I watched Late Night with the Devil expecting a solid found footage horror. What I got instead was a puzzle — one that kept revealing new layers the more I thought about it. The ending alone sent me down a two-hour research spiral. The Grove. The deal. Madeleine hidden in the frames. The skeleton. What Jack actually stabbed.

This article is everything I found. The full breakdown — with an original infographic mapping Jack’s deal and its consequences — of every symbol, every hidden detail, and every question the film leaves deliberately unanswered.

Let’s start where it all begins.

Full spoilers from here. If you haven’t watched Late Night with the Devil yet — stop, watch it, come back. It’s worth going in blind. Our spoiler-free review is [here].

The Grove — Jack’s Deal With the Devil

Before anything else makes sense, you need to understand The Grove.

The Grove is an elite secret society — the kind that has existed in American folklore and conspiracy theory for decades, modelled loosely on real organisations like the Bohemian Club. In Late Night with the Devil, it’s a gathering of the rich, the famous, and the ambitious, meeting in the woods to perform occult rituals whose true nature is never fully revealed.

Jack Delroy joins The Grove before the events of the broadcast. The film never shows us the moment — no signing of a contract, no explicit exchange. And that’s deliberate. As David Dastmalchian confirmed in a Variety interview: “There’s no way Jack would have participated in that if he knew what would happen. It’s never overt. It’s a nudge on the shoulder, a whisper in the ear.”

Jack never made a deal with the devil in any conscious sense. He sat in the woods with powerful people, performed rituals he didn’t fully understand, and wanted success badly enough not to ask too many questions. That’s the horror of it — the deal doesn’t require your signature. It only requires your willingness to look away.closed loop taken to its absolute logical extreme. Watch it after Caddo Lake while the feeling is still fresh.

Madeleine — The Price of Fame

Madeleine Delroy never smoked a day in her life. She died of lung cancer.

The film plants this detail early and lets it sit there, unexplained. By the time you understand what it means, it’s already too late for everyone on stage.

The Grove’s price is never stated in advance. That’s the mechanism — you get what you want, and the cost is extracted from somewhere you weren’t looking. Jack wanted success. Night Owls climbed the ratings. And Madeleine, who had nothing to do with any of it, paid the price he never agreed to pay.

What makes this genuinely devastating is the question of guilt. Jack grieved. He took a hiatus. He came back to television carrying what appeared to be genuine sorrow. But somewhere underneath all of it was a knowledge he couldn’t fully look at — that his career and his wife’s death were connected, and that he had chosen one without knowing he was choosing both.

Dastmalchian addressed this directly: “I’m sure there were times he got lost in the moment and said things you might not otherwise say — that you would sacrifice anything to get what you want. But you have to be careful.”

The Grove heard him. The Grove always hears you.

Mr. Wriggles and the Demon Hierarchy

The demon possessing Lilly calls itself Mr. Wriggles — a name derived, as the film explains, from the way it “wriggles” into its host’s body during possession.

Mr. Wriggles is not the top of the hierarchy. He is a subordinate — specifically, a demon connected to Abraxas, the malignant entity that Szandor D’Abo and his cult worshipped. When the cult committed mass suicide by burning down their place of worship, Lilly was the sole survivor. Mr. Wriggles’ possession is implied to be the reason she lived — the demon protected its vessel.

What the film establishes, crucially, is that Mr. Wriggles has encountered Jack before. He tells Jack this during the broadcast — a detail that confirms the demon’s presence in Jack’s life predates Halloween night. The Grove didn’t just take Madeleine. It invited something in.

The Skeleton in the Audience

One of the film’s most discussed details — and one of its most unsettling.

A figure dressed as a skeleton sits in the studio audience throughout the broadcast. Most viewers assume it’s a Halloween costume. It isn’t.

Dastmalchian confirmed in interviews that the skeleton is a Grove member — sent to the studio to observe, and to collect. The Grove’s representative ensuring that the debt is paid. When the demon finally unleashes on Halloween night, the skeleton watches without intervening. Its job is not to stop what’s happening. Its job is to witness it.

I find this one of the film’s most quietly horrifying details precisely because it’s so easy to miss. The monster in the audience isn’t the possessed girl. It’s the figure in the skeleton costume who already knew what was coming.

The Ending Explained — What Really Happened

The demon’s final act is to give Jack exactly what he deserves — and nothing he wanted.

After Mr. Wriggles kills Gus, burns Carmichael, and strangles June, the studio descends into chaos. The audience flees. Jack is left alone on the stage — surrounded by the carnage of the evening that was supposed to save his career.

Then the hallucination begins.

From Jack’s point of view, he is transported back to the forest — The Grove’s meeting place. He is brought to a bedroom. Madeleine is there, alive but dying. She hands him the ceremonial knife recovered from Lilly’s cult. She begs him to end her suffering.

