it just didn’t convince me. The scares work — Rob Savage knows exactly what he’s doing on a technical level. The film, though, never quite gets there. Craft without empathy only goes so far.

If Host made you a Rob Savage believer, Dashcam will test that faith — and whether it breaks depends entirely on your tolerance for spending 77 minutes with someone you’d cross the street to avoid.

Where to Watch Dashcam

Similar Movies to Dashcam

Dashcam sits at a crossroads between screenlife horror, social media satire, and found footage chaos. If one of those angles hooked you more than the others, here’s where to go next. And if the format itself is what drew you in, our guide to the The 11 Best Screenlife Movies — When the Screen Becomes the Stage goes much deeper.

Host (2020) — The film that earned Rob Savage the goodwill he spends on Dashcam. Six friends, a Zoom séance, 56 minutes, no exits. Where Dashcam is chaotic and provocative, Host is lean and precise — and considerably more frightening. The gold standard of pandemic horror. Read our full review.

Unfriended (2014) — A Skype call haunted by a dead classmate. The genre’s founding screenlife text, and still one of its most effective. Nastier than Dashcam, angrier, and built around a group dynamic that the format uses with real intelligence. Read our full review.

Spree (2020) — A rideshare driver livestreams his increasingly violent night for an audience that won’t stop growing. The closest companion piece to Dashcam in terms of social media satire and an intentionally repellent lead. Joe Keery is extraordinary. Not found footage in the strict sense, but the same DNA.

Creep (2014) — A videographer answers an online ad for a one-day job and slowly realises his client is not what he appeared. Found footage built almost entirely on performance and unease. Mark Duplass is one of the great horror performances of the decade. No livestream, no social media — just two people and a camera and the slow certainty that something is very wrong.

Der Beitrag Dashcam (2021): Rob Savage’s Follow-Up to Host — And Why It Doesn’t Quite Land erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

Eduardo Sánchez — one half of the duo behind The Blair Witch Project — returns to the found footage genre with Exists, a creature feature that wastes no time getting to the point. I had been following this film for almost a year before it landed, keeping my fingers crossed that it would eventually make it to home video. It did. And I’m glad I waited.

Exists Ranks Among the Best Bigfoot Movies — Whatever IMDB Says

A 5.2 on IMDB. Honestly, don’t let that put you off. Exists is one of those films that mainstream critics dismissed and genre audiences embraced — and the genre audiences were right. The criticism levelled at it — thin characters, generic script — misses the point entirely. This is not a film about character development. It is a film about something enormous in the forest that wants you dead, and on those terms it delivers better than almost anything else in the Bigfoot subgenre.

I’ve watched a lot of Bigfoot films. More than I’d care to admit. And Exists sits at the top of that list — not despite its relentlessness, but because of it. If you want to know where it ranks alongside every other Bigfoot film worth watching, check our full guide to the best Bigfoot movies. The competition isn’t as close as you might think.

What Exists Is About

Five friends plan a weekend of fun at a remote cabin in the woods. The trip starts badly — on the way there, they hit an unknown animal on the road, which promptly disappears into the forest. The group shrugs it off and heads to the cabin. That night, something starts making noise outside. Something large. Something that is not interested in being ignored.

The Exists Trailer

Review: Exists (Spoiler-Free)

What I noticed immediately is that Exists drops you straight into the action. There’s no lengthy setup, no prolonged character introductions, no slow burn that overstays its welcome. The film begins mid-journey — the animal gets hit, the camera catches a brief, blurred glimpse of something in the trees, and the tone is set. I find this approach genuinely refreshing. With found footage films, I don’t need ten minutes of backstory. I want to be pulled into the situation alongside the characters, discovering what’s happening at the same pace they do.

What follows is a masterclass in escalating tension. The early scenes establish an unsettling atmosphere — strange sounds in the dark, glimpses of something that shouldn’t be there — before gradually tightening the screw until the tension becomes almost unbearable. And when Bigfoot finally steps into the light and makes his intentions clear, the blood runs cold. Everything outside the screen disappears. That, at least, was my experience.

