The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project

Starring Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard, Mike Williams

Directed by Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez

The Story:
In 1994, three film students set out to produce a documentary about the Blair Witch.  None of them are ever found, but their footage has.  This is the story of the last days of their lives.

The Synopsis:
What is now conceptualized as the "found footage" subgenre of horror, "The Blair Witch Project" is the founding father of.  This subgenre consists of a supposed true story, shot by amateurs with cheaper cameras, and involves everyone disappearing, but only the footage is found (hence the name "found footage").  It's been mimicked several times since the 1999 classic, to varying success (some like "Cloverfield," "Paranormal Activity" and "Troll Hunter" fared very well, while the majority fall into mediocrity or unfortunately absolute disasters).  What makes it so bankable is how easy it is to film - most times there doesn't even need to be a script, not a lot of actors to pay, no high budget cameras to buy, and no costly CGI effects.  It's easy to make back the money spent, and pretty much anyone can make one.

Back in 1999, a film like "The Blair Witch Project" was never been done before, at least to the success it achieved.  The film cost $60,000 to make, and earned a whopping $248 million.  The marketing campaign was the stuff of legend, and has never been duplicated since.  Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez really wanted their audience to believe these three students really disappeared, so much so they relied heavily on the Internet (a first for film) to spread the lie.  They would produce faux police reports and interviews, going so far as to hand out missing persons flyers at different film festivals.  The three actors - Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Mike Williams - were kept out of the spotlight, and people truly felt they had gone missing.  In fact, Donahue's parents received sympathy cards for their missing daughter.  It was the first viral marketing campaign, and paid off in dividends.

The film itself is wholly unremarkable, at least to today's standards.  The camerawork is incredibly shaky (people would leave the theater to vomit), there wasn't a script, and the film relied on what was unseen to scare the audience.  It's basically three people doing a film in someone's backyard, but frightened audiences so much it led to a whole new subgenre in horror.  That's the real legacy this film will leave behind, and one that will never be equaled.

What's more fascinating is the behind-the-scenes stuff that occurred.  All three actors weren't even acting: they really thought there was a Blair Witch curse.  The directors staged interviews with townspeople unbeknownst to the actors, and even though they knew the film was fake, they thought the legend was real.  The directors would give them less and less food as the filming went on, causing them to erupt on each other and result in screaming matches between the three.  They really got lost in the woods, and were really freaked out in the one scene where their tent moves, because it was done by the directors without their knowing.  The entire film only took eight days to shoot.  In her now iconic scene, Heather Donahue thought she had the camera on her whole head instead of just right under her nose, but the directors kept it because it felt more real.

The outcome of the film had negative aspects as well.  Donahue received multiple death threats from people who really thought she was dead.  The town of Burketsville, Maryland was inundated with fans of the movie searching for the Blair Witch themselves.  All across America, the hunting trade suffered because people were in woods all over America to make their own found footage films.  For a film that's earned its place in history, it had some unfortunate side effects.

Everything you see in the film is real: the emotions, the fights, the screams, and the terror.  It's only the story that's fiction.

The Summary:
It's very rare for a film to produce an entire subgenre, but "The Blair Witch Project" did just that with the most effective viral marketing campaign ever, a fake story thought true by the actors, and the titular fear of the unknown to incite fear in the audience.  Sometimes, less is better.

The Score: A+