He stabs her.

He wakes on stage. It’s Lilly. She’s dead.

The demon gave Jack a vision in which killing felt like mercy — in which murder felt like love. And Jack, in his grief and his guilt and his desperation, did exactly what was asked of him. He became, in the end, the sacrifice he never consciously agreed to make.

“Dreamer. Here. Awake!” — What Does the Final Line Mean?

As Jack kneels in the wreckage of the studio, he repeats a phrase over and over:

“Dreamer. Here. Awake.”

This is Carmichael’s hypnosis mantra — the phrase he used throughout the broadcast to snap his subjects out of their trance. Jack, surrounded by death and unable to process what he has done, is trying to use it on himself. He wants to wake up. He wants this to be the dream and reality to be somewhere else.

Nothing happens.

The camera cuts to black. Jack doesn’t wake up because there is no waking up from this. Reality has already delivered its verdict. The hypnosis phrase works on suggestion and theatre — it cannot undo what the Grove’s bargain has set in motion.

It is perhaps the most desperate moment in the film. A man reaching for the tools of illusion and finding them useless against the truth.

Did Jack Know He Was Sacrificing His Wife?

This is the question the film is most careful not to answer directly — and the question Dastmalchian’s interview comes closest to resolving.

The short answer: no. Not consciously.

The longer answer: Jack knew enough not to look too closely. He joined The Grove. He performed rituals. He wanted success badly enough to sit in the woods with powerful people and not ask what any of it meant. When Madeleine got sick — when a woman who never smoked developed lung cancer — some part of him must have connected the dots. But connecting dots and accepting their conclusion are two different things.

“If someone had come up to Jack with a contract that said ‘For Night Owls to be number one, you’re going to have to kill Millie’ — there’s no way Jack would have participated in that,” Dastmalchian said. “There’s no way.”

The Grove doesn’t work that way. It never does.

Hidden in Plain Sight — The Symbols & Easter Eggs You Missed

This is the section that rewards a second viewing.

Madeleine in the frames. The most significant hidden detail in the film — and the one that went viral after eagle-eyed viewers on social media began pausing at key moments. Madeleine’s ghost is hidden in multiple frames throughout the broadcast. The first confirmed appearance: around the 8-minute mark, visible in a TV monitor behind Jack as he leans on a doorstep. She is present throughout the episode — watching, warning, unable to intervene. Similar to what Mike Flanagan did in The Haunting of Hill House, the Cairnes brothers hid her in plain sight, trusting that most viewers wouldn’t notice on a first watch.

The number 13. Appears repeatedly throughout the film in set details, background elements, and arrangements. A classic supernatural signifier — and in this film, a quiet marker of how long The Grove’s influence has been present in Jack’s life.

Occult props on the set. The studio dressing contains real occult symbols and imagery — books, objects, arrangements that hint at The Grove’s presence in Jack’s professional life from the very beginning. The set was never neutral. It was already consecrated.

The skeleton’s positioning. On a careful rewatch, the skeleton figure’s position in the audience shifts slightly between cuts — a detail the Cairnes brothers confirmed was deliberate. It is not static. It is watching.

Tarot imagery. The Devil card and associated tarot references are woven into the set design and background details throughout the broadcast — quietly foreshadowing the film’s conclusion for anyone paying close enough attention.

The Irony — The Show Was a Success

The final detail the film reveals — delivered almost as an afterthought, in the framing documentary that opens the broadcast — is perhaps its darkest.

The Halloween episode of Night Owls became the highest-rated episode in the show’s history.

The demon kept its end of the bargain. Jack wanted ratings. Jack got ratings. The cost was everyone on the stage, his own sanity, and Lilly D’Abo’s life.

The Grove always delivers. It simply never specifies how.

So…. What is the Movie Really About?

Strip away the demons, the possessions, the occult rituals, and Late Night with the Devil is a film about one thing: what people are willing not to know in pursuit of what they want.

Jack didn’t sell his soul. He simply never asked what he was buying. He sat in the woods, he performed the rituals, he wanted success badly enough to look away from the cost — and when the cost arrived, he carried it as grief rather than guilt, because grief is survivable and guilt is not.

The camera, in this film, doesn’t just record what happens. It bears witness to what Jack refused to see coming. And in the end, it captures the only truth The Grove ever offered: the deal always delivers. The price is always higher than anyone expected. And the show, God help us, must go on.

You’ve just read every spoiler in the film. You might as well read our full review of Late Night with the Devil too!

Der Beitrag Ending, Symbols & The Grove — Late Night with the Devil Explained erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

Backrooms understood that instinct completely. And when the credits rolled, I found myself doing something I rarely do after a horror film: sitting in the dark for a few extra minutes, not quite ready to re-enter a world that had, temporarily, started to feel slightly suspicious.

