Point-of-View (POV) and Found Footage Horror Movies

This infamous Italian gore-fest is told partially in "found footage" format, as a rescue mission discovers a documentary film crew's missing tapes revealing its ghastly encounter with indigenous Amazonian cannibals.

This realistic British documentary-styled film aired on BBC on Halloween 1992, purporting to be a live broadcast investigating a report of a haunted house. The (not really live) events shown on screen reportedly caused a mini War of the Worlds-type freakout amongst viewers, and the movie has never been shown again on British TV.

In this dark Belgian cult hit, a documentary film crew follows a serial killer who murders people on camera, nonchanlantly explaining his approach.

In this made-for-TV movie that originally aired on the UPN television network, a teenager named Tommy is filming his family's Thanksgiving dinner when he captures aliens on his video camera.The aliens quickly follow him home and, well, do some "probing" around. The ahead-of-its-time movie plays like Signs meets The Blair Witch Project (it even includes a tearful farewell from Tommy, a la Blair Witch's oft-parodied scene) and predates both.

This intelligent faux documentary investigates the "Jersey Devil murders," the 1995 killings of two hosts of a local public access TV show called Fact or Fiction. The last half of the film consists largely of footage of the "last broadcast" of the show, an Internet transmission from the Pine Barrens in New Jersey, as the show's hosts attempted to uncover evidence of the legendary New Jersey Devil. Similarities to The Blair Witch Project brought the film a good deal of attention, along with theories that The Last Broadcast influenced Blair Witch's production.

This surprise hit set the standard for "POV" movies, delivering the chilling tale of a documentary crew filming the story of a legendary witch haunting the Maryland woods. Ad-libbed dialogue and disorienting camerawork heighten the realism. And the nausea.

In this British film, wedding photographer Max moonlights as a serial killer, making home movies of himself as he murders people. He supposedly has taped over the horror movie that we, the audience, has rented in order to make a point about the nature of violence and voyeurism. Good luck getting your $4 back from Blockbuster.

B-movie action director Albert Pyun (Cyborg) ventured into horror with this intriguing, ambitious tale of an alien invasion told in "real time" from the point of view of a small town police officer's dashboard camera. The film is essentially one continuous shot, showing police investigating a meteor that turns out to contain a contagious alien force that inhabits the town's citizens and turns them into zombie-like drones -- like being at ground zero of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Doug, a geeky high-tech stalker, uses hidden cameras to spy on Amy, the object of his obsession, in this thriller told from the point of view of Doug's cameras. He uses his technology to study Amy and learn her habits, tastes and weaknesses in order to get close to her.

Taking place in a world in which slasher movie villains are real, this "mockumentary" traces the rise to fame of a serial killer named Leslie Vernon.The first half is told through the first-person lens of the documentary camera, while the second half jumps to a traditional third-person as the killer begins stalking the film crew.