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After the significant shaky-cam thriller surge of the 2000s inspired by The Blair Witch Project, the category didn't fade away but rather evolved into different styles. Audiences saw the rise of computer-screen films, newly designed interpretations of the first-person perspective, and ambitious single-shot films largely taking over the screens where unsteady footage and unbelievably persistent filmmakers once reigned.

A major exception to this pattern is the ongoing V/H/S series, a scary-story collection that created its own surge in short-form horror and has maintained the first-person vision active through multiple seasonal releases. The latest in the series, 2025’s V/H/S Halloween, features several short films that all take place around the spooky season, connected with a framing narrative (“Diet Phantasma”) that involves a completely detached scientist conducting a series of product experiments on a diet cola that kills the participants trying it in a range of chaotic, extreme ways.

At V/H/S Halloween’s world premiere at the 2025 edition of Austin’s Fantastic Fest, all seven V/H/S Halloween filmmakers gathered for a post-screening Q&A where filmmaker Anna Zlokovic characterized first-person scary movies as “extremely difficult to shoot.” Her fellow filmmakers applauded in reply. The directors later discussed why they believe shooting a first-person film is tougher — or in one case, easier! — than creating a conventional horror movie.

The discussion has been condensed for concision and clarity.

Why Is First-Person Scary Movies So Challenging to Film?

One director, director of “Home Haunt”: In my view the most challenging thing as an creator is being limited by your creative ideas, because each element has to be justified by the person operating the camera. So I think that's the part that's incredibly tough for me, is to separate myself from my imagination and my concepts, and having to stay in a confined space.

Alex Ross Perry, filmmaker of “Kidprint”: I actually told her this last night — I agree with that, but I also differ with it strongly in a particular way, because I really love an open set that's 360 degrees. I found this to be so freeing, because the movement and the coverage are the identical. In traditional filmmaking, the blocking 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've seen numerous found-footage films, but until you film your initial shaky-cam movie… Day one, you're like, “Ohhh!”

So once you know where the character moves, that's the coverage — the lens doesn't shift left when the character goes right, the camera advances when the character progresses. You film the sequence once, and that's all — we avoid get his line. It progresses in a single path, it reaches the conclusion, and then we move in the next direction. As a frustrated narrative filmmaker, avoiding a traditional-coverage scene in years, I was like, "This is great, this restriction proves freeing, because you only have to determine the identical element once."

Anna Zlokovic, director of “Coochie Coochie Coo”: In my opinion the hard part is the suspension of disbelief for the viewers. Each detail has to feel real. The sound has to seem like it's genuinely occurring. The performances have to appear believable. If you have something like an grown man in a nappy, how do you make that as realistic? It's ridiculous, but you have to create the sense like it fits in the environment properly. I found that to be challenging — you can lose people really at any point. It just takes a single mistake.

Another filmmaker, director of “Diet Phantasma”: I agree with Alex — as soon as you get the blocking down, it's excellent. But when you've got so many physical effects happening at one time, and ensuring you're capturing it and not making errors, and then setup takes — you only get a certain amount of opportunities to get all these things correctly.

The filming location had a large barrier in the way, and you couldn't hear anybody. Alex's [shoot] sounds like great fun. Our project was extremely difficult. I only had three days to complete it. It can be freeing, because with first-person filming, you can make some allowances. Even if you do fuck it up, it was going to look like trash regardless, because you're adding effects, or you're using a garbage camera. So it's beneficial and it's bad.

A co-director, co-director of “Home Haunt”: I would say establishing pace is quite difficult if you're shooting primarily oners. The method we used was, "Alright, this is edited in camera. We have a character, the father, and he operates the camera, and that creates our edits." That entailed a many simulated single shots. But you must be present. You really have to see exactly how your scene feels, because what is captured by the camera, and in certain cases, there's no cutting around it.

We were aware we had only a few takes per shot, because our film was highly demanding. We attempted to focus 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 found footage is, you're having to hide those cuts on shifting mist, on various elements, and you cannot predict where those edits are will be placed, and whether they're will undermine your whole enterprise of attempting to create like a fluid point-of-view camera moving through a realistic environment.

The director: You should try to avoid trying to hide it with digital errors as often as possible, but you must occasionally, because the shit's hard.

Norman: In fact, she is correct. It is simple. Simply add glitches the shit out of it.

Another filmmaker, director of “Ut Supra Sic Infra”: For me, the most challenging aspect is making the viewers believe the people using the camera would persist, instead of fleeing. That’s additionally the most important element. There are some first-person scenarios where I just cannot accept the people would keep filming.

And I think the camera should always arrive late to any event, because that happens in real life. For me, the magic is ruined if the device is positioned beforehand, anticipating an event to occur. If you are present, filming, and you detect a sound and pan toward it, that sound is no longer there. And I think that gives a feeling of truth that it's very important to preserve.

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

One director: Our character seated at a four-monitor deck of editing software, with multiple clips playing out at the identical moment. That's all analog. We shot those clips previously. Then the editor processed them, and then we put them on four computers hooked up to several screens.

That frame of the character positioned there with multiple recordings running — I was like, 'This is the visual I wanted out of this film.' If it was the only still I viewed of this movie, 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 get to that image.