20 Best Found Footage Horror Movies Ever
10. Noroi: The Curse
Noroi: The Curse turned 20 years old last year, and has lost none of its bracing impact as one of the most believable of all the fake-doc found footage films.
Noroi is presented as the completed documentary of a paranormal researcher who went missing while investigating a curse, showing the events that led up to his disappearance.
Director Kōji Shiraishi shrewdly makes use of relatively accessible camera technology - which, to modern eyes, can't help but look dated - to better ground the footage in a sense of reality. Beyond its style, the down-to-Earth performances also help sell what we're seeing as believably real up to a point, and even when it finally lets loose with something elevated during its sublimely creepy finale, it's delivered in a way that feels consistent with everything leading up to it.
That Shiraishi manages to do all this and hold the viewer's attention for almost two full hours - in a genre typically better suited to short runtimes, no less - is astonishingly impressive.