3. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)

Found footage has become a bit of a joke in more recent years, with the never-ending Paranormal Activity franchise to a slew of poor imitations made with increasingly lower and lower budgets, but it all began with The Blair Witch Project, and while it might not quite pack the punch it once did, the fact remains it is one of the most influential and important films in all the horror genre.

Presented as fact, The Blair Witch Project details the journey of three student filmmakers who, while making a documentary on the titular witch, head into the supposedly haunted woods outside the town of Burketsville, formally Blair, and were never seen again.

Perhaps the purest example of found footage, The Blair Witch Project also remains the best, using the style to great effect and creating a genuinely unsettling and uncomfortable atmosphere in the process.

For the uninitiated, The Blair Witch Project offers up a glimpse into the world of horrors newest sub-genre; found footage, and it also presents a creepy and frightening film, one void of gore and jump scares, but one that manages to create a sense of dread none the less.

IF YOU LIKED THIS: Paranormal Activity, The Borderlands, Lake Mungo, Blair Witch, REC.