History Film / TheBlairWitchProject

* DaylightHorror: While most of the more overt scares take place at night, the daytime has plenty of tension to go around.

* ClusterFBomb: Due mainly to the improvised script. It's not ''Film/{{Casino}}'' levels of bad, but you can tell it's the favorite word of the movie.

-->I wanna make movies, Heather. Isn't that what we came here to do? Just make some movies? Let's make some movies. [[spoiler: Okay, here's your motivation. You're lost, you're angry in the woods. There's no one here to help you. There's a witch, and she keeps leaving shit outside your door. There's no one here to help you! She left little trinkets, you took one of them, she ran after us! There's no one here to help you! We walked for fifteen hours today and ended up in the same place! There's no one here to help you! That's your motivation! THAT'S YOUR MOTIVATION!]] ... [[TearJerker You gonna write us a happy ending, Heather?]]

* NostrilShot: The apology scene. Heather aims her camera on her nose and eyes. Funnily enough, in spite of how famous and iconic that image wound up being, the DVD Commentary reveals the actress thought she was filming her entire face.

* ParallelPornTitles: The Bare Wench Project and The Erotic Witch Project, etc. Both of which had more sequels than the film they're spoofing.

* PunctuatedForEmphasis: "FUCK!! YOU!!! LOG!!!!" A little easy to miss, but an underappreciated gem. The line, according to the feature-length commentary on the DVD, is actually "FUCK! YOU! [[RageAgainstTheHeavens GOD!]]"

* MoodWhiplash

* SayMyName: '''JOOOOOOOOSH!'''

** It's hinted (and stated outright in the deleted scenes) that once Heather has actually hit the DespairEventHorizon, she keeps filming because she doesn't believe they'll make it out alive, and she wants to leave [[ApocalypticLog some kind of record behind.]]

[[caption-width-right:300:''[[TagLine Everything you've heard is true.]]'']]

''The Blair Witch Project'' is a 1999 supernatural horror film written, directed and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. Notably [[FoundFootageFilms shot entirely in the style of a documentary]] {{gone horribly wrong}}, the film became one of the most successful independent releases of all time, and is also commonly credited as the TropeCodifier[=/=]GenrePopularizer of found footage horror, a subgenre that grew so prevalent in the decades following that [[DiscreditedTrope it was driven into the ground over time]].

Apart from its revolutionary format, what the film is also notable for is having one of the best ViralMarketing campaigns ever, and certainly [[TropeMaker one of the first]] to demonstrate the effectiveness of Internet advertising. Fake online documents, footage, published dossiers, interviews, and even a couple of professional-looking television documentaries blurred the line between truth and fiction like few other campaigns had done before or have since. Many were convinced that the movie was based on a true story, or even consisted of actual footage. Even more were convinced that the "Blair Witch" was a real legend, as opposed to something the filmmakers made up themselves.

[[caption-width-right:300:''[[TagLine Scary as hell.]]'']]

It revolves around three college students [[TwentyMinutesIntoThePast in 1994]] -- Heather, Mike, and Josh -- who decide to make a documentary about the fabled "The Blair Witch", which is said to haunt the forest near the small town of Burkittsville, Maryland. After interviewing the locals about several creepy and macabre incidents in the area, the trio eventually decide to journey into the forest where the legend is supposed to have started. Things ultimately take [[FromBadToWorse a turn for the worse]].

* EerilyOutOfPlaceObject: The house where the end of the movie takes place is smack in the middle of the woods. If anything, this makes it even creepier than the forest itself.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: [[spoiler:In a deleted scene, Josh suggests that there is no witch; rather, he suspects that the townspeople or possibly the Blair Witch cult, which lived in the woods, are the true culprits behind the strange events. Other than that, the film overall is rather ambiguous on the witch's existence as none of the group's cameras ever catch the culprit in question, be it a supernatural witch or human stalkers.]]

** [[spoiler: One theory suggests that ''Mike and Josh'' killed Heather and used the legend of the Blair Witch to cover their tracks.]]

* MinimalistCast: Aside from the interviews with the locals at the beginning, the only characters to be shown on-screen for the vast majority of the film are Heather, Mike and Josh.
* {{Mockumentary}}: And several Mockumentaries were made ''about'' the mockumentary.

** The titular witch [[spoiler:is never seen; instead, her presence is hinted through the wooden dolls and the rock cairns found by the protagonists. Because the camera never catches the witch's presence, it is [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane ambiguous whether or not a supernatural being was truly haunting the group]]. This creative decision by the directors was partially due to ''The Blair Witch Project's'' aforementioned low funding; on the other hand, later found-footage films would have enough money for special effects to put their monsters on screen]] (though many believe that this makes the Witch a ''lot'' scarier than any of her successors, specifically ''because'' [[NothingIsScarier we never see her]]).

