Apocalyptic Log / Live-Action Films

• The style of 28 Days Later is meant to evoke found footage, even though the film itself doesn't fit the category. Aside from shooting on relatively inexpensive DV cameras and using odd angles to mimic a "found footage" look, several scenes were deliberately staged to resemble photographs from the genocide and war in Bosnia.
• The Age of Stupid is a 2009 pseudo-documentary that is created as one. The various clips we see are old recordings from our time, viewed by a sole archivist played by the late Pete Postlethwaite, living in an arctic repository in the mid-21st century where damage from climate change has driven humanity to extinction. The man attempts to create a film showing why humanity didn't save itself when it had the chance. It takes a certain view of climate change.
• Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (a remake of UFO Abduction a.k.a. The McPherson Tape) predates The Blair Witch Project and involves a family celebrating Thanksgiving in a secluded cabin when the power goes out. When searching for the source of the outage, the family stumbles on a UFO and a group of aliens who start terrorizing the family. Besides the typical "shaky cam" effect, suspense is added by the fact that the aliens are never shown in detail, as their very presence somehow causes the camera to pixelize. The aliens also possess some sort of Psychic Powers, allowing them to mind control the family. There are two endings: one involves the family members disappearing one-by-one, with the boy holding the camera finally dropping it when coming face-to-face with one of the aliens; the other has the aliens simply walk into the dining room, the family marches out under mind control, and an alien switches off the camera. The director's original intent was to make it as realistic as possible, ending the video abruptly. However, Executive Meddling has resulted in ending credits being added, dispelling the mystery by showing who played the aliens.
• The titular journal in Antarctic Journal clearly wants to be an Apocalyptic Log, but since the guys who find it don't really read much of it, and the pictures are vague, it fails in its attempt.
• Avengers: Endgame starts with Tony Stark using a helmet of his to record a log, which given the ship's Almost Out of Oxygen and with supplies depleted, he intends for it to be his final message. Luckily, he ends up saved soon after.
• Some of the footage used in The Bay is this, like the videos left by Dr. Abrams, head doctor who must deal with the outbreak at the local hospital, and Jennifer, a young girl who records the progress of her infection via a Skype/YouTube-like web app.
• Black Wake: The whole movie in a nutshell is presented as a series of video logs chronicling people being attacked either by strange individuals, and/or becoming hosts for a parasite.
• The Blair Witch Project (1999) brought the found footage genre into the mainstream. It comprises footage shot by an ill-fated documentary film crew researching the Blair Witch urban legend. The film was marketed as real found footage, causing some confusion amongst more gullible viewers.
• Blood Bags: Petra finds some notes in an upstairs room of the mansion detailing how a family's baby has been diagnosed with Gunther disease.
• Ultimately averted in Bug (1975). Parmiter makes an audio log of his study of the hybrid bugs, but they deliberately destroy it, so his findings can never be discovered.
• The infamous exploitation film Cannibal Holocaust is split into halves, the first being the recovery of an Apocalyptic Log filmed by a documentary crew observing Amazonian tribes, and the second being the log itself. Because the film was made way back in 1980, this makes the found footage genre Older Than They Think.
• Cloverfield is a "worm's eye view" of a Kaiju film in which a man records himself and a group of survivors struggling through New York City during a monster attack. Bumpers added to the footage identify it as from a tape discovered by later investigators.
• Clown Motel: One of the girls finds a journal in their hotel room that belonged to a police officer named "Jane Doe". She details how her partner disappeared after going beyond the cemetery, and how she found a mine, which gives the group hope they can use it to escape. It just goes right back to the motel.
• Color Out of Space (2020): Local hermit Ezra leaves a rather haunting one in the form of his audio logs, which continue playing in his hut after he's evidently died from the titular Brown Note Being's effects, broadcasting his thoughts and speculations about the Color.
• Subverted in The Core: Zimsky records his thoughts on his impending death... until he realizes the tape recorder's going to die with him and bursts out laughing. His final words are "What the fuck am I doing?"
