The Blair Witch Project: 25th Anniversary Retrospective
There’s just something about the woods, isn’t there? It’s all very nice taking a stroll on a sunny day when the trees are in full leaf, maybe sitting down for a picnic in a lovely glade and feeding friendly deer and bunny rabbits. It’s a different mood when the sun dips toward the horizon and shadows lengthen, or in the depths of winter when the branches are bare and the only sound is your own footsteps crunching on twigs and fallen leaves. That is when wooded areas can evoke our deepest primal fears. There is even a clinical word for it: Xylophobia.
Woods and forests have often provided the backdrop for horror movies but few have captured the feeling of being out there, lost in the dark and stalked by unseen terrors, better than The Blair Witch Project. Even scarier, the filmmakers’ novel approach to shooting and marketing told us it was real.
After that famous title card sets the scene, we are transported back to just before Halloween 1994 where we are quickly and economically introduced to the doomed students. First up is Heather (Heather Donahue), the brains of the outfit who has put together a project to make a documentary about the legendary Blair Witch. She comes across as self-consciously assertive and a little nerdy – notice the neat touch of her name proudly written on the cover of her notebook.
Along for the ride is her friend Josh (Joshua Leonard), who is cameraman on the film and has borrowed a rig for the weekend. He has also brought the wheels and he’s a bit bleary in the mornings. He looks like the kind of guy who plays in a grunge band and smokes a lot of weed. Lastly, there is the sound man Mike (Michael Williams), a pal of Josh’s who Heather hasn’t met before the morning they depart on their trip. He’s a bit more heavy-set and a little shy, but happy that he has been asked to work on the film.
First stop is Burkittsville, a tiny burg of around 150 people in Frederick County, just over an hour’s drive from Baltimore and Washington DC, to learn more about the fabled witch. Myrick and Sanchez concocted an entire back story for the legend going back centuries and we only get the most important snippets here - they fleshed out the tale on the website and further in Curse of the Blair Witch, a short mockumentary made to promote the film.
The locals that the trio speak to are a mix of genuine Burkittsville residents and actors, although the directors didn’t let their stars know who was who. The short interviews feel pleasingly authentic, with the subjects pitched at just the right amount of awkward dryness to make it seem realistic. Here we find out about sightings of the hairy old witch that supposedly haunts the woods and Rustin Parr, a serial killer who claimed he was murdering children on the witch’s behalf back in the 1940s. His method was abducting the kids in pairs and making one stand in the corner of the room while he killed the other – this segment was added in post-production to give the film’s chillingly abrupt ending some context. We also get some more foreshadowing when they visit Mary Brown (Patricia DeCou), an eccentric old lady who claims she saw the witch as a child. Notably, the rickety gate outside her trailer is made from sticks crudely tied together with string.
After spending the night in a motel, it’s off to the woods to find some key locations in the witch lore. The film is a little hazy about what the gang hope to achieve in the forest beyond Coffin Rock, where it is said that five members of a search party were gruesomely dismembered while looking for a missing girl back in 1886. Leaving the car behind, a shack is briefly mentioned – the witch’s house, or Rustin Parr’s? They also decide to check out an old graveyard deeper in the woods.
Either way, they get lost really quickly and the boys start doubting Heather’s map-reading skills. After camping the first night, Josh says he heard sounds, one of which was “cackling.” He says it with a straight face, but we have to assume he is winding the other two up – surely the filmmakers don’t expect us to believe their witch actually cackles?
Things go south very quickly as they become more lost and tempers begin to fray. Heather insists she knows where she is going and tries to maintain control of the project, but Mike seems ready to mutiny almost immediately. They find some piles of rocks that resemble burial cairns, and Heather is spooked when Josh accidentally knocks one over. That night, the sounds around them get worse – is it something supernatural or local rednecks messing with them?
It soon becomes clear that they are trudging around in circles. The film’s infamous stick figures add another level of barebones creepiness. It isn’t made explicitly clear in the movie but in Curse of the Blair Witch, an interview with two firefighters who joined the search for the missing students say they were in the area while the filmmakers were apparently still alive. This suggests that they somehow slipped into temporal space removed from the present.
