10 Movies That Are Actually Good Besides The Marketing Gimmick

The horror movie marketing campaign to rule them all must surely be The Blair Witch Project.

After the found footage film's premiere at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, it was quickly acquired for distribution and became an intensely buzzy title as its release approached later that year.

This was in large part due to the film's ground-breaking viral marketing campaign, which began months before its premiere and played itself 100% straight.

Above all else, the film's website, trailers, and posters suggested that the film's three main cast members - Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard - were actually missing and the film itself a real found recording.

The studio even went to the extent of having Donahue, Williams, and Leonard be listed as "missing, presumed dead" on IMDB, and encouraging them to maintain a low profile during the movie's initial theatrical run.

Released in 1999 while the general public was still relatively new to the Internet, The Blair Witch Project's fake websites were easily believed by many, allowing the unnerving mystique of the titular entity to spread like wildfire.

The result was a phenomenal return-on-investment, as its estimated $300,000 budget netted a worldwide gross of almost $250 million.

On top of that, The Blair Witch Project is a terrifically terrifying piece of work, perfectly exploiting the audience's fear of the unknown and letting their own imaginations do all the heavy lifting.

It's not for everyone, but is perhaps the purest and most creative entry into the entire found footage genre.