20 best film witches of all time

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The Blair Witch

The Blair Witch Project is unique here in that you never actually see the witch in question. You catch glimpses of her presence, whether it’s odd sounds in the forest or disturbing poppets and bundles of socks hung from the trees. And there are certainly whispers of her presence, both from the mouths of skeptical academics and more believing townspeople.

For some audience members watching this film in 1999, they may have even briefly believed. The Blair Witch Project is one of the earliest examples of found footage horror. You can thank this movie for all the good and bad (and very bad) films that followed, like [Rec] or Paranormal Activity. And, sitting in a theater at the very beginning of this trend, you may have allowed yourself to wonder — could this be real?

It’s not entirely crazy to think that three idealistic and kind of doofy college students could have gotten lost in the woods. Perhaps one of those students could have gotten their kicks terrifying the others with midnight tent-rattling and the aforementioned creepy tree figures. Or, maybe even a bored person from town could be laughing at them for their hair-trigger fear.

That false sense of reality really pays off when things get more supernatural. Over of the students disappears, and so the specter of the witch grows larger. When the remaining protagonists find an abandoned house deep in the forest, it seems as if the Blair Witch herself might step out and throw them into a cauldron, like a fairy tale grown into the real world.