10 Found Footage Movies That Are Actually Worth Your Time

What's the easiest way to justify your movie using the found footage trope? How do you make the audience stop questioning why the guy with the camera continues to hold the camera in situations where any reasonable person would chuck their filming equipment at whatever terrible creature is currently trying to eat him?

You make filming all those terrible things his job. That decision singlehandedly removes all the unnecessary shackles from REC, which then allows the movie to fire on all cylinders.

Documenting the night shift of a local fire department for her late-night TV series While You're Sleeping, a reporter and her cameraman accompany the firemen who are dispatched to an apartment building where a screaming old woman appears to be trapped in her apartment.

From there it moves into pretty standard zombie territory, which turns out to be remarkably fertile ground for the first-person POV style. Obviously, the scares feel bigger when they're being shown from that perspective, but the various camera effects - night vision, spotlighting, etc - simultaneously act as a security blanket from the darkness while creating some of the most tense moments in the film.

And that ending? Well, that's an ending that doesn't go away with a good night's sleep.