If you felt the same thing, this list is for you.

But here’s the problem: there is no film quite like Backrooms. It has no direct predecessor — no obvious template, no genre it belongs to completely. Instead it sits at the crossroads of several different fears, pulling from found footage, liminal horror, institutional dread, and psychological unravelling all at once.

That’s why this list is structured differently. We’ve split the picks into three categories — Wrong Space, Wrong Reality, and Wrong Format — because the films that share Backrooms‘ DNA don’t all get there the same way. Some trap you architecturally. Some quietly rewrite the rules of the world around you. Some use the camera itself as the instrument of dread.

None of them are Backrooms. But each one shares something essential with it.

Quick overview of the movies in this article

But before we take a look at all those movies, let’s start with the beginning.

Ground Zero — The YouTube Series That Made Backrooms Possible

Before Backrooms was an A24 film with Chiwetel Ejiofor and an $81 million opening weekend, it was a nine-minute YouTube video made by a 16-year-old in his bedroom using Blender. That video — Kane Pixels: The Backrooms (2022) — is the reason the film exists, the reason liminal horror is a mainstream conversation, and the reason you’re reading this list.

If you haven’t watched the original series, stop here. Watch it first. It’s free, it takes less than two hours to get through the core episodes, and it will make the film — and everything on this list — land considerably harder.

Kane Pixels: The Backrooms (2022) — YouTube

A grainy found footage video of a person who accidentally “no-clips” out of reality and finds themselves in an endless maze of yellow corridors and fluorescent hum. No explanation. No exits. Something in the dark that you can hear before you can see.

Why it’s essential: This is the source material — not just for the film, but for an entire aesthetic that has reshaped internet horror. Kane Parsons built the Backrooms mythology from this single video, developing it across more than 20 shorts before A24 came calling. The film is in direct continuity with the series. Watching the series first isn’t just recommended — it’s the difference between seeing a film and understanding a world.

What sets it apart: No budget, no cast, no studio. Just a teenager, a 3D software package, and an instinct for sustained dread that most professional horror directors never develop. Several episodes are more frightening than anything in the feature film.

Wrong Space: Films Where the Location Is the Monster

These are the films that understand what Backrooms understands: that the most frightening thing in a horror film isn’t always what’s inside the room. Sometimes it’s the room itself. A space with no logical exit, no rational architecture, and no interest in the people trapped inside it. The location as antagonist. The building as the monster.

Vivarium (2019)

A young couple visits a show home in a new suburban development and cannot leave. Every road leads back to the same house. Food is delivered. A baby appears. The world outside is green, pastel, and perfectly identical in every direction.

Why it’s similar to Backrooms: The trap here works exactly like the Backrooms — a space that looks almost normal, replicates itself endlessly, and has no visible exit. Lorcan Finnegan built the exterior on a physical set in Belgium: rows of identical pastel facades stretching to the horizon. The wrongness is in the geometry, not the gore.

What sets it apart: Where Backrooms is about a man who begins to prefer the nightmare, Vivarium is about two people who chose the trap — they walked into the show home voluntarily — and now the walls have closed. The horror here is domestic and slow-burning rather than spatial and suffocating. Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots are excellent.

Cube (1997)

Six strangers wake up inside a vast network of cubic rooms. Some rooms are safe. Some contain lethal traps. There are no explanations, no exits, and no obvious logic to which rooms are which.

Why it’s similar to Backrooms: This is Backrooms distilled to its purest structural form — an impossible space, no way out, and the gradual realisation that the architecture itself is the antagonist. The Cube has no purpose anyone can identify. It simply exists, and it kills.

What sets it apart: Where Backrooms keeps its horror atmospheric and psychological, Cube is ruthlessly mechanical. The deaths are sudden, the mathematics are real, and the film’s interest is as much in what the characters do to each other under pressure as what the space does to them. Lean, brutal, and surprisingly philosophical for a Canadian genre film made for $350,000.

The Shining (1980)

A writer takes a winter caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel with his wife and young son. The hotel is isolated, vast, and empty. It does not stay empty.

Why it’s similar to Backrooms: Kubrick’s Overlook is the most famous impossible space in cinema history — a hotel that is geometrically inconsistent, architecturally wrong, and somehow larger on the inside than any building has a right to be. The Overlook doesn’t just contain evil. It generates it. The space is the source.

What sets it apart: The Shining has characters worth caring about, a psychological depth, and a central performance from Jack Nicholson that Backrooms never attempts. It’s also the most mainstream film on this list — if you haven’t seen it, that’s the real emergency here.

Wrong Reality: Films Where the Rules Have Changed

These are films where the horror isn’t spatial but ontological — the world around the characters is operating according to rules they were never told. Physics behaves differently. Time moves wrong. The familiar becomes alien without warning and without explanation. You don’t need to be trapped in a room to feel trapped. Sometimes the entire world is the room.

