The Blair Witch Project (1999)

 The extremely low budget horror film which is largely credited with establishing the now ubiquitous "found footage" style of film making, 'The Blair Witch Project' became perhaps the greatest return on investment in the history of cinema, $248 million box office off a production cost of $60,000. Presented as a compliation of the "found" video footage of a team of three twenty-something film makers who.went missing in the Maryland woods in 1994 while making a short documentary on a (made up) local legend about a malevolent witch. This is a movie where seeing it now, a quarter century after it's release, one gets only a limited sense of the effect it had on Clinton era theater goers for whom this was something noval and new. It's still scary, or more accurately disconcerting now, the story is well told and the terror well solid, though we see really next to nothing. The mind is better at imaging horror then a made up film could ever be. ***1/2