I am thinking it was purely the advertising aspect. there was so much buzz and talk about it during the first few weeks before the opening. And how on earth did a low budget movie make it onto the big screen anyway?
shareIt definitely had to do with the marketing, but what made it so fresh at the time was the documentary, shaky cam style that hadn't hit the mainstream until this movie was released. Though films like Cannibal Holocaust came out long before Blair Witch, movies like Paranormal Activity and VHS owe a great debt to this movie for paving the way for their later mass appeal to horror audiences.
shareThe amazing thing is how much the movie made on such a low budget. 60k budget ended up making almost a quarter of a BILLION dollars. That is a huge return on the money.
It might be the most successful film of all time. And the movie itself wasn't even "that" good. Sure, it had an interesting element to it, the gimmicky found footage takes made it seem real but who the hell knows why so many peeps went to go see it. Usually when success of this magnitude happens there is some luck involved.
But yeah, the timing might have been good, I mean, it wasn't just another slasher film, and word of mouth probably played a role in it's success. The fact that they used somewhat unknown actors also helped because everyone thought they were watching a real story. Had they used popular well known people, it wouldn't have had the same effect.
It was a novel idea at the time, and it was pretty well made, it started a genre of its own, found tapes, and it still is the best of its kind
shareIt was low budget to the infinite power.
shareBecause it was well done and a 1st of its kind.
shareIt was the first wide release found footage film, that's why.
shareThis style of found footage horror wasn’t stale yet, and in the early years of the internet (with a cast of unknowns), they managed to convince people that the footage was real
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