If you were alive in 1999, chances are you have your own story about The Blair Witch Project. Some people claim they remember people vomiting around them in the theaters, or at least hearing about it. Others remember seeing a documentary on TV that cemented the “true story” the movie was based on. Everyone’s who’s seen it has an opinion, and often a strong one – either that the movie is “trash,” boring, upsetting due to the fact that it isn’t real; or that it’s genius, a masterpiece, and truly scary.
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The truth is, The Blair Witch Project is less a movie than it is a social experiment – one that occurred at an important time for the internet and, in turn, marketing. In a time before Wikipedia existed and IMDb became as omnipresent as it is today, two film students set out to create an experience of fear. Jaded with the state of horror movies in the ’90s, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez yearned to create something “totally scary.” In a 1999 press junket interview, the two scoff at Freddy’s Dead (1991) while lauding movies such as The Exorcist (1973) and The Shining (1980).
Myrick references In Search Of…, a TV series that ran from 1977-1982, as their major thematic influence for The Blair Witch, playfully calling it a “rip-off” of these type of paranormal documentaries. In Search Of… was a weekly broadcast that covered various controversial topics at the time, including supernatural lore, cryptids, true crime, and the paranormal. In a time before social media and the type of widespread message boards we know and use today, shows like this were nectar to people who enjoyed exploring the parts of society that the mainstream would rather sweep under the proverbial rug – the creepy, the weird, the unexplainable, and the scary. Naturally, these types of phenomenon fall in line with a love of horror movies, the two often going hand-in-hand as interests to the horror buff.
Both Myrick and Sanchez recall the feeling of watching shows like In Search Of… and feeling genuine, real fear that Bigfoot existed, and that he may pass by their window. The shiver after watching a good alien or UFO documentary and imagining being abducted. That tangible fear was what they felt was missing from horror films at the time – the camp of the mid-to-late ’80s had bled over and infected the ’90s – and was what they set out to achieve with The Blair Witch Project.
While not the first found footage film of all-time, a title that goes to Cannibal Holocaust (1980), The Blair Witch Project popularized the genre and added a new dimension – the internet. Prior to the films’ release, a made-for-TV “documentary” titled The Curse of the Blair Witch aired on the Sci-Fi network two weeks prior to the theater release of The Blair Witch Project. Curse was made to lend legitimacy to the film and spoke about the events surrounding the film – namely, the disappearance of Heather, Josh, and Mike, the three film students who mysteriously disappeared (the stars of the film) as their “recovered footage” is what The Blair Witch Project was said to be. For this documentary they interviewed actors that they said were friends and family members of the three, claimed residents of Burkittsville (where the film takes place), and forged newspaper clippings of both the disappearance and the legend of the Blair Witch herself.
It was around this time that the filmmakers released blairwitch.com, a website dedicated to keeping up the ruse that the film was based on real Burkittsville lore, and that the movie itself was real footage from missing film students. Even if people thought that the movie itself was full of actors, Sanchez and Myrick wanted the lore of the Blair Witch and Rustin Parr to be believable. Using old lore or real-life killers is common for horror movies – The Burning (1981) is based on the decades-old urban legend of Cropsey; The Amityville Horror (1979) was based on events experienced by the Lutz Family in 1975; The Exorcist (1973) was adapted from the novel of the same title, which was inspired by a real, documented exorcism and claimed demonic possession from 1949. The character of Rustin Parr, the serial killer alleged to have murdered children in The Blair Witch Project, is completely fabricated and is not a real person, nor is he based on one. The legend of the “Blair Witch” is not based on an existing legend or lore in Burkittsville or elsewhere. However, it was near-impossible to prove so in 1999, and the rumor of The Blair Witch Project being real or, at least, based on true events prevails today.
To ensure an authentically real performance from the actors, filming conditions for The Blair Witch were unlike any that have been attempted before or since. The three actors – Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard – really were roughing it in the woods. Unlike the movie, they were in a state park with a film crew a few hundred yards away, but the conditions were still paltry. Each day, they were given a canister that included rations such as food, cigarettes and water – as well as pieces of paper for each actor that included story points and acting direction, but absolutely no lines. No one knew what the other actors’ note said, so most of the actions of the characters were a surprise to the others, including Josh’s disappearance halfway through. The rations were slowly lessened each day, making the actors actually fatigued, hungry, and frustrated. Cigarettes were taken away each day, meaning nicotine withdrawal set in. Loud speakers set-up in the woods played sounds unexpectedly while they were sleeping, with no way of knowing whether they were hearing something real or something for the film. When Heather is running and screaming in the woods toward the end, it’s authentic fear – they had a local dressed in all white clothes and body paint standing in the dark, and she had no idea it was there. Shooting lasted for eight days.
Because of the fact that the footage was all improv and shot by the actors (occasional shots by the crew were achieved by camera operators hiding in the forest to capture the three), editing The Blair Witch Project took eight months due to the 20 hours of raw footage they needed to sort through. A movie that Sanchez and Myrick originally thought of in 1991 wouldn’t be near-ready for almost 8 years. While they never expected the movie to be viewed in a movie theater – the shaky-cam effect was intended for home viewing on a TV set – the film was picked up by Artisan Entertainment for $1.1 million dollars after seeing it at Sundance in early 1999. The $30k that was spent for filming grew another $30k with Artisan providing a marketing budget, and the rest was history. A perfect storm of circumstances helped elevate an independent movie into the viral sensation it became in the summer of ’99, a sort of comet spectacle that has never been seen since.
Many left the theater sick to their stomach in July 1999 – mostly because of motion sickness, though marketing gave that a horror-spin. News of this scary, possibly true story spread like wildfire throughout the media and from word-of-mouth. For many, this movie was horrifying even before they viewed it. The rumors were varied but not scarce. Everyone was talking about this movie, and everyone wanted to see it for themselves, as the $248.6 million-dollar box office may show. Many who saw it then can still remember the tangible fear they felt, or the wonder about the lore. Some saw through the ruse, but only after paying to see it.
Viewing the movie outside of this context can be disappointing – most of the “horror” is left up to the audience’s imagination as you never see any gore, monsters, ghosts or ghouls. None of the interesting, supernatural elements in the movie are explained by the end, and the ending itself is haunting but brief. Outside of the blanket of 1999, without the mystical wonder of “is it true?”, the movie does not stand alone. But as a one-in-a-lifetime experience, The Blair Witch Project maintains cult status in the eyes and hearts of many kids and adults who lived it that one summer.
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