One thing that sets Exists apart from most Bigfoot films is how much of the creature you actually see. Where Willow Creek and The Lost Coast Tapes kept their creature largely out of frame — a deliberate, effective choice in its own right — Exists takes the opposite approach. Bigfoot is present, physical, and genuinely threatening. The creature design holds up to scrutiny, which is not something you can say about most entries in the genre.

From the midpoint onward, the film barely pauses. The second half is relentless — no recovery time, no false calm, just escalating chaos. I won’t go into specifics, but the film earns everything it asks you to go through. The performances are convincing throughout — I believed these people in a way that found footage films don’t always manage. The moments of confusion, panic, and dark humour all ring true. There are a handful of scenes where the justification for the camera running stretches credibility — a common problem in the genre — but they are few enough that I was willing to forgive them.

One minor complaint: the film briefly incorporates a music score at certain points, which jars against the found footage aesthetic. It’s a small misstep in an otherwise confident production, but worth flagging.

Verdict

Exists is one of the strongest found footage creature features of the last decade — a film that understands the format, respects the genre, and delivers exactly what it promises. Eduardo Sánchez knew what he was doing with Blair Witch, and he hasn’t lost the instinct.

If you love found footage and you haven’t seen Exists yet, fix that tonight.

Where to Watch Exists

Similar Films to Exists

Similar Films to Exists

The Blair Witch Project (1999) — Eduardo Sánchez’s own masterpiece, and the obvious starting point for anyone who loved Exists. Where Exists shows you the creature, Blair Witch withholds it entirely. Two different philosophies, both effective. Essential viewing.

Willow Creek (2013) — The closest companion piece on this list. Same forest, same legend, completely different approach. Bobcat Goldthwait wrings genuine dread out of almost nothing — no creature budget required. Read our full review.

Trollhunter (2010) — Found footage creature feature done right, this time in the Norwegian wilderness. Deadpan, atmospheric, and considerably more epic in scale than most films in the genre. The finale alone is worth the runtime. See our review of Trollhunter.

Cloverfield (2008) — No Bigfoot, but the same DNA: a handheld camera, an enormous creature, and people running for their lives through terrain they can’t escape. The gold standard of big-budget found footage monster movies. Check out our Cloverfield feature.

The Ritual (2017) — Not found footage, but the closest thing to Exists in terms of tone and setting. Four friends hiking through a Swedish forest encounter something ancient and hostile. Genuinely unsettling, beautifully shot, and one of the strongest creature horror films of the last decade.

Der Beitrag Exists (2014): The Bigfoot Found Footage Film That Actually Delivers erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

Directed by Australian brothers Colin and Cameron Cairnes and premiered at SXWW in 2023, Late Night with the Devil is one of the most formally inventive found footage films in years — a movie that doesn’t just use the format as a stylistic choice but builds its entire architecture around it. The result is something genuinely rare: a horror film that earns its scares through craft rather than volume.

Where to Stream Late Night with the Devil?

What Late Night with the Devil Is About

It is Halloween night, 1977. Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) is the host of Night Owls — a late night talk show that has spent six seasons running a distant second to Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Ratings are down. His wife Madeleine died of cancer the previous year. His career is slipping.

Tonight, he has planned something special. A Halloween episode built around the occult — a psychic, a sceptic, a parapsychologist, and her subject: a young girl named Lilly, the sole survivor of a Satanic cult, who may or may not be demonically possessed.

What we are watching, framed as recovered footage from that broadcast alongside behind-the-scenes material shot during commercial breaks, is the night that Night Owls made television history — for all the wrong reasons.

