Soon after, the trio begins interviewing a number of the Burkittsville townsfolk about the legend of The Blair Witch. Founded in 1824, Heather explains how an "unusually high number of children are laid to rest there." It isn't long before the trio hits the town of Burkittsville, MD, (formerly Blair) where they shoot their first scene in the town's cemetery up on the hill. Heather packs her "essential readings" - How to Stay Alive in the Woods, and another book that she says explains the events of Coffin Rock. No found footage movie has managed to recreate the success or impact of The Blair Witch Project, but that's because the entire subgenre basically only exists because of the 1999 release.Prior to heading out to on their journey to document the mystery of The Blair Witch, we see Heather Donahue, Mike Williams, and Josh Leonard gathering up their equipment and gear. The narrative device of an ambiguous found footage ending has been harnessed by everything from Paranormal Activity to Cloverfield to to the underrated The Houses October Built, but it was The Blair Witch Project that first mastered the trick of making viewers feel like watching the movie was the first act in their own personal horror story. ![]() This was, of course, hysteria, hype, and a bit of fun in the times when water-cooler conversations drove public interest before memes and hashtags, but it's a testament to just how successfully The Blair Witch Project's ending achieved its objectives. ![]() The ambiguity was pulled off with such aplomb that horror aficionados, none of whom were numb to the found footage genre's real-but-not tricks and tropes, legitimately questioned whether the whole release wasn't actually just part of the Blair Witch monster's curse – one to which they'd now succumbed just by watching it. The final shots of The Blair Witch Project left 1990s audiences leaving theaters with a genuine sense of unease (which is why it's still the best Blair Witch movie). Why Paranormal Activity Kickstarted The Found Footage Craze By now, the legendary status of The Blair Witch Project is undebatable, but the movie wouldn't have reached it without the ending. It was the first found-footage movie pertaining to the supernatural that genuinely had audiences questioning its status as fiction. ![]() Then, The Blair Witch Project came along and changed everything. The found footage format was used to attempt this with movies like Cannibal Holocaust and equally controversial The Faces of Death, but the conceit was always "how close to a snuff film can we make without actually making a snuff film", relying on visceral disgust more than creating fear from psychological realism. No amount of suspension of disbelief could convince an audience that a scripted, edited movie with a cast of actors in character was real on an emotional level (although as an honorable mention, The Exorcist came pretty close). As a medium, cinema struggled to recreate this magic. Fiction masquerading as fact has always been a staple of horror, even before movies – everything from campfire stories at summer camp to the letter correspondence format of Mary Shelly's 1818 classic Frankenstein relied on convincing the listener/reader that the horrifying events conveyed are real.
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