• Creep plays with this. The setup is that the filming starts off as a video log to be passed to the unborn child of the terminally-ill subject, but as the movie goes on we learn there's something terribly off about him, the tables turn, and it becomes a chronicle of the cameraman's final days.
• Dawn of the Dead (2004):
  • The DVD extras have a video log of Andy's last days right up until he became a zombie. The log also had a short clip of what appears to be his family, which he partially recorded over.
  • Another DVD extra is an in-universe news broadcast about the opening stages of the Zombie Apocalypse, starting with initial reports about riots in the Midwest, continuing through clips and reports of the spreading zombie outbreak and various responses to it in both the US and abroad, and ending with the news anchor in an increasingly abandoned studio telling his wife that he's coming home as he walks out and the station goes to emergency broadcasting.
• The pseudo-remake of Day of the Dead (2008) had the survivors come across a scientist's video-log in a underground medical facility (which was very reminiscent of Resident Evil (2002)). The log also shows the scientist turning into a zombie.
• In Des hommes et des dieux, the final voiceover consists of Christian's testament, describing his view on the dangerous situation.
• As the rescue team enter the deserted Glasgow in Doomsday we're treated to excerpts of Kane's log, detailing his frantic attempts to survive in a barricaded hospital as civilisation outside crumbles and burns in the aftermath of the Reaper virus outbreak.
• In Eli, the title character finds a series of medical files showing the deterioration of Dr. Horn's patients. The page for Treatment 1 shows a picture of the child looking healthy. On the page for Treatment 2, they look weak and sunken-eyed. The page for Treatment 3 shows them dead on the operating table.
• A very abbreviated version can be found in Event Horizon, wherein the salvage crew finds the ship's logs. The first portion shows the ambitious crew getting ready to perform the experimental hyperspace jump, but it cuts out at the moment of entry, to be replaced by horrific images of what happened to the crew after the trip. The last coherent line recorded on the log is "Libera te tutemet ex inferis", or "Save yourself from hell". The last part is actually a plot point, as the original audio recording was garbled and made it seem as if The Captain was asking for help ("Liberate me" — "save me"), when, in fact, he was warning people to stay away.
  Captain Miller: [turning off the video] We're leavin'.
• The Evil Dead trilogy uses this trope as the catalyst for its plot, as Professor Knowby, the researcher who first unearthed the Necronomicon, kept an audio journal chronicling his battle with his demon-possessed wife Henrietta, and his failed attempt to survive the night. Unfortunately, he'd also recorded the recitation of the demon summoning spell that'd accidentally caused the mess to begin with, meaning that anyone who listens to the whole tape ends up going through the exact same thing.
• Found Footage 3D, an Affectionate Parody of the genre, refers to this as "the first rule of found footage" — the "found" part comes from the fact that nobody was left alive to bring the footage back, and it was only recovered later by the search party. The film revolves around the production of Spectre of Death 3D, "the first 3D found footage film", which plays this trope straight; the fact that Derek is trying to rewrite the script so that his character lives to the end is a sign of his growing diva behavior. The film itself is also a straight example, ending with a possessed Amy referring to "the first rule of found footage" before she kills Mark.
• Godzilla
  • The original 1954 Godzilla (1954) featured a reporter giving a blow-by-blow description of Gojira's destruction of Tokyo, ending with his description of the monster's attack on the tower he was broadcasting from.
  • Shin Godzilla has an Apocalyptic Log that serves as a major plot point. An abandoned yacht owned by a man named Goro Maki is found and the characters piece together what happened: Maki discovered Godzilla in a larval state and began researching him, keeping journals and jotting down data. Excerpts of the notes are given, explaining how Maki was shunned and mocked by academia, had his work censured by the United States government, and eventually crossed the Despair Event Horizon after his wife died of improperly treated radiation sickness. Pushed past the breaking point, he left behind all his notes (including a method to destroy Godzilla) for others to find, with a final entry saying "do what you will". We never find out what happened to him after that; all the authorities find are some personal belongings left on his boat. The ending heavily implies that he may have been assimilated by Godzilla, judging by the disturbingly humanlike growths seen on Godzilla's tail after he's frozen.
