Incredible films that were shot on an iPhone including star-studded 28 Years Lat
While there is endless filmmaking equipment out there costing from hundreds to £80,000 (and more), you would have thought the most anticipated horror film of 2025 might be using gear at the higher end of the scale… Right?
Wrong. If you're saving up for the best camera in the business to film your next project, you may just be wasting your time.
Why not just use your iPhone? Everyone else is, including Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later, which Metro has given 5 big fat emotional stars in our review.
It's not the first time this has happened, either. Here are all the films you might not know were filmed primarily using an iPhone. One even made it to the Oscars.
Hitting cinemas on Friday and starring Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, the hotly-anticipated sequel to 28 Days Later used an adapted iPhone 15 for the job, making the Hollywood thriller – with its $75million budget – the biggest film to be shot with a phone to date.
In 2002, 28 Days Later was one of the first Hollywood feature films to be shot with a Canon XL-1 for an intentionally low-fi look. This new flick – which kicks off a new trilogy for the franchise – took inspiration from its original.
Boyle recently explained why he used an adapted iPhone 15 for the job during the London premiere of the film.
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The director told The Independent: 'We decided to shoot it on the upgrade of a domestic video camera. That's smartphones, they're everywhere. They are lightweight in the countryside. You can create special rigs with them, filming the violence. But also you can give it to the actors and they can film themselves sometimes.
'Horror movies let you refresh the palate – you don't have to go classical.'
He also added to Business Insider: 'Any smartphone now can record at 4K, indeed up to 60 frames per second, which is more than enough resolution you need for cinema exhibition.'
Boyle went on to reveal how they utilised farm animals to help, explaining: 'We did strap a camera to some animals a couple of times — yeah, a goat.' Nice.
Stormzy's new film Big Man was fortunate enough to get their hands on an iPhone 16 Pro for filming… Eat your hear out Danny Boyle. Slow-motion scenes were captured in 4K 120 fps, while cinematic mode was also used to blur backgrounds.
Apple's short film tells the story of Tenzman, a fed up musician played by Stormzy whose life is changed by two youngsters when they embark on a journey together.
'I've never shot an entire piece of narrative filmmaking on an iPhone before, and it's been a really invigorating process,' director Aneil Karia said.
'iPhone is much smaller than the traditional cameras used for television, film, or music videos, and the lightness and flexibility that comes with that is boundless in a sense.
'I like trying to strive for an intimacy with characters, and sometimes a big camera is not particularly conducive for that.'
Psychological thriller Unsane, starring Claire Foy and Joshua Leonard, was filmed entirely on an iPhone 7 Plus.
Unsane follows a stalking victim called Sawyer Valentini (Foy) who is trapped in a mental institution against her will.
The 2018 film became one of the most high-profile uses of iPhone filming (until 28 Years Later) as its prominent director Steven Soderbergh championed the method through it.
'I think this is the future,' he told Indiewire. 'Anyone going to see this movie without any idea of the backstory to the production will have no idea this was shot on the phone.'
Soderbergh's second iPhone-only film came hot off the heels of Unsane in the form of NBA drama High Flying Bird. This time though, an iPhone 8 was used. Fancy!
In it Andre Holland stars as sports agent Ray Burke who tries to accelerate a rookie player's career in an unusual way.
While it seems unlikely an iPhone would be able to capture the subtle details that make up a tense, dramatic sports film, it's largely focused on the chatter around the gamerather than the game itself.
'It was shot in February and March of 2018, in three weeks. It's a very small crew and the gear that's available to enhance this already pretty extraordinary capture-device made it even better,' Soderbergh told The Hollywood Reporter.
'So, if I had to do it in a more traditional way, it would have actually hurt the film. I was able to do things because of the ease of shooting something.
'You can basically shoot anything you can think of, you can put the lens anywhere you want. If I were in a more traditional mode, there were things that I wouldn't have been able to execute as well as I'd wanted, because of the size of the equipment and people necessary to move it around.'
Tangerine, a 2015 film by Sean Baker – who swept the board at the Oscars this year with Anora – was shot entirely on an iPhone 5s using the FiLMIC Pro App, which gives further focus, aperture and colour temperature control.
The independent film, which was met with critical praise and was Sundance Film Festival's breakout movie, was shot using an iPhone to keep costs low.
'It was surprisingly easy,' Baker told The Verge. 'We never lost any footage.'
Alongside the help of the $8 app, Baker used a Steadicam to stabilise the footage.
'These phones, because they're so light, and they're so small, a human hand – no matter how stable you are – it will shake. And it won't look good,' he explained.
They also used an adapter lens that was attached to the iPhone, which was 'essential' to make it cinematic.
'To tell you the truth, I wouldn't have even made the movie without it,' he said. 'It truly elevated it to a cinematic level.'
2012's Oscar-winning film Searching for Sugar Man follows two fans of a South African icon – believed to be dead – as they set out to learn his true fate. More Trending
While Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul didn't set out for the film to make this list, he ran out of money so was forced to use an iPhone for the final shots.
'I started shooting this film with a Super 8 camera, which is pretty expensive stuff. I completely ran out of money. I had just a very few shots left, but I needed those shots,' he told CNN in an interview.
'I realised that there was this app on my iPhone and I tried it and it looked basically the same.'
The iPhone App in question was called 8mm Vintage Camera, which did a decent job at imitating a real 8mm camera. Good to know.
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MORE: 'Mind-bending' horror film available to stream for free as sequel wows critics
MORE: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 35, and director wife Sam, 58, look loved up at 28 Years Later premiere
MORE: Jodie Comer talks through her character's agonising journey in unseen 28 Years Later clip
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The UK is a wasteland in Danny Boyle's new film. Towns lie in ruins, trains rot on the rails and the EU has severed all ties with the place. Some residents are stuck in the past and congregate under the tattered flag of St George. The others flail shirtless through the open countryside, raging about nothing, occasionally stopping to eat worms. You wouldn't want to live in the land that Boyle and the writer Alex Garland show us. Teasingly, on some level, the film suggests that we do. Boyle and Garland first prowled zombie Britain with their 2002 hit 28 Days Later. It was an electrifying piece of speculative fiction, a guerilla-style thriller about an unimaginable world. Since then we've had Brexit and Covid, and the looming threat of martial law in the US … The story's extravagant flights of fancy don't feel so far-fetched any more. 'Yes, of course real world events were a big influence this time around,' Boyle says, sipping tea in the calm of a central London hotel. 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We drop off the rental car and race each other, Hannah on the moving sidewalks and escalators and me walking and taking the stairs. I wait with her at the bag check, then we kiss goodbye. I don't feel sad at this moment but that's because neither of us want this relationship to be more than it is. We enjoy sex with each other, and enjoy laughing and being silly together — but even after a few days together, things can get strained. I take the hotel shuttle back to the room and pack up. Hannah calls to say she missed her flight because she was in the bathroom with her earbuds in and missed the announcements. View More » I take a rideshare to meet my friend on the other side of town, not knowing when I'll see Hannah again. Do you have a story to share? 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