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Burkittsville, MD is a real town with a population of less than 200. It was flooded with tourists after the film's release, angering its residents.

** The titular witch [[spoiler:is never seen; instead, her presence is hinted through the wooden dolls and the rock cairns found by the protagonists. Because the camera never catches the witch's presence, it is [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane ambiguous whether or not a supernatural being was truly haunting the group]]. This creative decision by the directors was partially due to the ''The Blair Witch Project's'' aforementioned low funding; on the other hand, later found-footage films would have enough money for special effects to put their monsters on screen]] (though many believe that this makes the Witch a ''lot'' scarier than any of her successors, specifically ''because'' [[NothingIsScarier we never see her]]).

* TropeCodifier: The film is this for FoundFootageFilms although it was not the [[TropeMaker first of its kind]] [[note]]That honor goes to ''Film/CannibalHolocaust''[[/note]]. However, as noted in UnbuiltTrope, it does things quite differently from its successors in the genre.

** It's hinted... and stated outright in the deleted scenes... that once Heather has actually hit the DespairEventHorizon, she keeps filming because she doesn't believe they'll make it out alive, and she wants to leave [[ApocalypticLog some kind of record behind.]]

* FoundFootageFilms: The TropeCodifier for the genre, especially as far as horror is concerned. It's the most popular movie to use this format before ''Film/ParanormalActivity''.

* ExpandedUniverse: [[http://www.comingsoon.net/horror/features/763177-complete-blair-witch-legend Tie-in short films, books, comics, even computer games...]] Also a soundtrack album. The album is billed as being a copy of the mixed tape the police found in the tape deck in Josh's car. Is goth music, industrial, and post punk. The fact that they were able to sell a soundtrack for a movie that has no music shows the marketing power of this flick.

* EerilyOutOfPlaceObject: The house where the end of the movie takes place is smack in the middle of the woods. If anything, this makes it even creepier that the forest itself.

** The titular witch [[spoiler:is never seen; instead, her presence is hinted through the wooden dolls and the rock cairns found by the protagonists. Because the camera never catches the witch's presence, it is [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane ambiguous whether or not a supernatural being was truly haunting the group]]. This creative decision by the directors was partially due to the ''The Blair Witch Project's'' aforementioned low funding; on the other hand, later found-footage films would have enough money for special effects to put their monsters on screen.]]

''The Blair Witch Project'' is a 1999 horror movie, [[FoundFootageFilms shot entirely in the style of a documentary]] {{gone horribly wrong}}. It became one of the most successful independent films of all time, and is also commonly credited as the TropeCodifier[=/=]GenrePopularizer of the found footage subgenre of horror, a trend that became so frequent in the decades following that [[DiscreditedTrope it was driven into the ground over time]].

Apart from its revolutionary format, what it's also notable for is having one of the best ViralMarketing campaigns ever, and certainly [[TropeMaker one of the first]] to demonstrate the effectiveness of Internet advertising. Fake online documents, footage, published dossiers, interviews, and even a couple of professional-looking television documentaries blurred the line between truth and fiction like few other campaigns had done before or have since. Many were convinced that the movie was based on a true story, or even consisted of actual footage. Even more were convinced that the "Blair Witch" was a real legend, as opposed to something the filmmakers made up themselves.

->''"I'm scared to close my eyes. I'm scared to open them... We're gonna die out here."''
----

* WickedWitch: The titular witch [[spoiler:has killed children, been responsible for the disappearance of many different people through history, and tortures, torments, and kills the protagonists.]]

* EldritchLocation: The normal laws of reality do not apply in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. The best example of this being when Mike and Heather spend
* EveryoneDiesEnding: [[spoiler:A ForegoneConclusion is that they all disappear, Josh's teeth and hair is found early, and then Heather and Mike seem to die.]] an entire day walking south, using a compass, only to end up right back where they started.

* EldritchLocation: The normal laws of reality do not apply in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. The best example of this being when Mike and Heather spend an entire day walking south, using a compass, only to end up right back where they started.

* KillEmAll: [[spoiler:A ForegoneConclusion is that they all disappear, Josh's teeth and hair is found early, and then Heather and Mike seem to die.]]

-->-- '''Heather''', in an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m_lqGnLtWA oft-parodied scene]]

* DaylightHorror: If you look closely as Heather turns away from [[spoiler: the open bag fashioned out of Josh's shirt, containing his teeth, hair and blood]] while breathing hysterically, she pauses for three-odd seconds looking at a stick carefully placed behind her horizontally upon two small plants. [[FridgeHorror Not a METER away.]] Definitely not there when she walked behind the tent.