The Late Night with the Devil Trailer

Review: Late Night with the Devil (Spoiler-Free)

The first thing Late Night with the Devil gets absolutely right is its world. The grainy multi-camera broadcast aesthetic, the period costuming, the studio lighting that feels like it belongs to a different era of television — every detail is considered. Within the first ten minutes you are not watching a horror film set in 1977. You are watching a 1977 television broadcast.

And for a while — surprisingly long, actually — it feels good. Almost cosy. The guests are entertaining, the host is charming, the audience is laughing. There’s a warmth to the whole thing that you don’t expect from a horror film. I’d almost call it feel-good horror — the kind of film that lulls you into a genuine sense of comfort before pulling the rug. The subtitles, the fake commercials, the period-accurate graphics — all of it adds to the illusion. You’re not watching a film. You’re watching a broadcast. Nostalgic. The good old times. Making you feel a child again.

That’s the feeling it gave me – even though i wasn’t even born in 1977!

That distinction matters enormously, because the horror that follows depends entirely on you believing in the world before it starts to fall apart.

David Dastmalchian is the reason it works as well as it does. Jack Delroy is a specific and difficult character to play — charming enough that you root for him, desperate enough that you worry about him, and ambiguous enough that you’re never entirely sure how much of what you’re watching is performance and how much is genuine. Dastmalchian holds all of that simultaneously without ever tipping his hand. It is the kind of performance that carries a film and makes it look effortless. Does he do it for the ratings? Or because he believes it? Because of love? Or for glory?

The supporting cast is strong across the board. Ian Bliss as Carmichael Haig — a sceptic in the mould of James Randi, brought in to debunk the evening’s supernatural claims — provides the film’s sharpest dramatic tension. His scenes with the psychic Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) have a wit and energy that the film is smart enough to lean into before pulling the rug. And Ingrid Torelli as Lilly — the possessed girl at the centre of the evening’s main event — is quietly unsettling in a way that builds slowly and then, in the film’s third act, stops being quiet at all.

What I find most impressive about Late Night with the Devil is its patience. The film knows that horror landing in a familiar, comfortable setting hits harder than horror arriving in an already frightening one. So it spends its first half being genuinely entertaining — the talk show format is used with real wit, the guests are interesting, the dynamic between Delroy and his producer Leo (Josh Quong Tart) adds texture without slowing things down. By the time the evening starts to go wrong, you are invested in the show itself. You want it to succeed. That investment is precisely what the film uses against you.

The horror isn’t that hard — I’d actually recommend this to non-horror fans. Not overdone, not shocking, just plainly entertaining, like what a late night show should be. And when the horror does arrive — and it does arrive — it commits fully. There is a moment in the third act involving worms that I will not describe further, except to say that I respected it enormously for going exactly where it needed to go. The film earns its R rating without wallowing in it.

Verdict: A Feel-Good Horror Movie

Late Night with the Devil is the rare horror film that trusts its audience enough to take its time. It starts warm — almost nostalgic, like a childhood memory of staying up too late watching television — and uses that warmth as a weapon. By the time the comfort turns to dread, you’re already too invested to look away.

I’ll be honest: it’s not particularly scary. There are almost no jump scares that will keep you up at night — the horror here is slow and creeping rather than sudden and brutal. You feel it more than you fear it. Almost. What it is instead is consistently entertaining — witty, atmospheric, and building a quiet unease that sits somewhere between genuine dread and morbid fascination.

It is also, I’d argue, one of the most intelligent uses of the found footage format since The Taking of Deborah Logan — a film that understood, as this one does, that the camera doesn’t just record what happens. Sometimes it is the reason it happens at all.

If you think found footage has run out of ideas, Late Night with the Devil will change your mind — and probably keep you away from late night television for a while.

Is Late Night with the Devil Found Footage?

Strictly speaking — it depends on your definition.

The film uses a professional multi-camera live broadcast rather than a single handheld camera. But the foundational conceit is pure found footage: we are watching material that was never supposed to be seen this way. A broadcast that went wrong. Behind-the-scenes footage that was never meant to air. Recovered evidence of something terrible.

