Wire report
‘It soothes me’: why The Blair Witch Project is my feelgood movie
The latest in our series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort films is a dread-filled journey into the woods I’m not sure I could blame anyone for choosing, as their feelgood film, a film in which the characters feel good. Cinema is supposed to manipulate us emotionally - that’s the whole point. Nemo feels good when he’s found, and we feel good for him. By this logic, horror films should make us feel bad. So, when it was released in 1999, why did The Blair Witch Project – a film in which three film students are hunted, terrorised and presumably killed by an unseen entity – make nearly $250m at the box office? That’s the same as Love Actually. Of all the millions of people who paid to sit and watch Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s claustrophobic found-footage nightmare, I’m sure that not a single one of them entered the cinema hoping for their day to be ruined. I was te
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The latest in our series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort films is a dread-filled journey into the woods I’m not sure I could blame anyone for choosing, as their feelgood film, a film in which the characters feel good. Cinema is supposed to manipulate us emotionally - that’s the whole point. Nemo feels good when he’s found, and we feel good for him. By this logic, horror films should make us feel bad. So, when it was released in 1999, why did The Blair Witch Project – a film in which three film students are hunted, terrorised and presumably killed by an unseen entity – make nearly $250m at the box office? That’s the same as Love Actually. Of all the millions of people who paid to sit and watch Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s claustrophobic found-footage nightmare, I’m sure that not a single one of them entered the cinema hoping for their day to be ruined. I was te
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What happened
According to The Guardian’s linked item, ‘It soothes me’: why The Blair Witch Project is my feelgood movie, The latest in our series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort films is a dread-filled journey into the woods I’m not sure I could blame anyone for choosing, as their feelgood film, a film in which the characters feel good. Cinema is supposed to manipulate us emotionally - that’s the whole point. Nemo feels good when he’s found, and we feel good for him. By this logic, horror films should make us feel bad. So, when it was released in 1999, why did The Blair Witch Project – a film in which three film students are hunted, terrorised and presumably killed by an unseen entity – make nearly $250m at the box office? That’s the same as Love Actually. Of all the millions of people who paid to sit and watch Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s claustrophobic found-footage nightmare, I’m sure that not a single one of them entered the cinema hoping for their day to be ruined. I was te
Context
The development sits in VINI’s Technology coverage for readers following technology, science, product policy, markets, infrastructure, and the public consequences of innovation. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The linked item is dated 2026-06-08T09:00:03+00:00.
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Primary source: ‘It soothes me’: why The Blair Witch Project is my feelgood movie via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.
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- ‘It soothes me’: why The Blair Witch Project is my feelgood movieThe Guardian - 2026-06-08T09:00:03+00:00
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