No blood.  No monsters.  Just our own imagination tweaked by the single cam format, a sub-genre leveraged years later by Quarantine, Cloverfield, and Paranormal Activity.

Those films wouldn‘t exist unless Blair Witch proved the format could draw audiences in.

Made on the uber-cheap by a pair of unknown filmmakers, Blair Witch was nothing less than a sensation when it hit theaters 11 years ago. It was the ultimate word of mouth hit without recognizable stars, just a savvy Internet campaign that hinted that what you were about to see actually happened. Everything coalesced into a bracingly original experience, something impossible to recapture today.

That makes the just-released Blu-ray release a chance to appreciate a groundbreaking film, but not a moment to jump out of our seats all over again. The scares simply aren’t the same as they once were. That leaves a curious film, one that still commands our attention but cannot help but disappoint when compared to timeless shockers like The Omen and The Exorcist.

What emerges is a precursor to our reality television age, when everyone is armed with a video camera and few thoughts remain private.

The story remains a model of simplicity. Three young filmmakers head into the woods of rural Maryland to explore the myth of the Blair Witch. Locals say the creature has haunted the area for decades, a hairy half-man, half-beast who slaughters children and adults alike.

The filmmakers quickly get lost despite the map wrangling of their unofficial leader, Heather (Heather Donahue). They’re forced to camp out several nights straight, and each time they go to bed they hear odd noises and wake to find their camp site changed in small but peculiar ways.

Is someone pulling a prank on them, or is the Blair Witch prepping for the kill?

Much of the film’s dialogue feels unforced and raw, which helps the illusion that these three no-name actors might really be the real deal – filmmakers who died pursuing their art. That’s hooey, of course, but it was part of what made the film special during its theatrical run.

The script doesn’t give us much insight into the characters, a flaw that grew worse over time. They bicker about directions and how Heather refuses to put her camera down, but the arguments rarely reflect on the characters. It pushes the story forward, but when their lives are imperiled, it doesn’t make it easier to root for a possible rescue.

Only Mike (Michael C. Williams) is given a semblance of a character arc, growing from a passive soul to someone who takes measures to keep the trio sane.

The cam format allows for some confessional moments, and it’s hard not to think about those reality show rants when Heather turns the camera on herself to apologize for getting her friends in such a mess.

The extras include four alternate endings, each offering little in the way of new shocks, plus the antiquated short about the “true story“ behind the “Witch.” What’s missing is an extensive “making of” feature, or even one showing the film’s legacy from the perspective of film historians.

The Blair Witch Project can’t scare us silly any longer, but the film still matters to horror fans all the same.

But what would happen if you stopped believing in the devil – and even felt you had the means and a mission to prove he doesn’t exist – only to find out that you might be wrong and it might be too late to ever regain a strong enough belief to save yourself from his attack?

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That’s the creepy question underlying the new horror film “The Last Exorcism,” in which a former child preacher named Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), who became famous for casting out demons, has grown up to be a sarcastic con artist scamming people out of their hard-earned dollars with fake ceremonies and false promises.

But after years of deception, Marcus has become wracked with guilt after hearing of a young girl who died after undergoing an exorcism, and as a result he’s hired a film crew to follow him on one last job in an attempt to reveal on-camera just how fake exorcisms are and teach people that the devil is just a figment of our collective imaginations. He picks a request by the Sweetzer family, who live down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and heads out to “free” their teenage daughter Nell (Ashley Bell) and prove that her bizarre behavior has nothing to do with possession.

Well, anyone who has seen the film’s creepy posters and bus ads knows that Nell ain’t going to go quietly. Soon, she’s veering between her normal sweet disposition and a vicious rage that leads her to slice Cotton’s hand, climb the walls and talk like an ogre – and we haven’t even gotten to the fact she shows up with a catatonic stare in the hotel room of a crew member despite the fact they’re miles away and never told her where they were staying.

Cotton suddenly realizes he might be having to tangle with Satan after all, but his lack of faith may very well have rendered him powerless. With one twisted moment after another spinning out of control, viewers are left to wonder if he can pull salvation back from the brink.

“The Last Exorcism” follows in the footsteps of other famous horror mockumentaries like “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity,” but it scores on several levels above and beyond those prior efforts. “Blair” was almost entirely raw-looking and drew its fear-mongering from its normal-young-adult protagonists slowly losing their minds and cool while hopelessly trapped in some desolate woods, while “Paranormal” relied on dispassionate security-style footage to convey its dance with the dark side.

