Marketing, Reception and Legacy

Abstract

This chapter studies how The Blair Witch Project (1999) was marketed, how it was received by critics and audiences, and the legacy that endures more than a decade after its release. The Blair Witch Project was one of the first films to fully explore the potential of the Internet as a marketing tool. The distributors of The Blair Witch Project used ancillary media methods, including a detailed website that immersed the browser in the mythology of the film and an accompanying documentary, The Curse of the Blair Witch. After the Sundance screening that allowed the filmmakers to sell it to distributor Artisan, the marketing became a huge part of making The Blair Witch Project the phenomenon it was in 1999. It affected the reception with audiences being encouraged to see the film as just one more part of a larger experience and helped build the legacy that would make The Blair Witch Project such an enduring part of popular culture, with spoofs, a sequel, porn versions, and a whole sub-genre of horror imitating it by copying the found footage format.