10 Horror Movies That Were Scarier For Making You Think They Were Real
2. The Blair Witch Project
The legacy of The Blair Witch Project truly cannot be underestimated.
Released in 1999 and largely accepted to be the father of the modern found footage film, it followed three student filmmakers - Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard - as they headed into the Burkittsville, Maryland woods to investigate the mythical Blair Witch.
For audiences of the time, The Blair Witch Project represented a practically unfathomable level of gritty authenticity.
From the highly believable trio of actors, to the rough-hewn digital camerawork, and highly minimalist approach to scares, everything slotted into place to make the end result just believable enough.
Aiding things immeasurably was the movie's ingenious marketing campaign, focused on a website which claimed Donahue, Williams, and Leonard to be missing for real, while the actors maintained a low profile ahead of the film's release.
The film's ambiguity only makes it that much more believable as a piece of actual found footage, and arriving as it did shortly before Internet adoption enjoyed a worldwide uptick, it was able to play its clever trick on the world largely unimpeded.