The Gothic roots of found footage

That’s the idea, anyway, and while the concept has been around for a while, it was The Blair Witch Project which popularised it in recent times and it’s hung around in one form or another ever since, with the format proving so popular that the long-awaited sequel pretty much reuses the whole original story, with the sister of 1999’s Heather leading a group of college students into those cursed Maryland woods.

And, without second-guessing the movie, it’s not going to end well. Found footage films never do; that’s sort of the point of their central conceit: an investigation or expedition into something legendary or spooky goes awry, no one comes home, and only their video evidence is left behind, to be pored over, edited and presented in documentary form for people to make up their own minds about.

The Blair Witch Project was groundbreaking and, more to the point, terrifying. Rather than watching from the detached safety of our living rooms, we found ourselves living through the terror with Heather, Josh and Mike; we shared their growing unease and jumped out of our skins. The shaky camera work and close-up selfie shots exaggerated the sensation that this was the real deal, and that we were voyeurs, witnesses