Annihilation (2018)

A biologist joins a secret expedition into a mysterious quarantined zone known as the Shimmer — an area where the laws of nature appear to have been quietly rewritten. Animals mutate. Plants grow in human shapes. The expedition members begin to change.

Why it’s similar to Backrooms: The Shimmer is a liminal space in the purest sense — a zone between the world as it is and the world as something else has decided it should be. Alex Garland never explains what the Shimmer is or where it came from, and the film is considerably stronger for that restraint. The dread here, as in Backrooms, comes from the gap between the familiar and the wrong.

What sets it apart: Annihilation is the most visually beautiful film on this list. Where Backrooms is fluorescent and yellow and suffocating, Annihilation is lush, overgrown, and strangely seductive. The horror doesn’t repel you. It pulls you in. Natalie Portman is extraordinary.

It Ends (2023)

A woman returns to her hometown in Ireland after years abroad and finds that something has changed — in the landscape, in the people, and in herself. The world she grew up in no longer operates the way she remembers.

Why it’s similar to Backrooms: Kane Parsons himself cited It Ends as an influence — which tells you everything you need to know about its relevance here. The film shares Backrooms‘ interest in a world that remembers things slightly wrong, and its slow, patient approach to dread. Nothing announces itself as supernatural. Everything simply feels off.

What sets it apart: It Ends is the most grounded and emotionally rooted film in this section — it’s as much about grief and displacement as it is about horror. The wrongness here is personal as much as spatial. Slower than Backrooms, quieter, and ultimately more devastating.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

Set in 1983, in a mysterious research facility called Arboria. A young woman is held captive by a doctor who may or may not be losing his mind. The facility operates according to its own internal logic. The outside world barely exists.

Why it’s similar to Backrooms: Arboria is a liminal space in institutional form — a building designed to contain something, with rules that only its architect understands. The film shares Backrooms‘ corporate horror aesthetic, its fluorescent dread, and its refusal to explain itself in conventional narrative terms.

What sets it apart: Beyond the Black Rainbow is the most formally demanding film on this list — slow, hypnotic, and deliberately alienating. It is less a story than an experience. Director Panos Cosmatos described it as “a film that plays like a memory of a movie you’ve never seen.” I find that an accurate description. Not for everyone. Absolutely for some people.

Under the Skin (2013)

An unnamed woman drives through Scotland in a van, picking up men. What she is and what she wants becomes gradually, horribly clear.

Why it’s similar to Backrooms: The spaces Scarlett Johansson lures her victims into are among the most genuinely liminal in cinema — featureless black voids where the rules of physics no longer apply, where depth is impossible to judge, where the familiar becomes something ancient and predatory. Jonathan Glazer shot several scenes with hidden cameras and non-actors, creating an authenticity that makes the surreal sequences hit harder by contrast.

What sets it apart: Under the Skin is the only film on this list where the liminal space is a person as much as a place. The wrongness here is embodied rather than architectural. One of the most unsettling films of the last decade — and one of the most underseen.

Wrong Format: Films Where the Camera Is the Threat

I have a soft spot for this category. Found footage and analog horror are the formats I return to most — and the ones that, when they work, produce a specific kind of dread that no conventional film can replicate. The camera doesn’t just record what’s happening. It implicates you in it. You’re not watching someone’s nightmare. You’re watching their evidence.

Backrooms understands this. So do these four films.

The Rolling Giant (2023) — YouTube

A teenage vlogger discovers a mysterious staircase in an empty field leading underground to a supernatural recreation of a demolished Dallas mall. Something massive is down there with him. It rolls.

Why it’s similar to Backrooms: This is Kane Parsons’ other masterwork — made between the Backrooms series and the feature film, and arguably his most accomplished work to date. The same analog horror aesthetic, the same found footage grammar, the same sustained dread of a space that shouldn’t exist. The underground mall is one of the most effective liminal environments Parsons has ever created. And the Rolling Giant itself — a massive cardboard puppet on wheels — is one of analog horror’s great antagonists.

What sets it apart: Where the Backrooms series is corporate and conspiratorial, The Rolling Giant is melancholic. The mall it recreates was real — Valley View Center in Dallas, demolished in May 2023. The horror here carries genuine grief for a place that no longer exists. I find that emotional dimension gives it a weight that most found footage films never reach. Watch it in one sitting, in the dark, with headphones.

Skinamarink (2022)

Two children wake up in the middle of the night. Their father is gone. The doors and windows have disappeared. Something is in the house with them, speaking to them from the dark.

