Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s “The Blair Witch Project” (1999) was not the first horror film to utilize the “found footage” angle.
Others came before it that also claimed to be “real,” documentary footage of a frightening anomaly that was caught on camera. However, even with film history reminding us of other works that pushed this angle (more on this later), “The Blair Witch Project” succeeded in a way that not only created a specific sub-genre of horror film but found widespread popularity by being among the first films to utilize the Internet as a marketing tool.
Also, and this is most important, the film is still scary decades later.
The first thing we see is “In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Md., while shooting a documentary. A year later, their footage was found.”
After the title card (which also adorned most of the posters and trailers leading up to the release), it begins with a blurry shot that switches into focus of documentarian Heather O’Donohue. It’s a perfect start, as O’Donohue, playing herself (as do her two male co-stars), is the true focus of the film.
Set on Halloween, with a film crew of three – O’Donohue, Michael Williams (embodying the face of fear) and Joshua Leonard (the necessary skeptic and, arguably the one who suffers the most for his doubts) – investigate the growing myth of the Blair Witch.
If all you remember about “The Blair Witch Project” is the forest-set squabbling, shaky camera work and histrionics, it’s a pleasure to remind viewers how involving the first act is. The footage is always handheld and alternates between color and black and white.
The early interviews with the townsfolk are engaging, good humored and well-paced. At one point, there’s an interview with a woman who identifies herself as Mary Brown – it’s chilling, as she presents woodwork that, in my ’99 mindset, presented an obvious clue.
Is Mary Brown the Blair Witch?
The leads journey deep into the Maryland woods and, with every passing day, discover they are lost and that someone or something is making nightly visits to their campground. Then one of them vanishes.
While not the first “found footage” faux supernatural documentary, “The Blair Witch Project” was the first to catch on like this. Pre-“Blair Witch,” there was Charles B. Pierce’s still wonderful, if awfully quaint “The Legend of Boggy Creek” (1972) and Dean Alioto’s simple, chilling “The McPherson Tape” (1989).
Post-“Blair Witch,” we not only got the quickly made, ambitious but conceptually misguided “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2” (2000), but the obvious rip-off of “The St. Francisville Experiment” (2000), “Cloverfield” (2008), “REC” (2007) and the American remake “Quarantine” (2008), “Paranormal Activity” (2009) and “Chronicle” (2012), to name just a few.
There were also genre films that applied the technique as a storytelling device, ranging from “Halloween: Resurrection” (2002) to George A. Romero’s “Diary of the Dead” (2008) and M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Visit” (2015).
Whether you go as far back as “In Search Of…” consider the infamous “Cannibal Holocaust” to be the true originator of this genre (I don’t), the devious novelty of watching a “real,” found encapsulation of the unnatural has always been irresistible. The Blair Witch was only one of many media Pandora’s Boxes to come before and since.
Because “The Blair Witch Project” was shot on film and in the overly familiar digital mode that just about every subsequent found footage horror movie has been since, it has a scrappy feel, akin to Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.”
O’Donohue’s is the film’s center. She is sometimes irritating but also intelligent, engaged and authentic. While her work has been often parodied, O’Donohue gives a terrific performance, and her big scene (you know the one) may have been filmed at an unflattering angle but her straight-to-the-camera confession is still heartbreaking.
The shots of the documentarians filming themselves turns the camera into a character and storytelling tool, not a POV.
It all begins like a droll camping trip video and becomes increasingly strange (another odd theory that circulated the year of the film’s release that still holds up – if it’s not Mary Brown, then maybe it really is just O’Donohue (the character, not the version of herself she’s playing…you know what I mean).
As the filmmakers get lost (“I agreed to a scouted-out project!”), the tensions build. In the age of YouTube, Tik Tok and reality TV, this is less arcane than one would imagine.
The complaints lobbed at the film in ’99 still hold up. The camera shakes too much, the characters get on our nerves and the third act reveal is more cerebral than finite.
Considering the way the characters are often presented in an unfavorable light (Heather’s shrill self-importance contrasted with the sulking whine of the men), it’s no wonder audiences thought this was real.
Still, “The Blair Witch Project” (especially if viewed with the lights off) is scary, as the distant noises that surround the camp at night, the sudden appearance of the Stick Men and the morning “gift” outside the tent are still jolting.
The camera is weaponized, as it not only captures the horrors but occasionally becomes the tool in which the three use to survive; their cameras are also used by us as a character study and by them as a confession booth.
Someone notes, “I can see why you like this camera – it’s not quite reality.”
Indeed, it’s easier to look at the screen than face the truth in front of them. At one point, the trio decides to head east, because they recall The Wicked Witch of the West. The final scene plays like “Hansel and Gretel.” The ending is still seriously terrifying, an immersion into a haunted house with the final shots creating unbearable tension.
Because the footage is allegedly real (and that was what many believed in ’99, even after the film played in theaters!), we lean in closer, looking at the possibilities.
This is a Rorschach Test of a horror film, as some felt cheated and declared it the Emperor’s New Clothes, while others deemed it an instant classic.
How much should the stars of The Blair Witch Project been paid? @Forbes has estimated what they made—and how much they COULD have made, if their original contract was honored.
My latest on what happened, w/interviews from the stars themselves: https://t.co/DUYuhBrswr
— Lisette Voytko-Best (@lisettethebest) July 28, 2024
The subtext is fairly rich: one of the filmmakers declares, “It’s very hard to get lost in America these days.” This becomes a cautionary tale of assuming a paper map, a compass and youthful nerve are enough for novice hikers to survive the unpredictable obstacles within nature.
To step away from the phenomenon the film created, this is a keen reflection, both then and now, on our obsession with self-preservation through documentation.
Aside from the eerie, ambient end credits “score,” there’s no music. The characters feel trapped in those woods and we feel it. Nothing that happens is a given and no Hollywood conclusion is in sight.
Actually, if there’s a perfect and sadistic double feature to be had, check out this movie and follow it with John Sayles’ “Limbo,” which also came out in 1999 and is every bit as riveting and frustrating as “The Blair Witch Project.”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSjiCN–ZKs
There needs to be a movie made about the making of “The Blair Witch Project.” For now, here’s what we know: it was filmed in October of 1997, mostly improvised, with 20 hours of footage cut down to 82 minutes. After post-production, it cost less than $1 million. It was filmed in Seneca Creek and Patapoco Valley State Parks in Maryland.
The three actors weren’t properly compensated and deserve to feel cheated. This is a bare-bones production, which grossed an astonishing $130 million domestically, and the three leads are doing most of the work.
After the buzz-building premiere at the January of ’99 Sundance Film Festival, there were months of the addictive official website and dread-inducing trailer (which I must have downloaded at least 20 times on Quicktime).
Surprisingly, “The Blair Witch Project” changed cinema as much as “The Matrix” (also ’99), as it proved enormously influential and a permanent talking point in pop culture. It also put the small potatoes Artisan Entertainment on the map, made a gigantic profit and outgrossed mainstream summer movies like “Wild Wild West.”
As crude and divisive as “The Blair Witch Project” is, few contemporary horror movies deserve a Criterion Collection release more than this is.
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