The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American psychological horror film written, directed, and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez.

One of the most successful independent films of all time, it is a "found footage" pseudo-documentary in which three students (Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard) hike into the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland, to shoot a documentary about a local myth known as the Blair Witch.

When The Blair Witch Project premiered at the Sundance Film Festival at midnight on January 23, 1999, its promotional marketing campaign listed the actors as either "missing" or "deceased".

Locals tell them of Rustin Parr, a hermit who lived deep in the forest and abducted seven children in 1941; he murdered them all in his basement, killing them in pairs while having one stand in a corner, facing the wall.

He tells them of a young child named Robin Weaver, who went missing in 1888; when she returned three days later, she talked about an old woman whose feet never touched the ground.

Heather learns her map is missing; Mike reveals he kicked it into a creek out of frustration, which provokes a fight between the trio as they realize they are lost.

That night, they hear Josh calling out to them and follow his voice to the abandoned ruins of the house of Rustin Parr, featuring children's bloody handprints on one of the walls.

For instance, several character names are near-anagrams: Elly Kedward (The Blair Witch) is Edward Kelley, a 16th-century mystic, and Rustin Parr, the fictional 1940s child-murderer, began as an anagram for Rasputin.

[14] The directors also cited influences such as the television series In Search of..., and horror documentary films Chariots of the Gods and The Legend of Boggy Creek.

[9][8] Principal photography began on October 23, 1997, in Maryland and lasted eight days, overseen by cinematographer Neal Fredericks, who provided a CP-16 film camera.

[19] The actors were given clues as to their next location through messages hidden inside 35 mm film cans left in milk crates they found with Global Positioning Satellite systems.

[22][23] The final scenes were filmed at the historic Griggs House, a 150-year-old building located in the Patapsco Valley State Park near Granite, Maryland.

The directors screened the first cut in small film festivals in order to get feedback and make changes that would ensure that it appealed to as large an audience as possible.

The three actors claim that they had no clear knowledge that the entire movie would be composed of their found footage, and that they had not given much thought to the clause that allowed production to use their real identities.

The film's official website launched in June, featuring faux police reports as well as "newsreel-style" interviews, and fielding questions about the "missing" students.

[8] During screenings, the filmmakers made advertising efforts to promulgate the events in the film as factual, including the distribution of flyers at festivals such as Sundance, asking viewers to come forward with any information about the "missing" students.

[45] The backstory for the film is a legend fabricated by Sánchez and Myrick which is detailed in the Curse of the Blair Witch, a mockumentary broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel on July 12, 1999.

The Curse of the Blair Witch presents the legend as real, complete with manufactured newspaper articles, newsreels, television news reports, and staged interviews.

[48] The Blair Witch Project was released on VHS and DVD on October 22, 1999[49][50] by Artisan, presented in a 1.33:1 windowboxed aspect ratio and Dolby Digital 2.0 audio.

Special features include the documentary Curse of the Blair Witch, a five-minute Newly Discovered Footage, audio commentary, production notes, and cast and crew biographies.

The audio commentary presents directors Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, and producers Rob Cowie, Mike Monello and Gregg Hale, in which they discuss the film's production.

The website's consensus reads: "Full of creepy campfire scares, mock-doc The Blair Witch Project keeps audiences in the dark about its titular villain, proving once more that imagination can be as scary as anything onscreen.

[66] Audience reception to the film, though, remains divided;[67] Those polled by CinemaScore gave it an average grade of "C+" on a scale of A+ to F.[68] The Blair Witch Project's found-footage technique received near-universal praise.

[74] Todd McCarthy of Variety said: "An intensely imaginative piece of conceptual filmmaking that also delivers the goods as a dread-drenched horror movie, The Blair Witch Project puts a clever modern twist on the universal fear of the dark and things that go bump in the night".

[75] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave a grade of "B": "As a horror picture, the film may not be much more than a cheeky game, a novelty with the cool, blurry look of an avant-garde artifact.

Andrew Sarris of The New York Observer deemed it "overrated", as well as a rendition of "the ultimate triumph of the Sundance scam: Make a heartless home movie, get enough critics to blurb in near unison 'scary' and watch the suckers flock to be fleeced".

[77] A critic from The Christian Science Monitor said that while the film's concept and scares were innovative, he felt it could have just been shot "as a 30-minute short ... since its shaky camera work and fuzzy images get monotonous after a while, and there's not much room for character development within the very limited plot".

[88] Some critics have also noted that the film's basic plot premise and narrative style are strikingly similar to Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and The Last Broadcast (1998).

[106] The first volume, Rustin Parr, received the most praise, ranging from moderate to positive, with critics commending its storyline, graphics and atmosphere; some reviewers claimed that the game was scarier than the film.

[124] In October 2017, co-director Eduardo Sánchez revealed that he and the rest of the film's creative team were developing a Blair Witch television series, though he clarified that any decisions would ultimately be up to Lionsgate now which owns the rights to it.