I’d place it alongside Ghostwatch (1992) — a BBC broadcast that used television grammar to achieve the same effect found footage achieves with a shaky cam. Different aesthetic, same logic.

However, it is not pure footage: Ther is also a short documentary prologue that contextualises the broadcast before we watch it. Some say that “breaks” the found footage side -but honestly, that doesnt bother me at all. It contextualizes the whole thing, before the moei really starts. Doesn’ blunt the impact for me!

So yes — it is found footage and belongs here. Just don’t expect Blair Witch.

Want the full breakdown?

If you’ve already watched it and want every detail explained — The Grove, the deal, Madeleine hidden in the frames, and what Jack actually stabbed — our full explained article goes deep. Don’t click if you haven’t seen the movie, this link contains spoilers.

→ [Ending, Symbols & The Grove — Late Night with the Devil Explained]

Where to Watch Late Night With The Devil

Similar Films to Late Night with the Devil

The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014) — The closest comparison on this list. A documentary crew filming an Alzheimer’s patient slowly realises something else entirely is taking hold. The same slow build, the same use of a camera crew as witness, and a final act that goes to places you won’t see coming. The gold standard of possession found footage.

Ghostwatch (1992) — The film Late Night with the Devil owes the most to, whether it acknowledges it or not. A BBC live Halloween broadcast investigates a haunted house — and goes catastrophically wrong. Made for television, presented as real, and so convincing that it caused genuine public panic in the UK. Essential viewing as a genre artifact and still deeply unsettling today.

[REC] (2007) — A different format but the same core idea: a camera that was supposed to document something routine instead captures something that should never have been seen. Relentless where Late Night is patient, but the DNA is shared.

Videodrome (1983) — David Cronenberg’s body horror masterpiece about a television executive who discovers a broadcast signal that begins to alter reality. No found footage, no talk show — but the same obsession with what television does to the people who make it and the people who watch it. Darker, stranger, and completely essential.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) — Not horror, but hear me out. A true story about the performance of sincerity on television, the hunger for ratings, and what people sacrifice for the camera. Watching it after Late Night with the Devil reframes both films considerably.

Der Beitrag Late Night with the Devil (2023): My “Feel Good Horror Movie” erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

Cloverfield understood that instinct before most blockbusters were willing to try it. Produced by J.J. Abrams, directed by Matt Reeves — who would later make The Batman and War for the Planet of the Apes — and written by Drew Goddard, it arrived in January 2008 with almost no information attached to it. No title in the first teaser. No clear sense of what the film was. Just a release date and the image of the Statue of Liberty’s head rolling down a Manhattan street.

That marketing campaign was, in retrospect, the film in miniature: withhold the thing, and the imagination does the rest.

I find Cloverfield one of the most purely effective found footage films ever made — not because it is the deepest or the most formally inventive, but because it does exactly what it sets out to do with complete commitment and zero compromise. It puts you in New York on the worst night in the city’s fictional history, hands you a camera, and doesn’t let you look away.

Where to Stream Cloverfield?

What Cloverfield Is About

Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) is leaving New York for a job in Japan. His friends have thrown him a going-away party in a Manhattan apartment. His friend Hud (T.J. Miller) is filming the evening — testimonials, toasts, the usual chaos of a party that’s slightly more complicated than it should be, because Rob and his friend Beth (Odette Yustman) have a history that hasn’t been resolved.

Then something hits the city.

The power goes out. The ground shakes. Something enormous moves through Lower Manhattan. The Statue of Liberty’s head comes down the street. The party ends.

What follows is Rob, Hud, and a small group of friends attempting to cross a city that is coming apart — not because it makes strategic sense, but because Beth is still out there and Rob is not leaving without her.

