This 2024 Discovered Footage Horror Film Is the Closest We have Gotten to ‘The Blair Witch Mission’ in 25 Years

Each discovered footage fan is aware of the style shifted on its axis with 1999’s The Blair Witch Project. Borrowing foundational parts from The McPherson Tape (UFO Abduction) and Cannibal Holocaust, it set horror on a course for reinvention, not like something we’d ever seen. The advertising and marketing marketing campaign surrounding the discharge made the indie movie really feel so hauntingly actual and positioned the occasions as an precise disappearance. The actors vanished from public life throughout the film’s viral marketing cycle (they couldn’t even attend any red-carpet occasions) and largely satisfied the general public that the movie was genuine, newly-discovered footage.

Many years later, the discovered footage style is crammed to the brim with entries of various high quality. Many have tried to recapture the glory of The Blair Witch Mission, however none really feel as apt a religious successor as a title from final yr. 2024’s #MissingCouple mines comparable territory, each within the story and with its promotional supplies, and gives a contemporary re-imagining of the basic discovered footage story. Administrators Oliver Mauldin and Jacques Edeline understood the task of reapplying a brand new coat of shiny paint to well-oiled style conventions. Secluded location? Verify. Restricted solid? Double examine. Evil presence within the woods? Triple examine. Mauldin and Edeline honor style custom, replace a number of key points (corresponding to utilizing TikTok movies as cryptic breadcrumbs) and take advertising and marketing cues from its most blatant inspiration. In the event you like The Blair Witch Mission, #MissingCouple lives as much as its mysterious on-line marketing campaign and can delight any discovered footage fan.

#MissingCouple tells the story of an influencer couple who go away behind the brilliant metropolis lights for a secluded, quieter life within the nation. Austin and Janna Jenkins (their actual names) have rented out a cabin on the outskirts of a small city and plan on documenting their lives for his or her legion of loyal followers. An influencer’s work is rarely achieved, in spite of everything. However as they settle into their new house, somebody (or one thing) lurks within the woods round them. Co-directors Mauldin and Edeline pack the movie with thrills and chills, evoking a way of suffocating doom because the determine attracts nearer to their entrance step. The worry sprouts from a superb use of sunshine and shadow, permitting the unknown presence to remain principally hidden and solely come out into the sunshine whenever you least anticipate it. Any distinguishing traits stay blurry, although, so the viewers is barely capable of make out a imprecise define.

On the floor, it appears like your typical set-up for a discovered footage movie, however the circumstances surrounding #MissingCouple enhance its spooky method much more. The “found” footage is made that rather more horrifying when offered as reality in the actual world, in a lot the identical manner as The Blair Witch Project. As precise influencers, Austin and Janna even devoted a number of movies on their TikTok web page to their “renovation” venture. Below a video captioned “Join the search,” many customers started expressing their confusion and worry that the footage was actual. “What are the chances I’m watching the documentary proper now,” wrote one follower. “Have they ever been discovered?” requested one other, with a 3rd chiming in, “Why does this really feel like promoting for a film. I pray that’s all that is!”

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The forest could make anybody… snap.

A separate TikTok video featured lots extra viewers sharing their ideas. “Why do I really feel like I am being Blair Witched,” wrote one viewer. Regardless of Austin and Janna importing many extra movies, together with ones that includes their new child, numerous viewers have not been shy about sharing how they had been hoodwinked into nonetheless falling for the gimmick. “I’m right here from the film I assumed it was actual,” confessed one viewer beneath a running video.

‘#MissingCouple’ Depends on Our Tradition’s True Crime Obsession

A second TikTok account (referred to as Found Persons Report) fanned the flames by asking for any leads on the couple’s whereabouts. In utilizing social apps like TikTok, Austin and Janna created a hyper-realistic world wherein they disappeared out within the woods. With true-crime documentaries and biopics being so common – from Making a Assassin to Ryan Murphy‘s Monsters series – Austin and Janna depend on our collective obsession to trick you into believing the story is the chilly, laborious fact. Throughout one of many movie’s most unsettling scenes, the supposed killer breaks into their cabin and tip-toes by means of the rooms, even selecting up a digital camera to movie the couple asleep in mattress. If the killer might so simply break in, what’s to say he could not simply slaughter them of their sleep? That may be too simple; it is clear the killer likes to toy with its prey earlier than the kill.

Most found footage films don’t go to such lengths to make the occasions of the movie appear actual. Many entries, corresponding to The Den, Willow Creek, and The Tunnel perform as pure leisure and lack the real-life social part to additional deceive audiences. In making the movie interactive, the filmmakers encourage most people to submit story ideas and recommendation, as if they’re vigilante investigators attempting to unravel a real-life crime.

Very similar to The Blair Witch Mission earlier than it, #MissingCouple hooks into the story with implications that the individuals concerned desperately must be discovered. Oliver Mauldin and Jacques Edeline constructed a collection of intricate occasions and paired them with harrowing footage to create a narrative that feels eerily acquainted. It’s a headline ripped from the web, and that’s what makes it most surprising of all. With the gripping on-line presence and seek for Austin and Janna Jenkins, the indie gem makes for the right companion piece to The Blair Witch Mission.

#MissingCouple

Launch Date

October 8, 2024

Runtime

93 Minutes

Director

Jacques Edeline, Oliver Mauldin

Writers

Jacques Edeline