20 Horror Movie Box Office Bombs EVERYONE Saw Coming

When The Blair Witch Project released back in 1999, it struck gold with its unique marketing ploy. Cleverly dropping cryptic hints throughout the as-of-yet-young internet, potential audiences genuinely believed that the found-footage story was real.

Of course, it wasn't, but this didn't stop people flocking to the cinema in their masses, allowing the film to bring in a ridiculous $248 million against a minuscule budget of just $60,000. This largely came down to marketing ingenuity rather than the actual quality of the piece, and is something that simply couldn't be replicated.

That's not to say that this wasn't attempted, but, of course, it fell as flat as it possibly could have. Not only was the found-footage framing dropped altogether for Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, but without the same lightning-in-a-bottle marketing, box office numbers dropped to just $47 million.

This wouldn't have been ideal had Book of Shadow's budget stayed roughly the same as the first picture, but it still would have made a tidy profit. Considerably less so than the original, but still a profit. However, production costs inflated a ridiculous 250-fold to $15 million, making the overall intake an unthinkably bad result for the sequel.