The Cloverfield Trailer

Review: Cloverfield (Spoiler-Free)

The first thing Cloverfield gets right is the party. The opening twenty minutes — before anything goes wrong — are deliberately mundane. Friends arguing, drinks being poured, the low-level social tension of people who know each other too well. It is not the most gripping twenty minutes of cinema you will ever watch. It is, however, exactly what the film needs. By the time the ground shakes and the lights go out, you know these people. Not deeply — but enough. And that is enough.

What follows is one of the most sustained pieces of urban chaos ever put on screen. Matt Reeves and cinematographer Michael Bonvillain made a specific and difficult choice: to keep the camera in the hands of a character, at street level, with no access to information beyond what that character can see. No news broadcasts explaining the situation. No military briefings. No omniscient cut to the monster in full, framed against the skyline for maximum effect. Just Hud, running, filming, occasionally commentating in the way that people actually do when something incomprehensible is happening around them — a mixture of awe, terror, and the deeply human instinct to narrate.

The result is a film that puts you inside an event rather than showing it to you. The difference is considerable. Cloverfield doesn’t feel like a monster movie. It feels like being in one. The disorientation is the point. The fact that you never fully understand what is happening — where the creature is, what it wants, where it came from — mirrors exactly the experience of the characters. You are as lost as they are. I find that a genuinely radical choice for a studio blockbuster with a $30 million budget.

The found footage format earns its place here more than in almost any other big-budget film that has attempted it. The shaky cam is not a stylistic affectation — it is the argument. This is what it would look like. This is the footage that would exist. The film was edited to replicate the specific texture of a home video that has been partially taped over — glimpses of an earlier, happier day with Rob and Beth surface occasionally beneath the chaos, which adds an emotional undercurrent that the film never overplays.

What Cloverfield shares with the best found footage films is an understanding that the camera is not a neutral observer. Hud keeps filming when he shouldn’t. The act of filming becomes its own kind of compulsion — the same compulsion that makes people reach for their phones during disasters, that makes witnesses document rather than intervene. Director Matt Reeves noted that the pedestrians photographing the Statue of Liberty’s severed head with their phones was entirely contemporary — a 2008 observation that has only become more accurate since.

The performances are naturalistic in the way that found footage demands — not showy, not theatrical, just people reacting to things. T.J. Miller as Hud is the film’s unlikely emotional anchor, his running commentary shifting from comedy to fear to something more vulnerable as the night progresses. Michael Stahl-David carries the rescue mission with a quiet stubbornness that never tips into heroism.

If Cloverfield has a weakness, it is that the emotional investment in Rob and Beth’s relationship — which the film needs you to feel in order for the third act to land — is established quickly and never fully deepens. The film is eighty-five minutes long and has a monster to deal with. There is only so much room. It is a trade-off the film makes consciously, and I think it makes the right call — momentum over depth — but it means the ending hits harder as spectacle than as grief.

The monster itself deserves mention. Designed to be glimpsed rather than displayed, it is one of the most effectively withheld creatures in blockbuster cinema — present throughout, never quite seen, always suggested by what it leaves behind. When you do finally see it clearly, it has already done its damage. That sequencing is precise.

Verdict

Cloverfield is the film that proved found footage could work at scale — that the format wasn’t limited to low budgets and dark corridors, that you could point a handheld camera at something enormous and make it more frightening than any conventional shot could manage.

Seventeen years later, it remains the best argument for what found footage can do when a studio actually commits to it.

If you’ve never seen Cloverfield on the largest screen available to you, you haven’t really seen it.

Where to Watch Cloverfield

Similar Films to Cloverfield

The Blair Witch Project (1999) — The film that made everything after it possible. No monster, no budget, no answers. Where Cloverfield shows you the chaos, Blair Witch withholds it entirely. Two opposite approaches to the same question: what is the camera not showing you?

REC (2007) — The purest found footage horror of its era. A Spanish apartment building, a camera crew, and something that moves faster than they do. Shares Cloverfield‘s relentless forward momentum and its refusal to let the audience breathe.

