Both films open by telling you this happened. Hooper's narration about events that befell five young people is invented, and it worked so well that audiences went on believing it for decades; Myrick and Sánchez took the same device and built the entire film and its marketing on it, down to missing-person posters and a website presenting the footage as recovered. The other inheritance is texture: 16mm grain and non-actors in the first, camcorder and improvisation in the second, both chosen so the film does not look made.
