1 Box Office Record Seems Impossible To Beat Now After 24 Years

Found footage films are a long way from their popularity peak, and today it seems impossible to beat the biggest box office record within the sub-genre. Found footage filming is a technique that consists of telling a fiction story through a homemade video that is apparently capturing real-life events. Even though it has achieved the most notorious usage within the horror genre, there are other types of movies that take advantage of the found footage technique, such as Project X and Chronicle.

Found footage filming gives the impression of something being real and allows many camera movements that play a significant role in the creation of anxiety-inducing scenes. Consequently, the technique has found a common home within the horror genre. However, found footage films have been fairly hit-and-miss at the box office, with the most successful entries generally being horror or sci-fi movies that have still yet to break $300 million worldwide. Within the most iconic films using this technique, there’s one particular example that, despite not being the first found footage movie in history, popularized the subgenre and set a revolutionary box office record that still appears impossible to beat after nearly 25 years.

The Blair Witch Project Is The Highest-Grossing Found Footage Movie

The Blair Witch Project, one of the best found footage movies, tells the story of a group of three documentarians who investigate a local legend involving a witch and a forest. The videos produced by the trio are supposedly found after their disappearance, and the entire movie is narrated through that footage. The film’s greatness lies in its ability to take advantage of the marketing possibilities given by the found footage technique, and its viral nature in 1999 made it possible to set a record that remains unbeaten to this day. The Blair Witch Project is the highest-grossing found footage movie ever, having earned nearly $250 million at the worldwide box office (via Box Office Mojo).

However, what is more impressive about The Blair Witch Project is that it established that record on a $60 thousand budget, becoming one of the most surprising box office hits. The film’s creativity lies in the way it exploits the advantages of found footage, with the technique allowing for great horror scenes with few resources. The cinematic language is used at its best by concealing what needs to be concealed and showing only what must be shown. Additionally, the technique also triggered the rumor surrounding the movie’s release that the disappearances and footage were entirely real, which greatly augmented the film’s popularity and, subsequently, its box office record.

Why It’s Nearly Impossible To Beat The Blair Witch Project Today

Considering The Blair Witch Project came out more than two decades ago, and that the second-highest-grossing found footage film, Paranormal Activity 3 ($207 million), was released in 2011, the subgenre has lost steam. The reasons behind its seemingly inevitable death could be related to the fact that the impression of something being true worked better in the times before widespread social media usage. Additionally, domestic recording cameras have improved so much that the sharpness and visual quality they provide go against the basis of the technique, which allowed for less budgetary spending on aspects like makeup or visual effects.

The likelihood of another found footage movie coming along to surpass The Blair Witch Project‘s box office total is highly unlikely. The novelty of the approach isn’t apt to inspire a similar word-of-mouth or true-story-based campaign that aided the 1999 movie’s unprecedented success. Rather, found footage movies would be more likely to enjoy viral success on streaming, thus keeping The Blair Witch Project‘s box office record intact.