Why it’s similar to Backrooms: Skinamarink is liminal horror taken to its absolute logical extreme — a film constructed almost entirely from shots of ceilings, floors, and corners, with dialogue barely audible and narrative almost entirely absent. The house in this film operates exactly like the Backrooms: a domestic space that has become something else entirely, with its own rules and its own agenda.

What sets it apart: This is the most divisive film on this list by some distance. Kyle Edward Ball made it for $15,000 and it went viral on TikTok before receiving a theatrical release. Half of its audience found it unwatchable. The other half consider it a genuine horror landmark. I find myself in the second camp — but I’d recommend watching a trailer first to calibrate your tolerance for its particular brand of deliberate, suffocating slowness.

Exit 8 (2024)

A man is walking through an underground passage — the kind you find beneath any large Japanese train station. He needs to reach Exit 8. The passage loops. Something is wrong with the other people in the corridor. Some of them are not quite right.

Why it’s similar to Backrooms: Exit 8 is the most purely liminal film on this list — an underground passage, a looping space, and the specific dread of a public non-place that has stopped behaving like one. It is, in essence, a feature-length version of the original Backrooms creepypasta: you’ve ended up somewhere familiar that has quietly become something else. I watched it at midnight and spent the next morning slightly uneasy in every corridor I walked through.

What sets it apart: Where most liminal horror films build slowly, Exit 8 is compact and precise — more puzzle than atmosphere, more game logic than conventional narrative. It shares DNA with the video game format as much as cinema. If you’ve ever played a horror game and felt the specific dread of a looping level, Exit 8 will feel immediately familiar.

Which One to Watch First?

Not every film on this list delivers the same kind of dread. Here’s where to start depending on what Backrooms did to you.

If the architecture got under your skin → Vivarium. The most accessible entry point on this list — a recognisable world made quietly, completely wrong. Watch it the same night.

If you want the purest found footage experience → The Rolling Giant. Free on YouTube, 50 minutes, and in some ways more frightening than the feature film it helped inspire. Essential.

If you want something mainstream and undeniable → The Shining. If you haven’t seen it, that’s the real emergency. If you have, watch it again with the Backrooms fresh in your mind. Kubrick’s Overlook hits differently now.

If you want the most formally challenging experience → Skinamarink. No hand-holding, no conventional narrative, no exits. The film that goes furthest in the direction Backrooms points toward.

If you want something beautiful as well as frightening → Annihilation. The only film on this list that makes you want to walk into the horror rather than run from it.

If you want something completely unlike anything else → Beyond the Black Rainbow or Under the Skin. Both are singular, both are demanding, and both will stay with you considerably longer than their runtimes suggest.

If you want the most disorienting loop experience → Exit 8. Compact, precise, and the film most likely to make you feel slightly wrong in everyday corridors afterwards.

If you want to go deepest into the Backrooms mythology → Start with the Kane Pixels YouTube series, work through The Rolling Giant, then watch the film again. By the third viewing, the Easter eggs and connections start to reveal themselves.

Read Our Full Backrooms Review

If this list brought you here before you’ve seen the film — go watch it first. Our full spoiler-free review of Backrooms (2026) is waiting for you when you get back, along with a complete breakdown of the ending, the Async mythology, and everything the film doesn’t quite explain.

→ [Backrooms (2026): Spoiler-Free Review & Where to Watch]

Der Beitrag Movies Like Backrooms (2026): 11 Films That Share Its Liminal Dread erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

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.

Directed by David Bruckner — who would later go on to direct The Black Phone and the Hellraiser reboot — and based on Adam Nevill’s 2011 novel of the same name, The Ritual debuted in UK cinemas in October 2017 before landing on Netflix in February 2018. It arrived quietly and built its reputation through word of mouth. That reputation is deserved.

The Story: What The Ritual Is About

Five friends plan a hiking trip through Sweden’s Sarek National Park. Before they leave, one of them — Rob — is killed during a robbery gone wrong. Six months later, the remaining four set out anyway, determined to honour his memory.

They don’t make it far before things go wrong. Mutilated animals. Strange symbols carved into trees. Occult objects in abandoned cabins. Something is in the forest with them. Something that has been there for a very long time.

The Ritual: Trailer

Review: The Ritual (Spoiler-Free)

The first thing The Ritual gets right is its setting. The (Scandinavian) forest — vast, ancient, and utterly indifferent to human presence — does most of the heavy lifting before anything supernatural has even happened. The trees swallow the group. The trails disappear. Darkness and disorientation become enemies before whatever is hunting them does. I find that sequencing precise: by the time the film reveals what is out there, you are already convinced that the forest itself is hostile.

The performances are strong across the board. Rafe Spall carries the film’s emotional weight — guilt, grief, and the particular strain of male friendship that doesn’t know how to talk about either — without ever tipping into melodrama. The group dynamic feels lived-in and believable, which matters enormously in a film that depends on you caring whether these people survive.

