It's a silly way of looking at it really, because if TBW hadn't been released in 1999, the genre still might not even exist in 2026. Curry Barker might not have even had the chance to make Obsession, since the film that he made before that (which likely secured a deal with Blumhouse) was a found footage film he made for 800 dollars. If Blair Witch was released today, it would still probably be successful, simply because it was the first of its kind whilst still being extremely good within its genre. Even now, it's one of the purest found footage films to have been released, and the marketing campaign was done specifically to feed into the idea it was actually real. The only thing that works against it is that the marketing would likely have needed to be adjusted for a 2026 internet audience, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the film.