• Grave Encounters is this. It's supposed to be the footage the titular ghost-hunting show takes when they go into an abandoned mental hospital to film an episode. Obviously all of it was supposed to be fake (as shown by the spokesman of the show paying a custodian to say he saw something creepy), but, of course, the ghosts soon turn out to be real, and very, very nasty. It seems to switch between the in-universe cameras and regular ones, though (probably so the whole film wouldn't be in slightly grainy green-light)
• Timothy Treadwell's tapes in Grizzly Man constitute this, even to the point of recording Tim and his girlfriend being eaten by a bear (although with audio only).
• Hell House series
  • Hell House LLC starts as a documentary about a haunted house attraction in upstate New York where fifteen people, including most of the crew, die in an unknown accident. The bulk of the film consists of footage shot by the haunted house crew during setup showing how everything went off the rails.
  • Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel picks up eight years after the events of the original in the same style.
• Such log in Lucio Fulci's The House by the Cemetery leads to The Reveal regarding the Freudstein House's Creepy Basement.
• I Am Legend is a variation on the typical setup, as its the main character keeping the log of his continuing research into the plague, almost three years after the Vampire Apocalypse.
• Island of Terror had such a log, explaining how anti-cancer research resulted in the creation of the bone-eating Silicates.
• In It Came from Hollywood, Dan Aykroyd narrates the section about alien B Movies as "Colonel Dan Diamond" dictating the events of an Alien Invasion for future generations.
  "Yeah, the aliens came in all shapes and sizes. Short, tall, thin, fat...horny."
• In The Killer Shrews (which was featured on a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode), there is a Narmful scene where a scientist, having just been bitten by one of the title monsters, sits down at a typewriter and records the process of his body succumbing to the shrew's poisonous saliva. Based upon the real-life incident of herpetologist Karl P. Schmidt (see folder "Real Life", below).
• The Last Broadcast (1998) is a pseudo-documentary featuring found footage from a disastrous cable-access paranormal program. The film pre-dates the vastly more successful Blair Witch Project by a short time, causing many viewers to mistake it for a rip-off.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: When the Fellowship reaches the Mines of Moria, next to Balin's tomb they find Ori's journal which reads: "They have taken the Bridge and the Second Hall. We have barred the gates, but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes... Drums. Drums in the deep. We cannot get out. A shadow moves in the dark... We cannot get out... They are coming." This isn't exactly what Tolkien wrote, but it's chillingly effective, and even shows the journal with the final scrawled entry trailing off down the page.
• The film Lost Signal is based on a story of a Nebraska couple, Janelle Hornickel and Michael Wamsley, who tried crystal meth at a New Year party, crashed their car and decided to walk while making continuous 911 calls. Part of the real-life tragedy is that they assumed they were much closer to home than they really were and kept giving misleading directions to dispatchers.
• The Monster Club: Whilst in the church, the director discovers the skeleton of The Vicar and a long document he wrote before dying that explains the terrifying truth of Loughville; centuries before, a swarm of ghouls invaded the village, mated with the humans, and made their nest there.
• From Monty Python and the Holy Grail: This is actually a humorous subversion. "Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh" is actually the name of the castle where the Holy Grail is being kept.
  King Arthur: (about the inscription on the rock) What does it say, Brother Maynard?
  Brother Maynard: It reads, "Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the Castle of Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh..."
  King Arthur: What?
  Brother Maynard: "The Castle of Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh".
  Sir Bedevere: What is that?
  Brother Maynard: He must have died while carving it.
  Sir Lancelot: Oh, come on!
  King Arthur: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't have bothered to carve "Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh" into the rock. He'd just say it.
  Brother Maynard: Well, that's what's carved on the rock.
  Sir Galahad: Perhaps he was dictating it.
  King Arthur: Oh shut up!
• The titular Outlaw Couple in Natural Born Killers always Spare a Messenger at the scene of their killing sprees in order to tell the story of what happened and build their legend. The lone exception comes at the end, when they realize that, because the tabloid hack Wayne Gale filmed their interview, they can easily kill him and let the camera serve as the lone witness. Mickey describes it as not just the end of Wayne's career and life, but a metaphorical end to everything the man represented as well as the end of his and Mallory's killing spree.
