9 Classic Horror Films That Spawned Countless Imitators

After the success of The Blair Witch Project, the horror genre would see dozens of movies involving characters, often who are filming a documentary, going somewhere they shouldn’t, shaking the camera around, and then dying.

Found footage is a legitimately interesting way to frame a story, and it's not that all of these movies are inherently Blair Witch ripoffs. However, too often do they follow the same structure and utilize the same tropes.

Take the recent found footage flick Willow Creek: it's about characters who go into the woods to investigate an urban legend, but not before interviewing the local townspeople to find out if it's a myth or not. They freak out when they realize they're lost, they hear crazy noises while in their tent that night, and then at the end, the protagonist drops the camera and is presumably killed.

That's quite literally exactly the same thing that happens in Blair Witch beat by beat. Not every Blair Witch wannabe is this blatant, but they all still seem to use a similar formula.

It's as if when setting out to make a found footage movie, rather than thinking of what new can be brought to the table, horror directors set out to recreate Blair Witch with a slightly different element, i.e. "Blair Witch but with Bigfoot."