Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 21 mins
Director. Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez
Cast. Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael Williams.
Rating. 49%
Where Scream rebooted a stagnant genre by pulling back the curtains to reveal the inner workings of horror, The Blair Witch Project chose an alternate route. Groundbreaking at that time, The Blair Witch Project created a new style of presentation (and promotion), an entire sub-genre of horror - the found-footage film - one that paved the way for the likes of Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, Troll Hunter and Creep.
The Blair Witch Project was the first found-footage film to receive a widespread theatrical release, and Artisan Entertainment cleverly capitalised on the blossoming Internet to create an innovative and engaging online marketing campaign. Otherwise sane individuals were returning to the cinema to watch the cultural phenomenon that was The Blair Witch Project believing what they were seeing was real.
The film opens with an austere title card, plain white sans serif letters against a black backdrop,
"In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittesville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary. One year later, their footage was found."
Those words, silently displayed on screen, is the only context we have before we meet our three main characters: Heather (Heather Donahue), Josh (Joshua Leonard) and Mike (Michael Williams).
That's the exposition. That's the back-story. That's the plot. The remaining 80 minutes of The Blair Witch Project is apparently extracted from that found-footage, all of which is shot with handheld camcorders and a 16mm camera. The lack of polish and grainy, home movie aesthetic creates a genuine sense of foreboding and innately captures the terror of reality.
One of the film's undoubted strengths is actually in what you don't see. Some shots are blurred, others are just a pitch black screen with increasingly unnerving sounds. Part of the fear is trying to understand what you are seeing. At one point in the film, Heather yells, "What the fuck is that?" but the camera doesn't pan around to show us what she sees. Much is left to the audience's imagination, and we scare ourselves. The Blair Witch Project succeeds because it shows how much fear filmmakers could illicit just by suggesting that there was something out there in the woods.
I have a confession to make. I did not see The Blair Witch Project at the time of its release. I was that person. To me, viewing The Blair Witch Project now the film feels outdated and overdone. But at the time of its release, the film was fresh, and who knows, perhaps a little more terrifying, because for me The Blair Witch Project certainly wasn't "The scariest movie I've ever seen."
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