The film draws inevitable comparisons to The Blair Witch Project — four people, a forest, something they can’t see — and they’re not entirely wrong. But The Ritual is more direct and considerably less subtle than Blair Witch. Where Blair Witch withholds everything, Bruckner eventually shows his hand, blending cabin horror, backwoods brutality, and Norse mythology into something that feels genuinely original despite its familiar components. It’s a combination I didn’t expect to work as well as it does.

The camerawork deserves special mention — many scenes derive their unsettling authenticity directly from how they’re shot, and Bruckner uses the forest’s natural darkness with real intelligence. And unlike many horror films that throw in a supernatural element as an afterthought, The Ritual earns its monster. The mythological dimension gives the film a texture that pure survival horror rarely achieves.

The one element that divided audiences is the finale. Some viewers found the resolution undercooked after such a disciplined buildup — feeling that the film lost its nerve at the moment it needed it most. I disagree. I find the finale the most interesting part of the film — the moment where The Ritual fully commits to its mythological ambitions and goes somewhere genuinely unexpected. It won’t be for everyone. It was absolutely for me. But you can’t please everyone, right?

Oh – i almost forgot: One classic genre element makes its obligatory appearance. Yes, someone twists their ankle. You will see it coming. So will they. They go into the forest anyway.

Verdict

The Ritual doesn’t reinvent the forest horror genre. What it does is execute it with more craft, more atmosphere, and more mythological ambition than almost anything else in the subgenre. David Bruckner knows exactly how to use a forest — and exactly how long to keep you in it before showing you what lives there.

If you’ve ever felt uneasy walking through trees at dusk, The Ritual will remind you why.

Where to Watch The Ritual

Similar Films to The Ritual

The Ritual sits at the intersection of folk horror, survival thriller, and creature feature — which means its closest relatives come from several different directions. If one element hooked you more than the others, start there.

The Descent (2005) — Six women explore an uncharted cave system and encounter something that shouldn’t be there. The closest comparison in terms of sustained claustrophobic dread and creature design. One of the best British horror films ever made.

Trollhunter (2010) — Found footage, Scandinavian wilderness, ancient creatures from Norse mythology. The tonal opposite of The Ritual — deadpan where this is dread — but sharing the same mythological DNA. Read our full review.

Eden Lake (2008) — A couple’s weekend retreat is ruined by a group of increasingly violent locals. British, brutal, and relentlessly tense. Shares The Ritual‘s sense of ordinary people trapped somewhere they can’t escape, with threat coming from multiple directions at once.

Exists (2014) — Not the same mythology, not the same country, not the same format — Exists is found footage where The Ritual is not. But if what you loved was the sense of something enormous and hostile in a forest that doesn’t want you there, Exists delivers exactly that. Eduardo Sánchez knows his way around a treeline. Read our full review.

Der Beitrag The Ritual (2017): When the Forest Doesn’t Let You Leave erschien zuerst auf found-footage.com.

And yet — Bigfoot endures. The legend of a humanoid creature roaming the forests of North America has had a devoted global fanbase for decades, and it keeps finding its way onto the screen. The range of films is vast: from low-budget indie horror to family-friendly classics like Harry and the Hendersons (1987).

The problem is the signal-to-noise ratio. For every film that takes the mythology seriously, there are ten that treat it as a punchline.

This list is the signal. A small, carefully curated selection of Bigfoot films that actually work — films worth watching on a dedicated Bigfoot movie night, whether you’re in it for the scares, the mythology, or just the spectacle of something enormous moving through the trees. And one thing that might surprise you: a remarkable number of the best Bigfoot films are found footage movies. It turns out the shaky cam and the forest legend were made for each other.

The 11 Best Bigfoot Movies

Exists (2014): The Found Footage Bigfoot Film That Actually Delivers

A weekend in a remote forest cabin — five friends, no agenda, nothing that could go wrong. They’re there to have fun, disconnect, and forget about the real world for a few days. That assumption doesn’t survive the first night. Something is out there in the trees. At first it keeps its distance, circling, watching. Then it doesn’t.

Directed by Eduardo Sánchez — one half of the duo behind The Blair Witch Project — Exists is a found footage film that uses the shaky cam format exactly as it should be used: to put you in the middle of something you can’t control and can’t escape. The creature feels genuinely threatening rather than cartoonish, and the forest setting is used with real intelligence. It doesn’t just look scary. It feels like somewhere you shouldn’t be.

Without giving too much away: the ending will not leave you feeling shortchanged. One of the strongest found footage creature features of the last decade — and essential viewing for anyone serious about the genre.

Want to know more? Check out our full review of Exists!

Where to watch Exists

Primal Rage (2016): Carnage in the Forest

Not found footage

In the forests of North America, a research team sets out to investigate what appear to be traces of the legendary Bigfoot. The deeper they push into the wilderness, the clearer it becomes that this is far more than a rumour. The creature has already found them — and the pursuit has begun.