This aspect also comes into play with the discovery of their tapes, which were found in the foundations of an old house that burned down long ago. There should be no earthly reason how the tapes got there, but the film’s horrifying finale takes place inside a derelict house that they hadn’t stumbled upon earlier despite repeatedly retracing their steps.
The ending is stark, blunt, and nasty. After Josh goes missing and a bundle of sticks is found outside the tent, bound with shreds of his plaid flannel shirt, and Heather discovers teeth and something identifiably bloody contained within. To make matters worse, they hear Josh crying out in the night, much as they heard the cries of children previously. Is it really him, in pain and perhaps being tortured, forced to lure the others? Or worse still, something mimicking his voice for the same purpose?
After Heather’s infamous runny-nose final speech, she and Mike find one of the scariest-looking movie houses ever. I like the little camera movement looking back at the forest before they enter, seemingly inviting the question: What is worse? Staying out in the woods where they are hunted, or venturing into a place that looks even more ominous?
Josh’s cries are now coming from within the house. As the remaining pair dash about, we glimpse children’s handprints and mysterious symbols daubed on the walls, and another scrap of Josh’s shirt on the stairs. Heather’s screaming now becomes disturbingly unhinged as Mike descends to the cellar – and his camera clatters to the floor.
We now switch to Heather’s camera and the sound is out of sync. It’s a neat disorienting touch that we’re now hearing her screaming from Mike’s microphone while watching the last few moments of footage she captured. Running down into the cellar, we briefly glimpse Mike standing in the corner facing the wall before Heather’s camera also hits the ground. Roll credits.
Nowadays, just about anyone can capture a half-decent digital image with a basic smartphone. This made me appreciate the ingenuity of the filmmakers even more when I re-watched the film recently. Without such convenient tech, they and their actors had to go out into the woods with hefty camera equipment and hand craft their mock-doc the old-fashioned way.
The movie has a pleasingly analogue feel, the grainy video footage striking a chord of nostalgia for the days of VHS and clunky handheld video cameras. The Blair Witch Project is a very ‘90s artefact, right down to the heavy flannel shirts worn by the two guys. It’s a portal to a simpler time before mobile phones and the internet, although the fledgling world wide web was integral to producing a viral marketing campaign that helped make Blair Witch one of the most successful indie films ever. The innovative website pushed the idea that the footage in the movie was the real thing, and this level of uncertainty created an intense buzz ahead of its release. Some viewers claimed they thought it was a genuine documentary.
The Blair Witch Project became a cultural moment that bridged the gap between the analogue past and the digital future just before the turn of the 21st Century. In that sense, it’s a lo-fi cousin of movies like Johnny Mnemonic, The Net, Hackers, Strange Days, and The Matrix.
Despite its success, The Blair Witch Project was divisive at the time. There was so much hype around the movie and those who saw it were generally split into two camps. Many of its detractors felt the film was overrated, just a bunch of wobbly footage with three people running around in the woods screaming, without ever showing us anything apart from a few stick figures and piles of rocks. People who loved the film praised it for almost exactly the same things – it left the horror to our imagination by leaving the witch in the dark.
And what darkness. Not the somewhat well-lit darkness of many Hollywood horror movies, but a total and all-encompassing absence of light surrounding the hapless trio’s tent. Perfect cover for whatever lurks out there among the trees and, like the best psychological horrors, it generates more shudders the more you think about it. The ambiguity of that haunting final shot still leaves chills. Mike is a burly guy who looks capable of putting up a fight, but what could force him to stand obediently in the corner like that? Is it even Mike? Without any clear answers, we’re left to dwell on the manner of their demise in that cold ruined basement, and at what hands.
