You can't undersell the impact "Paranormal Activity" had on the found footage movie boom. While there were plenty of predecessors that made the horror subgenre feel downright revolutionary like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield," Oren Peli's self-contained haunted house flick kicked the doors down when it came to studio interest. It delivered suspenseful thrills and chills on a micro-budget that allowed it to make an unbelievable profit for Paramount. Everyone tried to recapture the magic with varying levels of success.

Peli would spend the following years producing the "Paranormal Activity" and "Insidious" franchises, while conjuring an original idea for television with "Paranormal Activity 2" co-writer Michael R. Perry. The result was 2012's "The River," a found footage adventure-horror series that only ran for one season on ABC.

There had been some examples of found footage finding success on the small screen such as Animal Planet's "Lost Tapes,...