20 Best Found Footage Horror Films

12. Diary of the Dead (2007)

The found footage addition to George A. Romero’s living dead cycle,

Diary of the Dead

played to mixed reviews, with many hailing it as the film that would end the zombie craze (obviously, those people were wrong for dozens of reasons). But

Diary of the Dead

is a much smarter film than some give it credit for. The film shows the zombie apocalypse from the perspective of a student filmmaker and his friends, riffing off the zombie-savvy, web-video watching youth culture of the films milieu. Romero’s zombie films have always done an excellent job of using the genre to hold society’s flaws under a microscope, and

Diary of the Dead

is no exception. In a post 9/11 world, the film is a reaction to an increase in paranoia, the emergence of surveillance culture, and a mistrust of the government to reveal the “real story.”

Next: Do the monster mash