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The Blair Witch Project Terrified Kevin Bacon, Says Smile Actor
Despite having his own history with the genre, The Blair Witch Project even terrified Kevin Bacon, says Smile actor and daughter Sosie Bacon. The elder Bacon actor rose to stardom with his role in the original Friday the 13th as one of Mrs. Voorhees before going on to appear in the horror genre a variety of times the following couple of decades, including Joel Schumacher's Flatliners, Ron Underwood's Tremors and David Koepp's Stir of Echoes. The past few years have seen Bacon back in the horror field with the likes of You Should Have Left and They/Them.
Written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, The Blair Witch Project told the story of a group of student filmmakers who head into a Maryland forest to investigate the titular local legend, only to encounter a series of increasingly terrifying events as they got lost. Hitting theaters in 1999, the film was not only one of the most successful indies of all-time, bringing in just shy of $250 million against its reported $250k production budget, but also scored widespread acclaim, helping popularize the found footage genre. Artisan Entertainment and the directing duo behind the film took a memorable approach to "promoting" The Blair Witch Project, an approach that worked on one genre vet.
While appearing on the latest episode of Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum with her co-star Kyle Gallner, Sosie Bacon reflected on her favorite horror movies. When The Blair Witch Project came up, the Smile star revealed that her dad, Kevin Bacon, was thoroughly terrified by the film, and recalls his shocked reaction to it. See what Bacon shared below:
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Do you know that we got that tape, nondescript, VHS in the mail? My dad freaked out. We were at our farm, and my dad was like, “Oh my god, I just got this” — he was like shaking — “I just got this, I don’t know what it is.”
The Blair Witch Project's Infamous Marketing Explained
Having been produced early in the days of the Internet's surge in popularity, The Blair Witch Project is considered to be one of the first successful viral marketing campaigns in film history, with its official website having been dedicated to faux police reports about the film's cast being "missing" and deeper backstory information shared about the titular local legend. With many taking to thus believing the film to be real, word-of-mouth helped propel The Blair Witch Project to becoming the sleeper hit it's known as today. Some films have similarly attempted to recapturing their predecessor's successful viral marketing, the most notable of which was the original Cloverfield movie, which created multiple websites and fake MySpace profiles in order to keep the film's mystery a talking major talking point among audiences.
Though having his own past in the horror genre, Kevin Bacon's own fear of The Blair Witch Project is sure to be a testament to some of the film's effective nature. While lacking some of the jump scares, and definitive answers, audiences have come to expect from modern horror movies, genre fans are sure to still agree it stands the test of time as one of the better found footage efforts nearly 25 years after it hit theaters. Audiences can revisit The Blair Witch Project streaming on Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Tubi now.
