V/H/S Halloween Filmmakers Explain Why Shaky-Cam Horror Is Still 'Challenging AF to Shoot'

After the massive found-footage horror surge of the 2000s inspired by The Blair Witch Project, the category didn't disappear but rather transformed into different styles. Audiences saw the rise of computer-screen films, newly designed interpretations of the found-footage concept, and ambitious single-shot films dominating the screens where unsteady footage and unbelievably persistent camera operators once ruled.

A significant exception to this pattern is the continuing V/H/S series, a horror anthology that created its own boom in short-form horror and has maintained the first-person vision active through seven themed installments. The latest in the franchise, 2025’s V/H/S Halloween, includes several shorts that all occur around the spooky season, connected with a framing narrative (“Diet Phantasma”) that follows a completely detached researcher leading a series of consumer product tests on a soda drink that kills the people sampling it in a variety of chaotic, over-the-top ways.

At V/H/S Halloween’s global debut at the 2025 version of the Fantastic Fest film festival, all seven V/H/S Halloween directors gathered for a post-screening Q&A where filmmaker Anna Zlokovic described found-footage horror as “hard as fuck to shoot.” Her fellow filmmakers cheered in response. The directors later explained why they feel shooting a first-person film is more difficult — or in one case, easier! — than making a conventional horror movie.

The discussion has been edited for concision and understanding.

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

Micheline Pitt, co-director of “Home Haunt”: I think the most challenging thing as an creator is being limited by your creative ideas, because each element has to be motivated by the person holding the camera. So I think that's the thing that's incredibly tough for me, is to distance myself from my creativity and my concepts, and needing to remain in a box.

Alex Ross Perry, director of “Kidprint”: In fact told her recently — I concur 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 found this to be so liberating, because the movement and the filming are the identical. In conventional movie-making, the positioning and the coverage are diametrically opposed.

If the character has to look left, the coverage has to face right. And the fact that once you block the scene [in a first-person film], you have figured out your shots — that was so amazing to me. I have watched 500 first-person movies, but until you shoot your initial found-footage project… The first day, you're like, “Ohhh!”

So once you understand where the person goes, that's the coverage — the lens doesn't move left when the character moves right, the camera advances when the person progresses. You shoot the sequence one time, and that's all — we don't have to get his line. It moves in a single path, it reaches the conclusion, and then we proceed in the following path. As a storyteller seeking simplicity, who hasn't shot a traditional-coverage scene in a long time, I was like, "This is cool, this restriction proves freeing, because you only have to figure out the same thing one time."

A third director, director of “Coochie Coochie Coo”: In my opinion the difficult aspect is the suspension of disbelief for the audience. Everything has to feel real. The audio has to seem like it's actually happening. The acting have to appear believable. If you have an element like an grown man in a nappy, how do you sell that as realistic? It's ridiculous, but you have to make it feel like it fits in the world properly. I found that to be challenging — you can lose the audience really at any point. It just takes a single mistake.

Bryan M. Ferguson, creator of “Diet Phantasma”: I agree with Alex — as soon as you get the blocking down, it's great. But when you've got numerous practical effects happening at one time, and trying to make sure you're panning onto it and not making errors, and then setup takes — you have a certain amount of opportunities to achieve all these elements correctly.

The filming location had a large barrier in the way, and you couldn't hear anyone. Alex's [shoot] sounds like very enjoyable. Ours was very hard. I only had three days to do it. It can be liberating, because with first-person filming, you can take certain liberties. Although you do fuck it up, it was going to look like trash anyway, because you're adding effects, or you're employing a low-quality camera. So it's beneficial and it's challenging.

R.H. Norman, filmmaker of “Home Haunt”: In my view finding rhythm is quite difficult if you're filming mostly single takes. The method we used was, "OK, this was edited in camera. We have a character, the father, and he turns the camera on and off, and those are our edits." That entailed a lot of simulated single shots. But you must be present. You need to see exactly how your shot appears, because what's going into the lens, and in some instances, there's no editing solution.

We were aware we only had two or three attempts for each scene, because ours was very ambitious. We attempted to concentrate on finding varying paces between the attempts, because we were unsure what we were going to get in post-production. And the real challenge with first-person filming is, you're needing to conceal those cuts on moving fog, on various elements, and you really never know where those edits are going to live, and if they're going to betray your whole enterprise of trying to feel like a seamless first-person lens moving through a realistic environment.

Zlokovic: You should try to avoid concealing it with digital errors as much as you can, but you have to occasionally, because the shit's hard.

Her colleague: In fact, she's right. It is simple. Simply add glitches the shit out of it.

Another filmmaker, creator of “Ut Supra Sic Infra”: For me, the most challenging thing is making the viewers accept the people operating the camera would persist, rather than fleeing. That’s additionally the key element. There are some first-person scenarios where I just cannot accept the characters would keep filming.

And I think the camera should always arrive late to whatever's happening, because that occurs in reality. For me, the magic is ruined if the camera is positioned beforehand, anticipating something to occur. If you are here, filming, and you detect a sound and turn the camera, that sound is no longer there. And I think that gives a feeling of truth 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 editing software, with multiple clips running at the identical moment. That's all analog. We shot those videos previously. Then the editing team treated them, and then we put them on multiple devices hooked up to several screens.

That frame of the character sitting there with multiple recordings playing — I was like, 'That is the image I envisioned out of this project.' If it was the sole image I viewed of this film, I would be starting it immediately: 'This looks cool!' But it was harder than it appears, because it's like four different art people activating playback at the same time. It looks so simple, but it took three days of planning to achieve that shot.