Primal Rage delivers exactly what it promises: relentless splatter sequences and a creature that doesn’t hold back. It won’t win any awards for dialogue or acting depth, but that’s not why you watch it. This is a film that commits fully to its creature and its carnage, and on those terms it delivers. One firm recommendation: watch it in the original English version. I don’t know about other langauges, but the German dubbing (the version i saw) is, to put it charitably, an unintentional comedy. Save yourself the trouble.

Where to watch Primal Rage

Willow Creek (2013): Less Is More

Jim (Bryce Johnson) is an amateur filmmaker with one goal: to get to the bottom of the Bigfoot legend. He drags his sceptical girlfriend Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) along to Willow Creek — the heart of Bigfoot country. After a series of interviews with locals, the two pitch their tent and head into the forest. By the time darkness falls, it becomes very clear that they are not alone.

Willow Creek takes its time getting started — the interview sequences in the first act are deliberately slow, building atmosphere rather than tension. But once the film shifts into the forest, it picks up fast and doesn’t let go. Unsettling sounds, an unseen presence, and the particular dread of being somewhere you can’t leave — director Bobcat Goldthwait wrings genuine tension out of remarkably simple means. One of the most effective found footage entries in the Bigfoot genre.

Where to watch Willow Creek

Strange Wilderness (2008): The Comedy Relief

Not found footage

Peter (Steve Zahn) is the host of a wildlife TV show that’s hemorrhaging viewers and on the verge of cancellation. His last-ditch plan to save it: head into the wilderness and capture proof of the legendary Bigfoot on camera. Naturally, things don’t go according to plan.

Strange Wilderness is pure comedy — no scares, no tension, no mythology. What it has instead is a lot of laughs, some genuinely absurd set pieces, and the kind of screwball energy that makes it easy to watch on a Friday night without thinking too hard. Director Fred Wolf combines the best elements of road trip comedy and outdoor adventure, and Steve Zahn is reliably entertaining in the lead. If you’re looking for something lighter between the horror entries on this list, Strange Wilderness is exactly that — unpretentious, funny, and completely aware of what it is.

Where to Watch Strange Wilderness

Abominable (2006): The Good Bad Movie

Not found footage

Preston Rogers was injured in a climbing accident and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since. A year later, he returns to the region where it happened — only to find that his traumatic memories are the least of his problems. A killer Yeti is moving through the mountains, and it has developed a taste for people.

Ryan Schifrin’s Abominable pulls you into a mountain world where something terrible is always just around the corner. The film does a solid job of portraying its protagonist’s inner struggle — a man trying to come to terms with his past while nobody believes his warnings about a very present danger.

Abominable falls squarely into the category of “good bad movies” — the kind of film that has no business being as enjoyable as it is. Like a lazy Sunday afternoon movie that you know isn’t great, can’t stop watching anyway, and somehow remember fondly for years afterwards. Don’t go in expecting a masterpiece. Do go in expecting a good time.

Where to Watch Abominable

The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot (2018): The Wildcard That Works

Not found footage

Calvin Barr is a reclusive war veteran living a quiet, solitary life. Nobody knows that he is the man who killed Adolf Hitler almost fifty years ago. His peace is shattered when he is called back into service to deal with a new threat — the legendary Bigfoot, who is roaming the forests of Canada and carrying a disease that could wipe out humanity.

Yes, the title gives away the plot. No, that doesn’t matter. The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot is one of the brightest stars in the Bigfoot film universe — a genuinely surprising genre hybrid that earns its absurd premise through a charismatic lead performance, a calm and measured pace, and a quiet melancholy that you won’t see coming. And when the Bigfoot showdown finally arrives, it delivers. One of the most original entries on this list.

Where to Watch The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot

The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972): Where It All Began

Documentary / Proto-Found Footage

A small town in rural Arkansas. A series of sightings. Locals who swear something is out there — something large, something fast, something that doesn’t want to be found.

The Legend of Boggy Creek is the grandfather of the Bigfoot film. Made in 1972 by Charles B. Pierce on a shoestring budget, it blends dramatic recreations with real testimony from local witnesses in a documentary style that predates the found footage genre by decades — and arguably helped invent it. The result is rough around the edges, deliberately paced, and quietly unsettling in a way that glossier productions rarely manage.

If you approach it as a historical document rather than a conventional horror film, it rewards the patience. This is where the Bigfoot movie began — and you can feel that weight in every grainy, atmospheric frame.

Where to Watch the Legend of Boggy Creek

Embedded (2012): The Underseen Gem

A reporter and his cameraman head into the forest to investigate the disappearance of a boy from a remote village. With the help of local hunters, they try to track down the missing child — and stumble onto the trail of something else entirely. Something that has already noticed them.