Trollhunter (2010) — The Scandinavian answer to the found footage creature feature. Less panic, more deadpan — but the same core idea: a camera pointed at something that shouldn’t exist. Read our full review.

War of the Worlds (2005) — Not found footage, but the closest Hollywood came to the same street-level disaster perspective before Cloverfield. Spielberg keeping the camera with the civilians, withholding the full picture. A direct ancestor.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) — The spiritual sequel, set almost entirely in a bunker. No handheld camera, no monster in the streets — but the same DNA, the same question of what is happening outside the frame. A completely different film that somehow belongs to the same universe.

Der Beitrag Cloverfield (2008): New York, One Camera, and Something Enormous erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

Rather than tension or dread, Hollow delivers 84 minutes of familiar tropes, paper-thin characters, and jump scares so scarce you begin to wonder if the film forgot it was supposed to be scary.

Wo kann man Hollow streamen?

What Hollow Is About

Two couples head to the rural Suffolk home of Emma’s (Emily Plumtree) recently deceased grandfather, a former vicar. Nearby stands an ancient tree with a dark local legend: it is said to have driven countless couples to suicide.

What begins as a quiet getaway quickly sours, as old jealousies, buried secrets, and something altogether more sinister begin to close in on the group.

The Hollow Trailer

Review: Hollow (Spoiler-Free)

Hollow arrives with the right ingredients and does almost nothing with them. The Suffolk setting — crumbling ruins, ancient folklore, genuinely atmospheric countryside — deserved a better film. With a stronger screenplay, it could have been one.

The problems start early. The group dynamic strains credibility from the first scene: a woman, her fiancé, her ex-boyfriend, and his new girlfriend. I’ll be direct — no real group of adults would voluntarily spend a weekend together in this configuration. It’s a screenwriting convenience dressed up as character drama, and it shows.

The found footage format is handled with similar carelessness. There’s no convincing reason why everything is being filmed — a vague sense that friends on a trip might record things doesn’t hold up when the camera stays running through situations where no one would keep filming. Around the midpoint the film reaches for a justification — the characters are stuck in the dark and need the camera’s night vision to see — which is not a bad idea in isolation, but it raises its own questions. Nobody in Suffolk owns a torch?

The cast, to their credit, do the best they can with what they’re given. The performances are genuinely the film’s strongest element, and I find it hard to fault the actors for what is ultimately a screenplay problem.

What I find hardest to forgive is the near-total absence of tension. Hollow constructs several moments that clearly intend to build toward a scare — a creeping sense of unease, a held shot, an expectation — and then cuts away to the next scene. Nothing. The film’s first jump scare arrives at the 1:24 mark. The second and last at 1:27. Neither lands with any real force. For a horror film running 84 minutes, that is a remarkable achievement in restraint — and not the good kind.

The supernatural elements, which should be the film’s backbone, remain frustratingly underdeveloped. There’s a genuinely interesting idea buried somewhere in the legend of the tree and a recurring phone box motif that briefly suggests the film might have something to say. It doesn’t follow through.

The locations are beautiful. The film is not.

Verdict

Hollow is the kind of found footage film that gives the genre a bad reputation. Not because it’s offensive or incompetent, but because it’s simply inert — a collection of familiar elements assembled without conviction, set against scenery that deserved far better.

If I hadn’t been six hours into a train journey with nothing else on my laptop, I doubt I’d have made it past the halfway point.

Where to Watch Hollow

If Hollow Left You Wanting More — Watch These Instead

The Blair Witch Project (1999) — The original, and still the standard. Three students, a forest, and an absence of answers that remains more frightening than anything Hollow puts on screen.

[REC] (2007) — A Spanish apartment building under quarantine. Relentless, claustrophobic, and everything Hollow wishes it were in terms of escalating dread.

Grave Encounters (2011) — A paranormal investigation crew locks themselves in an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Same year as Hollow, dramatically better execution.

