‘The Blair Witch Project’ (1999) – 25 Years Later!

I spent a lot of time in the Mayan indie theater in high school and college, but I never saw it with a line around the block and people as excited as the night one movie came out: The Blair Witch Project. Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez on a budget of $60,000, the film would go on to make $248 million dollars. It both revitalized the found footage genre and used a clever viral internet marketing campaign to advertise it that would change the way films were promoted forever.

Synopsis:

Three film students vanish after traveling into a Maryland forest to film a documentary on the local Blair Witch legend, leaving only their footage behind.

The Blair Witch Project also confirmed for me what I always suspected – never go camping unless you want to die. But you have to give it to our hapless main characters, played by Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard, they did give it their all.

The movie it hits all the best notes of a great horror film:

• Spooky location – Hey, I think the woods are great to look at – in photos or from afar. I myself have no interest in getting lost in them and wandering around there.
• Unsettling back story – The backstory tells us just enough to get us interested but not so much that it ruins the mystique of the Blair Witch.
• Those weird stick figures – I would have packed up and kept running until I hit an ocean if I saw those. Hats off to the design department.
• Bad stuff happening at night – Again, this is why camping/looking for evil witches is such a bad idea. The woods are DARK.
• Marketing Online! – It posted a mock page on the internet that made it seem like the film was in fact real, creating huge buzz for the movie. This ingenious move would change film advertising.
• Genuine fear from the actors – This is one place where I think this film really rises above all others. The directors used something unique and fun: guerilla style filmmaking. They took the main characters and gave them no real direction except a vague outline each day. But what they didn’t tell the actors was that the directors were going to torment them at night to capture something rare on film: true, genuine fear.

As a horror fan with a reverence for the found footage film genre, The Blair Witch Project will always be sacred to me. It is often imitated, but will never, ever, be equaled.