the.com/found footage

means A filmmaking style that presents a movie as raw, unedited recordings discovered after the events they depict, usually implying the people filming met a bad end.

from The term comes straight from documentary jargon, where 'found footage' meant real archival or amateur film discovered and repurposed by filmmakers. Horror borrowed the label and the conceit wholesale — early cult entries in the 1980s toyed with the pseudo-documentary frame, but it was a notorious low-budget 1999 woods-and-camcorder film that burned the style into mass pop culture, convincing some viewers the footage was genuine. The name itself is honest, even if the footage never is: it's always staged, just dressed up as something stumbled upon.