The Blair Witch Project released in 1999 and had an incredible impact on the horror genre and the entertainment industry as a whole. Today, the ripples of this low-budget indie masterpiece can still be felt. With a recent remake film and video game adaptation, The Blair Witch Project has become a veritable franchise, proving that studios and the public have not been able to forget the original. It frequently ranks highly on “Best of” horror lists, and it’s been the primary inspiration for the many faux-documentary, “found footage” horror films that have been made since 1999. In short, it’s one of the greatest scary movies ever made. The New York Times even states that it “can’t be replicated.” But those who find the movie slow or lacking in scares may question how it became such a massive hit. To shed some light on the subject, and to revisit a truly special film, let’s talk about why The Blair Witch Project was so successful.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

The Appeal of “Found Footage”

     Artisan Entertainment

The meaning of the “found footage” style of filmmaking lies in the name: footage is presented as though it was discovered (i.e., found) rather than scripted, directed, and recorded by professionals. Oftentimes, found footage movies make use of first-person perspective and may be presented as pseudo-documentaries in an effort to trick audiences into accepting their authenticity. Although The Blair Witch Project didn’t invent the found footage genre, it certainly popularized it. Thanks to its amateur, handheld-camera-footage style, it appears that the events of the film really happened to the people involved.

Of course, this is an intentional effect on the part of the director, who wanted to make it seem as though they had discovered the footage in the abandoned cameras of three missing filmmakers. These choices serve to make the movie appear “real,” in part because of how un-staged and stripped down everything is in comparison to most film productions. The Blair Witch Project does this especially well thanks to its cast, who do an excellent job of pretending that they’re not acting. Because they truly are out in the woods, their terror when they realize they are lost and in danger comes across as believable. It’s a convincing effect, one heightened by the low-quality camera and audio equipment used to capture it all. Thus, where other found footage movies failed to create a guise of authenticity, The Blair Witch Project did so successfully, making found footage a staple subgenre of horror cinema.

A Genius Marketing Strategy

     Artisan Entertainment 

Sometimes, a movie is only as successful as its marketing campaign. The genius of The Blair Witch Project’s marketing was they way it presented the events of the film as things that really happened. Found footage was the perfect filmmaking model to make this presentation work, but it went further than that. When the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1999, the cast members, who were credited under their real names, were listed as missing or deceased. This gave audiences the feeling that what they were seeing was not superficially horrifying, but really and truly so.

Once The Blair Witch Project was picked up by Artisan Entertainment for distribution, they began an aggressive internet marketing campaign — one of the first of its kind. This campaign included an official website that tried to pass off the movie as a real tragedy that left three young students missing (per Braithwaite). Fake police reports, interviews, and other supplementary materials were used to enhance the sense of realism. In the same year that the film was released, the website received 160 million visitors. These innovative marketing strategies helped the film garner nearly $250 million at the box office — a monumental achievement for something that cost only a few hundred thousand dollars to make.

Timeless Scares

     Haxan Films

Though highly innovative for its time, The Blair Witch Project was still a horror movie, meaning that audiences came to theaters with the expectation that they would be scared. Despite all it did to shake up the horror genre, the film would nevertheless have risked flopping at the box office if it didn’t succeed in frightening viewers. Thankfully, The Blair Witch Project is incredibly scary, and has long been considered one of the most terrifying horror films ever made. What makes it so effective is the way it slowly builds tension, becoming increasingly unsettling before it finally explodes into outright horror.

This approach has turned some viewers away, and there are those who wish it revealed the titular Blair Witch early in the film. But this is not a jump scare movie. Rather than showing us the monster, it makes us afraid of the unknown — of what we don’t see. The Blair Witch Project pushes us to recognize that our imagination can be scarier than anything filmmakers visualize onscreen. Plus, it isn’t like the monster is totally absent: we see what it does, how it haunts and pursues and threatens those who enter its domain. And even disgruntled critics would be hard-pressed to deny the effectiveness of The Blair Witch Project’s last act. The chilling final shot in particular stands out at the scariest moment in the entire film, and has become an iconic image.