25 years after its release, The Blair Witch Project co-director takes a deep dive into found footage cult hit and shares an obscure Star Wars inspiration

The Blair Witch Project still (1999).

documentary shows In Search of… (hosted by Leonard Nimoy) and Unsolved Mysteries that truly got under his skin. But before Cannibal Holocaust, even before COPS, Sánchez’s number one inspiration for found footage? Bigfoot. "For me and Dan, the Patterson-Gimlin film was the impetus for us to get into found footage. That film was the creepiest thing we’d ever seen." These cinema-verité documentarians, alongside Sánchez’s lifelong uneasiness around the deep wood, inspired the stew of ideas for what would eventually become The Blair Witch Project.