Michael Bafaro’s Embedded is a found footage horror film that keeps the tension wound tight from start to finish through rapid scene changes and a camera that never lets you settle. The camerawork is genuinely impressive for a production of this size, and the forest setting does exactly what it should — it feels vast, disorienting, and deeply unwelcoming. Essential viewing for fans of creature horror and Bigfoot mythology alike.

Where to Wacth Embedded

The Lost Coast Tapes (2012): A Twist You Won’t See Coming…

Years ago, Sean destroyed the career of his rival Carl by exposing his show as a hoax. Now Carl claims to have discovered the body of a real Bigfoot. Sean heads into the wilderness with his team to get to the bottom of it — convinced it’s another fraud. In the dense forests of Northern California, however, it becomes clear that there may be more than one Sasquatch out there, and not all of them are dead.

This found footage film manages to keep the tension alive from start to finish without ever telegraphing its finale — and what a finale it is. The camera crew does convincing work capturing the fear of the unknown in shaky, disorienting footage. The film also takes an interesting angle on the Bigfoot mythology that sets it apart from most entries in the genre. Definitely worth your time.

Where to Watch The Lost Coast Tapes

Nightbeasts (2010): Don’t Judge It By Its Cover

Not found footage

Don’t let the cheap-looking cover fool you — Nightbeasts scores surprisingly well on both Rotten Tomatoes (88% on the Popcornmeter) and IMDB, and for good reason.

A father takes his son on a weekend hunting trip deep in the forest. They are not alone. Something unknown is out there in the dark — and it isn’t friendly.

This independent production has more to offer than its low-budget appearance suggests. Yes, some of the creature costumes are more likely to raise a smile than a scream. But the film more than compensates with genuinely effective lighting, strong sound design, and — perhaps most surprisingly — a respectful and interesting treatment of Native American mythology that gives the Bigfoot legend real cultural depth. Not the strongest film on this list, but an absolute must-watch for dedicated Bigfoot fans.

Where to Watch Nightbeasts

Harry and the Hendersons (1987): The Family Classic

Not found footage — family comedy

The Henderson family is driving home from a camping trip when they accidentally hit a large, hairy creature with their car. Convinced it’s dead, they strap it to the roof and bring it home. It is not dead. It is Bigfoot. And it is now living in their house.

Harry and the Hendersons is the wildcard on this list — and deliberately so. No scares, no shaky cam, no dark forests. Just a warm, funny, genuinely charming family film that treats its creature with more dignity and affection than almost any other Bigfoot movie ever made. Harry — brought to life through remarkable practical effects that won an Academy Award — is not a monster. He is a gentle giant, and the film’s real subject is what happens when something wild and innocent collides with suburban American life.

It shouldn’t work alongside the horror entries on this list. It does. Because at its core, Harry and the Hendersons asks the same question every Bigfoot film asks — what if he’s real? — and simply chooses to answer it with warmth instead of terror. A classic for a reason.

Where to Harry and the Hendersons

Which Bigfoot Movie Should You Watch First?

Not every Bigfoot movie is created equal — and after eleven entries, you deserve a shortcut. Here’s a quick guide to where to start depending on what kind of night you’re having.

If you want the best pure found footage experience → Exists. The gold standard of the Bigfoot found footage film. Eduardo Sánchez knows exactly what he’s doing.

If you want slow-burn atmosphere over jump scares → Willow Creek. Patient, understated, and quietly terrifying by the time the lights go out.

If you want to understand where it all started → The Legend of Boggy Creek. Essential genre history.

If you want something completely original → The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot. Nothing else on this list sounds like it.

If you want gore and spectacle → Primal Rage. No depth, no pretension, maximum carnage.

If you’re watching with kids or non-horror fans → Harry and the Hendersons. The gateway drug to the entire genre.

If you want a fun Friday night with friends → Strange Wilderness. Low stakes, high laughs.

Other Bigfoot Movies Worth Mentioning

The list above covers the essentials — but the Bigfoot filmography runs deep. A few more titles worth knowing if you’ve worked through the main list and want to keep going:

Hunting Grounds / Valley of the Sasquatch (2015) — A family encounters a territorial clan of Bigfoot creatures in the Pacific Northwest. Better creature design than most and a genuinely tense second act. Worth a watch for dedicated fans.

Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues (1985) — The sequel to Legend of Boggy Creek, led by the original director. Completely unhinged in the best possible way. Best watched with friends and low expectations.

Stomping Ground (2014) — A found footage entry that takes the relationship drama as seriously as the creature horror. Uneven but ambitious, and more emotionally grounded than most films in the genre.

Der Beitrag The Best Bigfoot Movies: 11 Films That Take the Legend Seriously 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.