People can't believe film fans thought the Blair Witch Project was real

The Blair Witch Project remains one of the most influential horror films ever made, but despite its significance to the genre people can’t quite believe how it was received at the time.

The movie was a huge, if unexpected, success when it was released in 1999, grossing $248 million off the back of a tiny budget and pioneering the “found footage” genre.

It follows three student filmmakers who head into the woods to investigate the local myth known as the Blair Witch. They all disappear and the footage they recorded was found a year afterwards – and this is what the audience purportedly saw.

While found footage films are everywhere in 2024, the format was groundbreaking at the time. There were other things which helped people believe what they were seeing was happening for real too.

The film was hugely influential after its release in 1999Artisan Entertainment

The actors filmed a lot of the footage themselves, which added to the realism. Another touch saw the filmmakers list the actors as being deceased on their IMDB pages.

Speaking to the Independent in 2016, one of the film’s stars Heather Donahue said that there were still conspiracy theories swirling around the cast, saying: “There are some people online who think that we are hired shills because those kids really did die and we've been hired to be them so that nobody will get arrested.”

Bearing all that in mind, the film is back trending on social media recently.

Some people have been left in disbelief that people were ever tricked into believing it was real – while others are sharing their experiences of being freaked out by the movie for the very first time.

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