Did they genuinely believe that, or did they just enjoy playing along?Ī sequel was inevitable. Okay, some would admit that, yes, it was after all a movie with actors, but the legend was real, right? Some people went even further, still believing the film to be real. People were still debating the reality of it all. Fan-created message boards replaced the fake news stories on various websites created to promote The Blair Witch Project. Phew! Enter Joe BerlingerĪnd that’s where it gets interesting. A masterpiece in indie filmmaking and scary as hell, but it wasn’t real. But it didn’t take much digging, even then, to discover it was all a work of fiction. Even the mixtape Joshua Leonard had made for the trio’s car-ride into the woods was marketed and sold as the official movie soundtrack. The merchandise embellished the legend. Heather Donahue’s diary that was supposedly found with the film cans was available to purchase. The story was kept alive for as long as possible the three lead actors went into hiding and did zero publicity to convince the public they were still missing. Then the masterstroke an hour-long documentary, Curse Of The Blair Witch, appeared on TV featuring interviews with locals from the area, the family of the missing filmmakers and local authorities, as well as a few clips from the supposed ‘found footage.’ It may seem naïve now with found footage films such a horror genre staple and the rise of social media and photoshop leaving us to question everything, but people were genuinely curious, was this for real?įast forward a few months, the film became a huge smash and was a phenomenon, the likes of which no horror film has come close to since. A crude website popped up that seemed to be related to the film and had what looked like real news articles giving snippets of the legend and three filmmakers who had gone missing while making a documentary. In the months that followed, although we weren’t aware of it at the time, one of the most ingenious marketing campaigns (that has still not been beaten) was launched. But what was this Blair Witch Project? A genuine phenomenon I’d read an article that summer, it was a tiny paragraph story thrown to the side of the page about a horror film that had supposedly sent audiences fleeing in terror during screenings at the Cannes Film Festival. Maybe an article here or there in the reader’s film magazine of choice. The internet, then still in its infancy, didn’t feed us every tidbit of movie gossip, buzz, scandal or spoilers months in advance. I t’s hard to imagine now, back in the far-off realms of 1999, that a film could arrive, seemingly out of nowhere, to steal the hearts of horror fans and take the entire world by storm.
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