But “Exorcism” has a vibrant and charismatic lead to follow while still maintaining the feel and appearance of being utterly real. It’s the slicker-looking, professional feel of the footage that makes the gambit work so well, because it makes it easy for the viewer to think as long as pros are involved in the film’s story, nothing can get too crazy. They’ll know how to handle anything, right? Right?

“Exorcism” also has an inherent wit that was utterly lacking in its forebears, as Cotton tries to keep his wisecracking cool throughout when the Sweetzer family’s not looking. Director Daniel Stamm and writers Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland wisely chose total unknowns for the leads, which is key to the effectiveness of the genre, and dole out the scares in a tasteful enough fashion that amazingly keeps the film at a PG13 rating while being utterly terrifying as it spins ever further into darkness.

For secular horror-movie fans, “Exorcism” is a terrific work of terror. But for Christians, the movie harbors a worldview that is disconcerting in much deeper ways.

SPOILER ALERT (not of plot details as much as broad ideas): While Cotton Marcus offers a fresh twist on the timeworn character of a hypocritical minister, his depiction in the film will probably only serve to further secular-minded viewers’ idea of Christian leaders as charlatans. Even as he starts to realize the evil he’s facing is real, he can’t quite seem to regain his beliefs, leaving the film to bear the message that evil reigns supreme.

That may not come as much of a surprise to those who are wise enough to shy away from Hollywood’s often pointlessly gruesome excuses for horror in the slasher-film genre. But when that message is at the heart of a film like “Exorcism” that is vastly better made than most horror films, Christian viewers should be warned that it risks leaving a lasting impression on their minds. I saw the film two months ago at a film festival, and I still can’t quite shake it. And while it might have been the filmmakers’ goal, that’s probably not a good thing for my soul.

Considering the extent to which fear controls decision-making in Hollywood, it isn’t much of a stretch to assume it also controls how content, particularly film, is marketed. Television isn’t the issue here, quite as much as feature films. If there is any doubt that marketing capital is being flushed down the toilet by the major studios, one need only look in the entertainment section of any major newspaper. Gigantic ads for movies still fill most of the pages. Hollywood doesn’t seem to notice that newspapers are dying a quick death, that their primary demographic doesn’t read newspapers, and that anyone who wants to know the location and time of a movie has a portable communication device with them at all times.

Meanwhile, the percentage of total media spending that the studios allocate to the Internet will be about 7.7% this year.  This is all they allocate — while the Internet has essentially consumed eyeballs across the entire globe.

Even worse, the dollars they do spend online are utilized in the most unimaginative ways possible. There’s certainly no denying that money spent on trailers is extremely well-spent. Latest research shows trailers are the third or fourth most viewed items online. Beyond that, however, advertising is generally limited to straight-ahead websites for the movie in question. As one web designer who handles most of studio websites told me, “The marketing people keep giving me the same stuff to do, over and over, because they are too afraid for their jobs to work out of the box.”

It’s astonishing, given the studio’s advertising budgets and that technology allows them to do just about anything, that fear is allowed to trump the most valuable of capital – selling the product.  Even more amazing, the Internet’s lack of creative boundaries could permit studios to engage in the most radical, experimental, and daring advertising campaigns ever seen. And yet, they won’t – even though there have already been paradigms in place for a decade. The Blair Witch Project presented the most rudimentary form of imaginative marketing that unquestionably helped propel the film’s success. Cloverfield did a nice job of it, and The Dark Knight, with its guerrilla-style, immersive, real-world approach all had an impact.

In other words, it’s all about trans-media, folks. And you better click on that link in the last sentence. And by trans-media, I don’t mean some lame-ass MySpace page. Even better, trans-media relies on creative ingenuity — true out-of-the-box thinking – as much on storytellers as it does marketing folks. That means bringing the creative elements of a film into the process – creating a partnership rather than an antagonistic relationship. It means doing it early. It means paying them a little extra, but they’ll gladly do the work because their interests are aligned with those of the studio.

Further, the method of incorporating all levels of media – including cellphones, text messaging, you name it – has the same goal as traditional advertising: get the viewer to buy (or see) the product. The difference is that its requirement for immersion requires the viewer to invest time. The more time they invest, the more connected to the product they become, the more likely they are to become ambassadors for that product, and the more likely they are to see the darn movie.