The Tunnel (2011) — An Australian found footage film set in an abandoned tunnel system beneath Sydney. Atmospheric, patient, and genuinely unsettling in ways Hollow never manages.

Lake Mungo (2008) — Not a haunted house film, but the most quietly devastating found footage horror of its era. If Hollow appealed to you on paper, this is what it should have been.

Der Beitrag Hollow (2011): 84 Minutes of Wasted Potential erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

Deadstream is the exception. Written and directed by the husband-and-wife team Joseph and Vanessa Winter — with Joseph also playing the lead — it’s an 87-minute found footage horror comedy that has no right to be this good, and is anyway.

What Deadstream Is About

Shawn Ruddy is a YouTuber who has fallen from grace. Sponsors gone. Community turning on him. In a last-ditch attempt at redemption, he decides to spend a night alone in a famously haunted house — and stream the whole thing live. No exits. No escape. He locks himself in and throws away the key, literally, on camera.

The ghosts of the house take a dim view of the intrusion.

The Deadstream Trailer

A word of advice: I’d genuinely recommend skipping the trailer and going in cold. The film earns its surprises, and the trailer gives too many of them away.

Review: Deadstream (Spoiler-Free)

The premise is familiar enough to feel like a setup for disappointment. An influencer in a haunted house, filming for likes — it’s a concept that writes its own punchlines before the film even starts. What Deadstream does, and does remarkably well, is take that familiarity and use it as cover. You think you know where this is going. You don’t.

Joseph Winter’s performance as Shawn is the film’s secret weapon. He nails the particular breed of performative desperation that defines a certain kind of content creator — the product placements dropped mid-panic, the merch plugs delivered to an empty room, the instinct to frame every moment for the camera even when everything is falling apart. It’s a sharp, funny, and surprisingly nuanced portrait. I found myself oscillating between genuine sympathy and pure schadenfreude, sometimes within the same scene.

What makes Deadstream more than a satire, though, is that it commits to the horror. The haunted house builds genuine atmosphere. The scares are inventive — not borrowed from the genre’s greatest hits, but constructed with real imagination. There’s a moment in the second act, in particular, that I won’t describe here, that is both deeply unsettling and genuinely funny, and pulling off both simultaneously is harder than it looks.

The integration of the live chat — Shawn’s audience reacting in real time — is one of the film’s cleverest moves. It adds a layer of authenticity that grounds the found footage conceit, and it raises a question the film keeps alive until surprisingly late: is any of this real, or is Shawn engineering the whole thing for views? That ambiguity does a lot of quiet work.

At 87 minutes, the film doesn’t overstay its welcome. The pacing is tight, the tonal balance between comedy and horror is maintained with more discipline than you’d expect, and the Winters never let the satire tip into condescension. Deadstream is a film that clearly enjoys itself — and that enjoyment is infectious.

Verdict

Horror comedy is one of the hardest tonal balancing acts in genre filmmaking. Too much of one and you lose the other. Joseph and Vanessa Winter make it look easy.

If you think the haunted house formula has nothing left to offer, Deadstream will change your mind — and probably make you laugh while doing it.

Where to Watch & Stream Deadstream?

Similar Films to Deadstream

Hell House LLC (2015) — The haunted house found footage benchmark. Less comedy, more dread, but the same sense of a location that genuinely doesn’t want you there.

Grave Encounters (2011) — A paranormal investigation TV crew locks themselves inside an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Played straighter than Deadstream, but shares its sense of escalating, inescapable chaos.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018) — A Korean found footage horror that follows a livestreaming crew into one of the country’s most infamous abandoned buildings. One of the best the genre has produced in recent years.

Host (2020) — Found footage horror distilled to its purest, leanest form. 56 minutes, a Zoom call, and no exits. Read our review here.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) — The one that started it all. No comedy, no livestream, no safety net. Still terrifying.

Der Beitrag Deadstream (2022): One Haunted House. One Livestream. One Very Bad Night. erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.