The other thing that kicked off the modern found-footage spree was the launch of YouTube in 2005. “People were amazed by the number of amateur camcorders that captured the disaster, and they were quite intrigued by the footage. “I think the found-footage phenomenon got a boost from 9/11,” says Pete Turner, a film lecturer whose book on The Blair Witch Project was published last year. Millions of people browsed the site before seeing the film, so when the cinema’s house lights went down, their disbelief was already well and truly suspended. The site also featured mocked-up news reports, interviews with people who knew the characters, and pages from Donahue’s journal. Just as crucially, and just as innovatively, Myrick, Sánchez and their team devised a website which detailed the Blair Witch mythos, dating back to the late 1700s. The air of authenticity wasn’t conjured up by the film alone. I can remember intelligent people seeing it in 1999, and saying, ‘I’m sorry, but was that true or not?’” It’s that element of discovery that pushes the performances over the edge, and it really works on the audience.

Obviously the actors knew that they were making a film, but you can see that they’re genuinely befuddled. When they’re woken up by something banging on their tent in the middle of the night, that’s the directors banging on their tent. “When the characters discover spooky stuff hanging from a tree, that’s when the actors discover it, too. “Blair Witch has a strange blend of acting and actuality,” Mark Kermode, film critic and a world-renowned horror expert. You don’t get that in Paranormal Activity. Myrick and Sánchez left notes around the area, instructing them what to do and where to walk, but they never knew what was going to happen next, so their stress and fatigue are tangibly unfeigned. Not only did the actors improvise their dialogue and use their own names – Heather Donahue, Michael C Williams and Joshua Leonard – but they shot the film themselves while hiking.

Famously, the Last House on the Left had the slogan, “To avoid fainting, keep repeating, It’s only a movie.” But the writer-directors of Blair Witch, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, had the opposite message in mind: they wanted viewers to imagine that Blair Witch wasn’t a movie, but a documentary. What shocked viewers at the Sundance Festival, where the film premiered in January 1999, was how real it seemed. well, it’s not clear what happens at the end, but the idea is that the unlucky trio never returned from the woods, and all that was ever recovered was their footage of the ordeal. As days and nights pass, they hear unsettling noises and stumble on ominous arrangements of stones and twigs.

The blair witch project 1999 full movie