As you can probably tell, I’m someone who really appreciates The Blair Witch Project. I was breathlessly terrified watching it in the cinema at the time, peering into the dark and fearful of what might be creeping on the periphery of the camera’s light. But even I have to admit that it is a one-trick pony. It was a must-see movie but it doesn’t lend itself to endless rewatches like some true cornerstones of the horror genre. Once you know how it plays out, the scare moments are still effective and it still works on your fears, but the trudging around in the woods and all the bickering does get repetitive.
Meyrick and Sánchez’s use of found footage was innovative and receives the dubious credit of inspiring a whole subgenre of horror movies, although it wasn’t the first film to use the technique. That honour goes to Ruggero Donato’s grisly and barely watchable Cannibal Holocaust (1980). The problem with found footage is that its strengths are also its weaknesses. By necessity, Blair Witch and its many imitators are made deliberately rough and ugly to convince viewers that they are watching something that really happened, and the acting and dialogue needs to be believably banal to convince us that these are real people rather than scripted characters. It doesn’t make for a particularly cinematic experience beyond the visceral thrill it offers - too visceral for some, as stories coming out of theatres around the time of Blair Witch’s release reported that the wobbly cam provoked motion sickness and vomiting from some audience members.
Another issue with found footage is that by striving for faux authenticity, screenwriters and filmmakers need to find excuses to keep the camera rolling when people start dying without it seeming contrived. The Blair Witch Project just about gets away with it, hand-waved by Heather when she says that filming gives her a sense of normality and puts some distance between her and the terrifying events.
Other critics felt that the performances were not up to scratch, with Heather Donahue taking a lot of the flak. For me, dismissing the actors as amateurish is largely missing the point. Although the three stars were professionals selected from a pool of 2,000 who had auditioned, their performances are authentically rough around the edges. They genuinely seem like three normal guys who aren’t used to being on camera, and their banter and attempts to crack jokes are reassuringly normal.
The Blair Witch Project was whittled down from around 20 hours of raw footage, shot almost entirely by the actors themselves, to 81 minutes. The process took Meyrick and Sanchez eight months. What they left out reveals what a good job the actors did with improvised dialogue shot on-the-fly while living the story themselves. In the documentary Sticks and Stones, there is a cut scene where Mike and Heather reckon with their imminent death. It is very am-dram, and their mental deterioration and hopelessness is far better served by a wordless scene in the final cut where Heather simply hugs Mike as he rocks back and forth, his nerves totally shot.
When the screaming really starts, the actors look and sound absolutely terrified. The director’s guerilla approach to making the film clearly played a large part in eliciting such disturbingly realistic reactions, marching the actors around in the woods, making sounds and shaking their tent at night, and gradually reducing their rations over the eight-day shoot. From what we see, the three were obviously put through an uncommon amount of discomfort during that time, sleeping out in the cold and wet woods in late October. Who could blame them if they half-believed the story was real by the time it came to filming the final scene in the house?
The success of The Blair Witch Project surprised even Meyrick and Sanchez, who initially thought it would only make cable TV. But after it premiered at a midnight screening at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1999, it began to gain traction, picked up by Artisan Entertainment and driven by the notorious marketing campaign ahead of its July release.
Once it hit theatres proper, the phenomenon really took off. From its original paltry budget of around $60,000, the film made over $248.5 million worldwide, approximately 4000 times what it cost to make. It became the 10th-highest grossing movie in the United States for the year, coming in ahead of The World is Not Enough, the disastrous Wild Wild West, and American Pie, to name just a few more traditional would-be blockbusters. Not bad for a DIY indie filmed by its own actors.
In some ways, Blair Witch was more than a movie. It was a pop culture sensation on a similar level to The Exorcist, Jaws, or Star Wars in the ‘70s, and almost as influential. The film’s iconic scene - Heather’s runny-nose speech - was lampooned in Scary Movie and Burkittsville residents were besieged by horror fans poking around their cemetery and peering through their windows.
