

The sequel, and thankfully it is a sequel rather than a remake or reboot, has the brother of Heather, who went missing in the first film, head into the woods with a group of friends to make a documentary about her disappearance. But, given the long wait, is she too late? With the sub-genre close to death, or giving off a stench as it decomposes, given your tolerance of handheld horror-induced headaches, the Blair Witch herself has returned to remind us where it all started.

But by the sixth Paranormal Activity film, the line: “Put the camera away!” became as tired as “I’ll be right back”.īlair Witch trailer: watch first footage from the surprise sequel – video Guardian A rushed, universally loathed sequel was thrown into cinemas the year after and forgotten about just as quickly but the self-shot style of the original endured and its influence was felt for the following 17 years.įor a while it was refreshing with Cloverfield, Rec and The Bay all finding neat ways of telling familiar tales.

It utilised viral marketing like no film before and despite its inauspicious beginnings, managed to make $248m worldwide. The next seminal moment arrived at the tail-end of the decade as The Blair Witch Project arrived out of nowhere, quite literally, with no stars and precious little budget yet it created an entirely new sub-genre: the found-footage horror. In 1996, Scream changed things somewhat, proving that with the right amount of energy, self-awareness and originality, horror films could make money again. After the repetitive slasher movies of the 1980s, the genre had given up the ghost and no one was interested in bringing that ghost back to scare a new generation of horny teens. Back in the early 1990s, scary movies were about as profitable as Adam Sandler movies are now.
