The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

What makes The Taking of Deborah Logan special is how it smuggles real, human grief into a found-footage horror movie and then lets the dread bloom from there—quietly at first, and then with a confidence that’s hard to shake. Adam Robitel uses the documentary setup not as a gimmick, but as a trapdoor: the camera feels like a witness to something intimate and medical until it becomes the only thing standing between you and the unthinkable. Jill Larson is extraordinary, giving Deborah a fragile dignity that makes every unsettling turn land harder, while the film’s mystery thread keeps tightening in the background like a noose you don’t notice until it’s already snug. It’s not for viewers who prefer their horror clean or comforting—this one is raw, cruelly plausible, and genuinely unnerving—but if you want “found footage done right” with a performance you’ll remember, it’s a minor modern classic.

The Taking of Deborah Logan is clearly trying to fuse a grounded, sad look at Alzheimer’s caregiving with found-footage supernatural horror, and for a while that uneasy mix really works. The problem is it leans hard on familiar possession beats and shaky-doc tricks, so if you’re tired of “we caught it on camera” horror, it may feel derivative rather than revelatory. The pacing and editing can get choppy as it ramps up, and the final stretch trades the earlier emotional weight for louder, more conventional scares that won’t land for everyone. Still, Jill Larson commits and there are a few genuinely unsettling sequences, so it’s worth your time if you like grim, nasty found-footage horror—but not if you want subtlety, originality, or a consistently thoughtful mystery.