The ‘Blair Witch’ Viral Marketing Has Begun With A Creepy New Video
17 years later,The Blair Witch Projectisn’t just one of the most influential horror movies of all time – it’s a great film, a “found footage” movie that actually feels like an actual lost document. Unlike its often too stylized successors, it’s easy to understand why the original could actually inspire many viewers at the time to wonder if what they were watching was actually real. It’s as vague and incomprehensible as a really unfinished movie cobbled together out of footage shot by a couple of dead kids…which only makes it all the more frightening.
The new film in the series, simply titledBlair Witch, was never go inspire the mania that surrounded the first movie. However,keeping the identity of the film a secret until just two months before its releaseis the kind of impressive hucksterism that the horror genre needs. Speaking of impressive hucksterism, it looks like theBlair Witchviral marketing has begun in earnest, starting with a creepy YouTube video.
Like a proper piece of viral marketing, the video below contains no studio watermarks or release dates. It’s just creepy camera footage of someone running through a dilapidated series of corridors…or are they being chased?
Here’s the description of the video from uploaderDark Truth301, who seems obsessed with a few infamous disappearances that have occurred over the past few decades in rural Maryland:
Now that people are starting to wake up and join the search for truth, we felt it time to share one of our darkest secrets. Our friends and fellow hactivists, known as darknet666 (https://darknet666blog.wordpress.com), originally posted this in April 2014 when they found an old dv tape in the Black Hills Forest (Frederick Watershed), Maryland. Within a month, they’d gone missing in those same woods and the video was mysteriously DELETED as part of a COVER-UP. We recently “acquired” the file from our friend’s computer. THIS IS WHAT THE AUTHORITIES DON’T WANT YOU TO SEE.
For the record,the fullBlair Witchtrailercontains a few snippets of the footage in this video, although it’s not clear if this is a full clip from the movie or not.
Blair Witch, which appears to wisely ignore the ambitious but terribleBook of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, follows the younger brother of Heather Donahue (the documentary filmmaker who vanished while filming a documentary on a creepy local legend in 1999) as he sets out to uncover exactly what happened to his sister. We can safely assume that he uncovers a little too much. While original directorsDaniel Myrick andEduardo Sánchez aren’t behind the camera on this one, directorAdam Wingardand screenwriterSimon Barrettare fine replacements –You’re NextandThe Guestare both smart, sharp, vicious delights. Our own Fred Topelhad kind things to say about the filmfrom its Comic-Con premiere.Blair Witcharrives in theaters onSeptember 16, 2016. Heres the official synopsis:
