It remains one of the most ill-advised, clumsily executed sequels of the 21st century, and seemed to have killed the franchise forever. The 2016 sequel - we'll forget the 2000 one existed, as Lionsgate seems to have done - is an attempt to bring it back.The last time we heard about some mysterious goings-ons in the woods of Burkittsville, Maryland, it was courtesy of 2000's Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, the sequel to one of the biggest indie movies ever made, and a film that finally revealed, with frightening force, the true power of the Blair Witch: In just 90 minutes or so, she can make you forget you ever once saw a movie called Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. A failed sequel in 2000 ditched the shaky cam approach and Blair Witch seemed to fizzle out. The movie's runaway success - almost $250 million at the global box office, from a $60,000 budget - was instrumental in the explosion of the found footage horror genre, though it never experienced the franchise popularity of notable successor Paranormal Activity.

No one was certain if it was real or not. Snippets of video, newspaper mock-ups and falsified histories hyped up audiences, who questioned the movie's authenticity. The Blair Witch Project brought one of the first viral marketing campaigns to a then-young internet.

The 2016 Blair Witch surprise at Comic-Con faintly echoes the splash made by its predecessor in the run-up to its July 1999 release. James doesn't know that, but he and his friends are going to find out. She's missing because terrible things happened. Heather was one of the three stars of The Blair Witch Project. James (James Allen McCune) and several of his college friends head to Maryland's Black Hills Forest to look for Heather, James' sister.

The story picks up 15 years after the events of the original film. It adopted a new title at Comic-Con - Blair Witch - as the screening and trailer made clear the connection to the 1999 hit.

Blair witch trailer 2016