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The Blair Witch Project (1999)

★★★½ — The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Shot on a budget of around $60,000 using consumer-grade 16mm and Hi-8 video cameras, The Blair Witch Project was the debut feature from co-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, two film school graduates who cast largely unknown actors (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams, all essentially playing versions of themselves) and sent them into the Maryland woods with minimal scripted dialogue. The footage was edited from roughly 20 hours of material the cast had actually shot themselves. Artisan Entertainment acquired the film at Sundance for around $1 million and ran a genuinely clever internet marketing campaign that blurred the line between fiction and reality, treating the "missing students" as a real case. The film eventually grossed nearly $250 million worldwide, making it one of the most profitable films ever made relative to its production cost, and it effectively launched the found-footage horror genre as a commercially viable form.

The Original Found Footage Nightmare Honestly, I was really surprised by The Blair Witch Project. I was lucky enough to see it before all the parodies and internet discourse ruined the mystery, and on that first viewing? It was GENUINELY terrifying. (I was only a teenager at the time lol) There’s something so raw about it. The shaky cam, the panic, the way the fear slowly creeps in rather than jumping out at you. It’s minimalistic horror at its finest, proving that suggestion is often scarier than spectacle. NOTHING HAPPENS but it's still scary. Of course, in the years since, the found footage genre has been done to death (mostly badly), but credit where it’s due, this one started it all. Even if it doesn’t quite hold the same power today, it’s still an incredibly effective piece of horror history.

Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 1999 | Watched: 2005-03-03

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Where to watch (UK)

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Physical: Amazon UK

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