The Blair Witch Project (1999) Directors: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez

Twelve years on, The Blair Witch Project is still a terrifying and almost perfect horror film. It's rather basic - camcorder footage and lots of running around in the woods - but it works so well through the build-up of the narrative, the 'realism' of the situation and what we don't see. True horror exists in our brains; we don't need blood and guts on screen to put the willies up us. The last shot in Blair Witch has haunted me for all those years as it relates back to something that is mentioned earlier on in the movie. It's extremely clever and very, very scary.

The film is presented as documentary footage found after three young student filmmakers go missing in the Black Hills, Maryland, whilst filming their quest to find out more about the legendary Blair Witch. They start off with vox popping locals who give some kudos to the legend and go deeper into the woods to investigate areas where 'incidents' have taken place. This is when we start to get really spooky as strange piles of rocks appear in front of their tent and weird humanoid stick figures hang from trees. Oh yes, and crying children in the depths of the night. Always fun.

It's then a chiller ride as one of the filmmakers goes AWOL from the group and he seems to come back to them, albeit small pieces of him in a little wrapped warped parcel of teeth, flesh and hair. You feel everything for Mike, Heather and Josh - unlike Paranormal Activity, where you don't give two flying monkeys about the characters, the Blair Witch builds up the 'characters' of the filmmakers as real people. Let's not forget either the extraordinary promotion campaign around the movie that this was real footage and Mike, Heather and Josh actually existed. They do. They're alive and they are real.

The erratic last ten minutes are full of running and screaming. The camera goes dead. We can't sleep again.

4/5