The Blair Witch Project came out in the very late end of the 1990s. I was a bit too young for horror movies at the time, since I would’ve only been 10 or 11 when it was released. I’ll also always associate this movie with my middle name, Blair, which was named after my grandfather, since the movie became so culturally massive that plenty of kids teased me about it growing up. It wasn’t until roughly a decade later that I actually rented it on DVD through Netflix’s mail service and finally watched it out of pure curiosity.

What’s genuinely strange about the movie is that it wasn’t shot with professional cameras at all, unlike virtually every other film ever made. I remember kids years later chasing after Red One cameras specifically for the image quality on their own amateur projects, but this movie was filmed entirely on basic 1990s camcorders. The video quality is rough, to put it mildly.

The story follows three young adults investigating local legends surrounding the Blair Witch, supposedly a woman accused of witchcraft and executed long ago, whose spirit now haunts the rural Maryland woods as a kind of regional boogeywoman. There’s also an old serial killer legend woven into the mix. Naturally, these three decide it’s a great idea to go investigate firsthand.

The film is also full of intentionally poor camerawork, which somehow makes everything feel unsettlingly authentic, like you’re watching something genuinely happening in real time. The sound is bad, the editing is rough, and the cinematography looks amateurish, almost like nobody involved actually knew what they were doing, like my grandma somehow ended up behind the camera.

And by the end, the whole thing spirals into something that barely makes coherent sense. One friend goes missing, they can’t locate him, and eventually they stumble into some bizarre abandoned house. The remaining guy just stares blankly at a wall, the girl starts screaming, and then the movie abruptly ends.

And in case it wasn’t already obvious, The Blair Witch Project is entirely fictional, scripted by writers, with all three leads being actual actors, one of whom I believe went on to appear in a fairly major film afterward, though that’s beside the point. What’s genuinely remarkable is how this movie became one of the most profitable films ever made relative to its budget. I imagine the cast must have kicked themselves for not negotiating some kind of profit-sharing deal, since I doubt they were paid much upfront, and it doesn’t seem like the film did much for most of their careers afterward either. It’s undeniably a landmark moment in horror movie history, just an incredibly strange one.