Why did this freak out Gen X'ers so much?

Why did this freak out Gen X'ers so much?

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You had to be there, the marketing at the time made it look entirely legit. The actors even laid low before its release to give the impression that they really died. Yes, people were that innocent/retarded back then.
It was the first of it's kind at least on a large scale and it couldn't be replicated again

>Is that... is that my...friend? Facing the wall?
>AAAAAGH! I'm going INSAAAANE!
>*dies*

alright user, fess up...
did you think that The Blair Witch Project was real when you first saw the movie and the "real" documentary about the "real" legend?

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BW is one of the GOAT horror films

not going to lie, i always thought it was fake but the fake documentary really did make me believe it for a short timethe movie scared the shit out of me because you're in constant anticipation of seeing something completely fucked up and terrifying

This. A pure product of the early internet era where audiences were naïve rather than just plain dumb/ignorant.

>most people didn't have internet
>found footage wasn't common
>"real" wanted signs were sent out
>creepy b/w photography
>no-name actors gave roles credibility
Oldfag here, the late 90's weren't nearly as cynical as 2022. We understood we were watching a work of fiction, but it was delivered in ways it never had been before, which borked our brains.

That said, the movie is still shit.

It really is, nothing happening the whole time keeps you on edge for when something spoopy does eventually go down.

Gen X are the biggest pussies, I can't wait for them to stop existing.

it was so long ago I don't even remember what I thought. I had internet at the time I know that much.

yeah this pretty much nails it. you dont know what it was like back then, there was like 4 different styles, same with movies they were pretty formulaic there were like 5 different genres horror, action, sci-fi comedy, romance. Everyone watched the same shows and watched the nightly news unironically. It was on the back of Jerry Springer, reality was becoming entertainment and The Blair Witch Projects found footage style was perfect. It's a common trope now but back then it was revolutionary.
again you have to realize the time there was no google to check shit, people believed Marilyn Manson removed a rib to suck his dick, the CIA implanted a compulsion to draw some weird S symbol in everyone. Clinton was a sitting president for fucks sake.

>You had to be there
Exactly. It's like millenials and Paranormal Activity.

>12 years old when Blair Witch is released
>friend's cousin sneaks me and him into the theater to watch
>all fucked up after, actually think the movie is real
>a few weeks later we go to camp for a week in the mountains
>the counsellers, probably bored out of their fucking minds, set up some eerie shit to freak us out
>blair witch twig figures are scattered around our cabin to mess with us
>a campfire story about the witch living in the woods set us on edge
>three days in
>some mexican gardener is crushed by a forklift and dies right in front of a few of us (including me)
>during a night hike, one of my friends vanishes for two hours, comes back and says he doesn't know how he got here and doesn't even remember going on the hike
>my buddy (who watched the movie in theaters with me) cries himself to sleep one night, saying someone was watching us from the cabin window
>on the last night, one of the conselers, with tears in his eyes, makes us all pray for forgiveness

It's surreal to think about even now, two decades later. I don't know what was real and what wasn't. Thinking back on it it's almost like a dream... but yeah.

Wow. Your counselors murdered a spic over a prank? That's hardcore.

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That's just how it was back in the day.

Also there was only like a 10 year period where the premise that some hikers would have a portable video recorder small enough to walk around with was both believable and new

>freaked out genXers
whatever. it only freaked out the normies

ah, it's never a good childhood trip without being viscerally terrified in the woods at night and paranoid that something is looking through the window at you

it uses its medium so effectively, it gives me goose pimples just thinking about it
>first act plays out like a sasquatch/cryptid doc which ran on scifi channels all the time in those days.
>everything feels mysterious but all in good fun until that one woman talks about seeing the witch covered in hair and hovering by the riverside
>2nd act, a walk in the woods
>tension rising with the new location.sense of isolation sets in, weirdness mounting, twig figures, looping, something is after them when it gets dark
>3rd act everything goes terribly wrong
>they're terrified, we're terrified
>goes from anxious argument to screaming terror
>we NEVER see what is after them, we only hear them reacting to it

it's so good, honestly. completely effective horror filmmaking.

zoomies will never experience something original developing in front of them

Based. Are you thankful to have been so spooked just once in your life?

based and kayfabe-pilled

This and The Descent are the only two films that legitimately scared me in a theater.

Oldfag here. Only brainlets thought it was real. Jesus.

It's the best horror movie ever, and definitely one of the only horror movies that in the context of its release was genuinely terrifying. But the "scary last image" of him staring at the wall was pretty uninspired even back then. They could've done something more, while keeping the overall idea of the ending the same.

The racial makeup and dispersement of America was a lot different back then especially if you were a middle class college kid. Heather didn’t know what real horror was