Trans-media also has a good pedigree in television. The Lost Experience, produced by Javier Grillo-Marxuach, was a terrific immersive experience that was done on a limited budget. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that the network felt the campaign had no merit because it didn’t generate revenue. What they failed to realize was the intangible benefits yielded by the campaign, namely, keeping the show in viewer’s minds during summer hiatus. In today’s market, that is absolutely essential. Viewers have far too many media choices to chose from, and they have lives to lead, as well. A six-week hiatus of Heroes during the spring of 2007 cost NBC almost 20% of its audience – which never returned – and that show was the one hit of that season! With the degree of audience fragmentation, and the infinite choices that now exist, the studios need to redeploy marketing capital into constant, trans-media-related campaigns, to keep audiences aware of their product all the time, every day.

Tomorrow morning I’ll discuss how Hollywood should alter its method of manufacturing, and how it should specifically redeploy its capital.

Back in 1999, a movie called “The Blair Witch Project” burst into the American pop culture consciousness from seemingly nowhere.  It appeared to be (and was marketed to viewers as) a raw documentary film about three student filmmakers and their tragic last days experiencing supernatural forces while lost in the wilderness, but in reality it was a fictional film made for under $30,000 by a team of indie filmmakers and actors and had caused a sensation at the Sundance Film Festival months before. 

The resulting hysteria of “was that real or not?” among the average, uninformed horror-film fans drove the film to a massive $150 million gross in the US alone, and inspired dozens of spoof films and cheapo horror films in its wake. But no one’s been able to catch that lightning in a bottle of mass mental manipulation twice – until now. 

“Paranormal Activity” uses the same conceit of “found footage” depicting the tragic consequences of supernatural attacks on seemingly normal people. In this case, it follows the events that befall young shacked-up couple Micah (Micah Stone) and Katie (Katie Featherston) after Micah buys a video camera in an attempt to see whether they can catch on video exactly what’s causing awful noises to waft through their apartment and doors to slam viciously while they sleep at night. 

Katie is more inclined to believe there’s a supernatural element to things than the skeptical Micah, partly because she reveals that she’s experienced strange behavior before from what seemed like spirits at other times in her life, no matter where she’s moved. Micah starts to believe pretty soon as well, however, especially after he leaves a Ouija board out and notices that it’s very definitely been used for a message from the beyond. Soon, a paranormal expert comes over to check things out and says he definitely thinks there’s trouble brewing. 

“Paranormal” uses a string of subtle effects to convey the slow yet steadily growing horror felt by the couple as they experience all manner of noises, slammed doors, shaken chandeliers, flipped-on TVs and eventually the sight of hideous claw marks in some strategically placed powder on the bedroom floor. The lead actors are total unknowns making their feature film debuts, effectively adding to the feeling that this is real rather than a predictable cinematic adventure sure to be survived by a star like George Clooney or Angelina Jolie. 

And yet, while first-time writer-director Oren Peli crafts a haunting, desolate look for the film with its frequent use of shadowy night footage, very few moments of the film provide a true scare that makes audience members jump out of their seats or shriek in terror. Having seen it with a crowd of mostly underage teenagers who should have been perfect targets for a truly scary film, I can attest that the loudest freakouts of the film – other than its undeniably disturbing final moments – came when audience members dropped bottles loudly at tense moments, provoking false panic immediately followed by whoops of laughter, and at the film’s conclusion, a chorus of disappointed comments. 

That reaction was surprising, because distributor Paramount Pictures is turning “Paranormal” into a box-office juggernaut by using a viral Internet campaign in which a million people had to electronically “demand” the film be released widely before the studio would release it nationally (surprise, the campaign worked). Having seen through the hype after surviving a screening, one can only hope that the “demand” won’t keep growing once word gets out about its almost-nonexistent plotline and simply sporadic scares. 

Advance hype in a Los Angeles Times’ article on the film stated that Steven Spielberg himself went crazy for “Paranormal,” finding it so terrifying that he believed his advance screening tape was haunted and that he brought it back to his office the next day wrapped in a plastic trash bag for fear of touching it. If this is what terrifies the legendary director of “Jaws” and writer of “Poltergeist” these days, then perhaps he’s made a few too many family films. 

He should have also kept the tape in the trash bag and spared the rest of us our ten dollars.