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Following the massive found-footage horror surge of the 2000s following The Blair Witch Project, the subgenre didn't disappear but rather evolved into new forms. Audiences saw the emergence of “screenlife” movies, freshly stylized versions of the first-person perspective, and showy one-take movies dominating the screens where unsteady footage and unbelievably persistent camera operators once ruled.

A significant exception to this pattern is the ongoing V/H/S franchise, a scary-story collection that spawned its own boom in short-form horror and has kept the found-footage dream alive through seven seasonal releases. The latest in the franchise, 2025’s V/H/S Halloween, includes several short films that all occur around the spooky season, strung together with a framing narrative (“Diet Phantasma”) that follows a brutally disengaged researcher leading a series of product experiments on a soda drink that eliminates the people sampling it in a range of messy, over-the-top ways.

At V/H/S Halloween’s world premiere at the 2025 version of the Fantastic Fest film festival, all seven V/H/S Halloween filmmakers assembled for a question-and-answer session where director Anna Zlokovic characterized found-footage horror as “extremely difficult to shoot.” Her co-directors applauded in response. They later explained why they feel shooting a first-person film is more difficult — or in some instances, easier! — than making a conventional horror movie.

The discussion has been edited for brevity and clarity.

What Makes First-Person Scary Movies So Difficult to Film?

Micheline Pitt, co-director of “Home Haunt”: I think the biggest aspect as an artist is being limited by your artistic vision, because everything has to be justified by the person holding the camera. So I think that's the part that's hard as fuck for me, is to separate myself from my creativity and my ideas, and needing to remain in a confined space.

Another director, director of “Kidprint”: I actually told her this last night — I agree with that, but I also disagree with it vehemently in a particular way, because I really love an unrestricted environment that's all-around. I discovered this to be so liberating, because the blocking and the coverage are the identical. In traditional filmmaking, the positioning and the shots are diametrically opposed.

If the actor has to look left, the camera angle has to face right. And the fact that once you block the scene [in a first-person film], you have determined your coverage — that was so amazing to me. I have watched 500 found-footage films, but until you shoot your first found-footage project… Day one, you're like, “Ohhh!”

So once you understand where the character moves, that's the coverage — the camera doesn't shift left when the actor goes right, the lens moves forward when the character moves forward. You shoot the sequence one time, and that's all — we avoid capture individual dialogues. It moves in one direction, it arrives at the end, and now we proceed in the next direction. As a frustrated narrative filmmaker, who hasn't shot a standard multi-angle shot in years, I was like, "This is cool, this restriction proves freeing, because you just need to figure out the identical element one time."

Anna Zlokovic, director of “Coochie Coochie Coo”: I think the hard part is the suspension of disbelief for the viewers. Each detail has to appear authentic. The sound has to feel like it's actually happening. The acting have to feel grounded. If you have an element like an grown man in a diaper, how do you make that as realistic? It's absurd, but you have to create the sense like it exists in the environment correctly. I discovered that to be challenging — you can lose people easily at any point. It only requires a single mistake.

Another filmmaker, creator of “Diet Phantasma”: I concur with Alex — once you get the blocking down, it's great. But when you've got numerous practical effects occurring at one time, and ensuring you're panning onto it and not fucking up, and then preparation attempts — you only get a limited number of opportunities to get all these elements right.

Our set had a big wall in the way, and you couldn't hear anybody. Alex's [shoot] seems like very enjoyable. Our project was extremely difficult. I only had 72 hours to complete it. It is liberating, because with found footage, you can take certain liberties. Even if you do fuck it up, it was destined to appear like low-quality regardless, because you're adding effects, or you're employing a garbage camera. So it's good and it's bad.

R.H. Norman, co-director of “Home Haunt”: In my view finding rhythm is quite difficult if you're filming primarily single takes. Our approach was, "Alright, this is filmed continuously. There's this guy, the dad, and he operates the camera, and that creates our cuts." That required a many simulated single shots. But you really have to be present. You need to observe exactly how your scene feels, because what's going into the camera, and in some instances, there's no editing solution.

We knew we only had a few takes per shot, because ours was very ambitious. We really tried to concentrate on finding different rhythms between the attempts, because we were unsure what we were would achieve in editing. And the true difficulty with first-person filming is, you're needing to conceal those cuts on moving fog, on all sorts of stuff, and you really never know where those cuts are going to live, and if they're going to betray your entire project of trying to feel like a seamless first-person camera traveling through a three-dimensional space.

Zlokovic: You should try to avoid trying to hide it with glitches as much as you can, but you have to occasionally, because the process is difficult.

Norman: In fact, she's right. It is simple. Just glitch the content out of it.

Paco Plaza, creator of “Ut Supra Sic Infra”: For me, the most challenging aspect is convincing the audience accept the characters using the camera would persist, instead of running away. That’s also the most important element. There are some found-footage fields where I just cannot accept the people would keep filming.

And I think the camera should always be delayed to whatever's happening, because that occurs in real life. For me, the magic is ruined if the camera is already there, anticipating something to happen. If you are here, recording, and you hear a noise and turn the camera, that sound is no longer there. And I think that creates a feeling of truth that it's crucial to maintain.

Which Is the Single Shot in Your Movie That You're Most Satisfied With?

One director: The protagonist seated at a four-monitor deck of editing software, with four different videos playing out at the identical moment. That's all analog. We shot those clips days earlier. Then the editing team processed them, and then we loaded them on four computers hooked up to four monitors.

That shot of the character positioned there with four different videotapes running — I was like, 'This is the visual I wanted out of this project.' If it was the sole image I saw of this film, I would be pressing play right now: 'This appears interesting!' But it was more difficult than it appears, because it's like four different art people pressing spacebars at the same time. It looks so simple, but it took several days of planning to achieve that shot.