‘I’m scared to close my eyes, I’m scared to open them! We’re gonna die out here…’
As I’ve written many times before, horror is subjective. Perhaps the most subjective subgenre of them all. What terrifies one person inspires shrugs in another. You might not believe in ghosts, you might not believe in vampires, you might even not believe in witches, but one fear that nobody can deny and that everyone has experienced at least once is the feeling of being lost. Properly lost. That sinking feeling when you look up from your idle daydreaming and realise that your surroundings have become strange and unfamiliar. In 1999, directing duo Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez captured that fear and bottled it as The Blair Witch Project…
The conceit is that Heather Donahue, an amateur documentarian, hires Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams to head out into the woods of Maryland to explore the legend of the Blair Witch. The film purports to be ‘real’ footage obtained after the fact.
Obviously, by now everybody knows that the marketing campaign behind The Blair Witch Project was hokum, but it’s impossible to overstate how seismic the impact this film and its faux narrative had back in 1999. Having been ingeniously preceded by a fake documentary about the Blair Witch (that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel), Sanchez and Myrick’s film was a sleeper hit that eventually earned an astonishing £248 million off an original budget of just $35 thousand – a feat that ensures that the film is still one of the most profitable films ever made even over 25 years later. Madness. This was not simply a financial phenomenon, however. While The Blair Witch Project wasn’t the first found footage film (there had been a few minor examples in previous years – most notably the charming Cannibal Holocaust in 1980), this was the film that popularised the genre leading to a slew of imitators such as Paranormal Activity, REC and Cloverfield. But how does it hold up now that the dust has settled and everyone knows the real story behind the Blair Witch? Surprisingly well, is the answer.
This was only my second or third viewing of The Blair Witch Project, but it was my first in theatres, and while the opening 30 minutes are a bit of a slog (although even this segment is not without its charm), when things start to go south, I was locked in all over again. I was also struck this time around about the quality of the performances. Sure, the the cast went beyond method acting and into just being actually terrorised in the woods, but that shouldn’t take away from the fact that all three cast members provide authentic, lived in performances – particularly Donahue who is excellent throughout. Her big monologue towards the end is one of the ’90s most recognisable movie moments.
The Blair Witch Project was a one-and-done, once-in-a-lifetime moment of pure alchemy. A genuine game changer. I think of it every time I enter any kind of woodland, no matter how innocuous. Horror cinema was never the same again.
