Movies that are . . . actually scary?

There was one made in 2007, by a Britisher in fact, "Louise Paxton"

The Blair Witch crew were really canny wrt promotion. IIRC, the actors' IMDB profiles were modified for an entire year to show them missing? I can't imagine a working actor giving the okay on that nowadays.

That could easily have the opposite effect too, though. Personally, I wasn't aware of any of the promotional stuff and hadn't heard anything about the movie beforehand. Had I known that there were people claiming that THIS IS TOTALLY A REAL TAPE, the skeptical asshole in me probably would have kicked in and ruined the experience.

I would love a Criterion or equivalent Blair Witch release with docs and stuff detailing their efforts

As OL, points out: The Blair Witch marketing was INDEED super grassrooted and heavily, heavily seeded for longggg-game. There were a ton of early websites and other red herrings and deliberate misinformation planted all around.

I saw it on opening day lol that's how much I had bought in to the hype. Stood in line for 2 hours at an OLDE urban single-screen theater. I brought the newspaper (!) with me in line, it was the day after JFK Jr. died in his plane crash, so that was notable.