  Wayne Gale: Don't Mickey and Mallory always leave somebody alive to tell the tale?
  Mickey Knox: We are. Your camera.
• The remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) has one from an Asian and Nerdy video blogger. We see several video entries about his dreams of Freddy... and then we see one with him asleep. He then suddenly slams into the camera and the screen blacks out.
• In the cult classic Night of the Creeps, James Carpenter "J.C." Hooper leaves a audio recording for his friend explaining how the alien leeches get into your head and incubate. They then create more "brain slugs" before they kill you and reanimate your corpse. His voice is clearly changing, due to the fact he's slowly turning. It's one of the few things in this Horror/Comedy hybrid film that's played bone chillingly straight.
• In Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (another from Mystery Science Theater 3000), there's one of these for the process the heroine uses to try to save Fingal's mind.
• The Paranormal Activity series is presented as footage taken by people who encounter the titular paranormal activity. In all cases, every single protagonist ends up dying. In the first film, it's made pretty obvious that the protagonist putting up a camera has only made the demon more active — and angry. This doesn't deter him in the slightest.
• Planet of the Apes (2001) has this, explaining how the crash of Leo Davidson's ship turned the desolated planet into a simian dystopia. A non-canon book expands on this and reveals that the apes were deliberately engineered to be smart in order to help fight off the local Insectoid Aliens. After the apes won, their leader Simos decided that they didn't need to obey humans anymore.
• Pokémon Detective Pikachu: At the PCL ruins, Tim and Pikachu replay holographic diary entries made by Dr. Laurent detailing the experiments done there with Mewtwo including the creation of R and the Neural Link completed, leading up to the Mewtwo's escape and Laurent's death.
• The Possession of Michael King starts as a documentary by Michael to disprove the supernatural, and ends up being a warning left to not meddle with such forces.
• [REC] and its American remake Quarantine (2008) are found footage recorded by a female reporter and her camera man while trapped inside an apartment building with zombies. There's also a subversion of the trope when they discover a dictation machine in a Room Full of Crazy. You'd assume that the machine would hold an Apocalyptic Log about the zombie virus's origins, but the batteries are dead, so the message is incomprehensible.
• Part of the plot of Resolution is that Michael starts finding a series of these with the medium ranging from records to projector slides to books to photographs to DVDs. Eventually, they start to be about him...
• Robot World: In a small shed, the astronaut find an old film reel of a family having a party when a huge attack occurs.
• In Serenity (2005), the crew of the eponymous ship head to the planet of Miranda and come across a lot of dead folks who had apparently lain down and died with no explanation. When they come across a video log from a rescue mission, they find out what happened to the planet: the Alliance had seeded the planet's air with an experimental drug called the Pax, which was intended to curb violent tendencies. It worked too well, resulting in nearly everyone on the planet laying down and dying. Even worse, the drug had the opposite effect upon a small portion of Miranda's population, turning them insane and psychopathically violent, resulting in the creation of the Reavers that we know and fear. The crew also see what happened to the rescuers. We don't see, but they do.
• At the end of Superhost, Claire records and uploads a final video to her vlog attempting to warn that Rebecca is a psychopathic murderer, shortly before Rebecca kills her. Problem is, Claire and Teddy's YouTube channel had such a bad reputation for clickbait that everybody thinks it's another stunt.
• The BBC docudrama Supervolcano has a group of people watching the logs of a dying scientist, who documents the conditions of the U.S. after the eruption of Yellowstone. Subverted, in that the scientist actually survives, and is one of the people watching the logs.
• The Thing (1982). Helicopter pilot MacReady leaves an Apocalyptic Log to warn the eventual rescuers about the title monster.
  MacReady: I'm going to hide this tape when I'm finished. If none of us make it, at least there'll be some kind of record...
• George Pal's version of The Time Machine in the form of the talking rings that explain how a nuclear conflict created two separate species of humanoids.
• The Widow (2020): The rescue team finds a phone in an underground tunnel. On the phone is a video of Nikita and his little brother being kidnapped by the Lame Widow.

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