#The 12 Scariest Found Footage Horror Movies

A found-footage film that needs no introduction, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s “The Blair Witch Project” claims to tell the story of three student filmmakers who disappeared after trekking into the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland, to film a documentary about a local legend. One of the most successful independent films ever given its no-budget origins, “The Blair Witch Project” holds up as a terrifying paragon of found-footage horror (as well as the movie responsible for popularizing the format).

Much of the film’s success can be traced back to the highly convincing nature of its cinema-verité presentation: Heather (Heather Donahue), the crew’s director, wields a color camcorder, while cinematographer Josh (Joshua Leonard) operates a 16mm, black-and-white camera, and Mike (Michael Williams) does the sound. Together, this trio’s footage makes up everything audiences see, from unsettling stick figures hanging in the trees to ominous sounds that ring out as they become hopelessly lost in the forest.

But what makes the film so effective, even more than its many imitators, is its insidious manner of weaponizing the audience’s imagination, leaving the exact nature of the terrors befalling its characters ambiguous so that the audience fills in the blanks itself. “I’m scared to close my eyes, I’m scared to open them!” says Heather at one point, pinpointing the spine-chillingly effective power of this all-time horror classic.