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Following the massive found-footage horror surge of the 2000s inspired by The Blair Witch Project, the category didn't disappear but rather evolved into new forms. Viewers witnessed the rise of computer-screen films, newly designed versions of the first-person perspective, and ambitious single-shot films dominating the screens where unsteady footage and improbably dogged camera operators once ruled.

One major outlier to this pattern is the continuing V/H/S franchise, a horror anthology that spawned its own surge in short-form horror and has kept the found-footage dream alive through multiple themed installments. The eighth in the franchise, 2025’s V/H/S Halloween, features several shorts that all occur around Halloween, strung together with a framing narrative (“Diet Phantasma”) that involves a completely detached scientist leading a set of consumer product tests on a soda drink that eliminates the people trying it in a variety of messy, over-the-top ways.

At V/H/S Halloween’s global debut at the 2025 edition of the Fantastic Fest film festival, each of the V/H/S Halloween filmmakers assembled for a question-and-answer session where director Anna Zlokovic characterized first-person scary movies as “hard as fuck to shoot.” Her fellow filmmakers applauded in response. They later discussed why they believe shooting a found-footage project is tougher — or in some instances, simpler! — than making a conventional horror movie.

The discussion has been condensed for concision and understanding.

What Makes Found-Footage Horror So Difficult to Shoot?

Micheline Pitt, director of “Home Haunt”: In my view the most challenging thing as an creator is being limited by your artistic vision, because everything has to be motivated by the character operating the camera. So I believe that's the thing that's hard as fuck for me, is to distance myself from my imagination and my ideas, and needing to remain in a box.

Another director, filmmaker of “Kidprint”: I actually told her recently — I agree with that, but I also differ with it vehemently in a very specific way, because I greatly enjoy an unrestricted environment that's all-around. I discovered this to be so freeing, because the blocking and the coverage are the same. In traditional filmmaking, the positioning and the coverage are diametrically opposed.

If the actor has to look left, the coverage has to face right. And the reality that once you block the scene [in a found-footage movie], you have figured out your shots — that was so amazing to me. I have watched numerous first-person movies, but until you shoot your first found-footage project… Day one, you're like, “Ohhh!”

So once you understand where the character goes, that's the coverage — the camera doesn't move left when the actor goes right, the lens advances when the character progresses. You shoot the scene one time, and that's all — we don't have to capture individual dialogues. It progresses in one direction, it reaches the end, and now we proceed in the next direction. As a storyteller seeking simplicity, avoiding a standard multi-angle shot in a long time, I was like, "This is cool, this restriction proves freeing, because you only have to determine the same thing once."

A third director, director of “Coochie Coochie Coo”: In my opinion the hard part is the audience's acceptance for the viewers. Each detail has to feel real. The audio has to seem like it's genuinely occurring. The performances have to appear believable. If you have an element like an grown man in a diaper, how do you make that as plausible? It's absurd, but you have to make it feel like it fits in the environment properly. I found that to be challenging — you can lose people really at any point. It only requires one fuck-up.

Another filmmaker, creator of “Diet Phantasma”: I concur with Alex — once you finalize the movement, it's great. But when you've got so many physical effects occurring at one time, and ensuring you're capturing it and not fucking up, and then setup takes — you only get a certain amount of opportunities to get all these elements right.

The filming location had a big wall in the path, and you couldn't hear anyone. Alex's [shoot] seems like very enjoyable. Ours was extremely difficult. We had only 72 hours to complete it. It is freeing, because with found footage, you can take certain liberties. Even if you make a mistake, it was going to look like low-quality regardless, because you're adding effects, or you're employing a low-quality camera. So it's beneficial and it's bad.

R.H. Norman, filmmaker of “Home Haunt”: In my view finding rhythm is very challenging if you're filming primarily single takes. The method we used was, "Alright, this was filmed continuously. There's this guy, the father, and he operates the camera, and those are our cuts." That required a many simulated single shots. But you really have to live in the moment. You really have to observe precisely your shot appears, because what is captured by the camera, and in certain cases, there's no cutting around it.

We knew we only had two or three attempts for each scene, because ours was very ambitious. We attempted to concentrate on discovering varying paces between the takes, because we didn't know what we were going to get in post-production. And the true difficulty with first-person filming is, you're needing to conceal those cuts on shifting mist, on all sorts of stuff, and you really never know where those edits are will be placed, and if they're will undermine your whole enterprise of trying to feel like a seamless point-of-view lens traveling through a realistic environment.

The director: You should try to avoid concealing it with glitches as much as you can, but you must sometimes, because the shit's hard.

Her colleague: In fact, she's right. This is easy. Simply add glitches the content out of it.

Paco Plaza, director of “Ut Supra Sic Infra”: For me, the biggest thing is making the audience accept the people using the camera would persist, rather than fleeing. That’s additionally the most important element. There are some first-person scenarios where I just cannot accept the characters would continue recording.

And I think the camera should consistently be delayed to any event, because that happens in reality. For me, the illusion is destroyed if the camera is already there, expecting something to occur. If you are here, recording, and you hear a noise and pan toward it, that sound is already gone. And I think that creates a feeling of authenticity that it's crucial to preserve.

Which Is the Single Shot in Your Movie That You're Proudest Of?

Perry: The protagonist sitting at a four-monitor deck of video editing, with four different videos playing out at the identical moment. That's completely practical. We filmed those clips previously. Then the editing team processed them, and then we put them on multiple devices connected to four monitors.

That shot of the person sitting there with four different videotapes running — I was like, 'This is the visual I envisioned out of this film.' If it was the only still I viewed of this movie, I would be starting it immediately: 'This looks cool!' But it was more difficult than it looks, because it's like multiple art people pressing spacebars at the same time. It appears straightforward, but it took three days of preparation to get to that image.