Personally, I paid the price for referencing it. One Czech winter a few years after the movie came out, I was visiting a friend in the countryside who worked as a doctor in an old converted chateau that served as a retreat for people recovering from psychiatric disorders. That in itself sounds like the set-up for a horror movie, but it got worse. While my friend was consulting patients, I took a stroll in the forest nearby. I decided to play a little joke. Stepping off the path, I selected some twigs and tied them together with blades of grass to make a crude stick figure. Wouldn’t it be funny to take it back and say I found it hanging in the trees?
Well, the joke was on me. When I rejoined the path, I realised that it had gotten dark very quickly. Now the stick figure had me thinking about The Blair Witch Project and I felt a flutter of terror as I tried to retrace my steps through the deepening shadows. As I walked, I became aware of something rustling in the trees and dead leaves close to me. Of course, I knew it was probably some forest creature rather than an evil supernatural witch, but that idea was hard to shake once the seed of fear had taken root.
I tried to use my lighter to guide my way, but the feeble flame barely illuminated my hand. My next bright idea was to make a torch, a bit like the ones you see superstitious villagers wielding in movies, wrapping pages from my notebook around a stick. It burned brightly for a second before the paper was reduced to ash and I was left in darkness again. The path was barely visible by now, so I picked up the pace while I could still see something.
There were more noises on either side of me now. Things sound louder when you can’t see, especially all alone in the middle of the woods. I started jogging, trying not to panic. That was when a deer sprang out of the undergrowth a few feet ahead of me. I let out a squeal that was more high-pitched than I thought I was capable of, and I broke into a flailing scaredy-cat run all the way back to the chateau.
For the filmmakers and stars of The Blair Witch Project, things never got this big again. Writer and director duo Meyrick and Sanchez went on to make other movies and TV shows, but nothing that anyone really saw.
Heather Donahue later stated that she wished she hadn’t agreed to use her real name in the movie as she felt it had hindered chances of landing subsequent roles. It also didn’t help that she landed the Razzie Award for Worst Actress, pitted against established stars like Melanie Griffith, Sharon Stone, Mila Jovovich, and Catherine Zeta-Jones (a double nomination for Entrapment and The Haunting).
Donahue was the face of the film and she suffered in its wake, struggling with depression and heavy drinking. She quit acting and started growing weed instead, as detailed in her 2012 memoir Growgirl: How My Life After Blair Witch Project Went to Pot. She was paid a sum to use her name again in 2016’s Blair Witch, but shed it altogether four years later when she changed it to Rei Hance.
With Donahue taking most of the heat, the boys didn’t get dragged quite so much in the aftermath. Michael Williams added a few more credits to his IMDb profile but moved on to become a theatre manager and guidance counsellor. Joshua Leonard built a modestly successful film career from the role he was only paid $500 for initially.
Ahead of the 25th anniversary, Variety published an article revealing how poorly compensated the actors were even as the film powered towards its astonishing box office success. They claimed that they were still working day jobs, struggling to pay rent, and only received a basket of fruit to celebrate breaking the $100 million mark. With their lives overshadowed by appearing in a groundbreaking horror movie, they were once again stung when it became clear that Lionsgate intended to use their faces and names to generate publicity for the studio’s upcoming reboot with Blumhouse.
What joy. Adam Fogelson of Lionsgate said: “We are thrilled to kick this partnership off with a new vision for Blair Witch that will reintroduce this horror classic for a new generation.”
I don’t hold as much hope for the new movie, knowing Blumhouse’s tendency to use jump scares and loud stings to goose an audience, the cinematic equivalent of someone creeping up and yelling “Boo!” in your face every few minutes. Two films have already taken a dump on the legacy of the original. The first was the horribly misguided Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000), a sequel dashed into production when Artisan realised they had a massive hit on their hands. The Blair Witch (2016) seemed like it was in decent hands with Adam Wingard, who had turned heads with You’re Next (2011) and The Guest (2014), but it was very much a retread with an over-reliance on jolts and bad CGI. Spoiler alert: We get to see the witch this time around.
One of the benefits of these cash-ins and countless found footage knock-offs is that they have the unintended side effect of making the original sleeper hit all the more mythic. Arguably, there hasn’t been such a universal generation-defining horror movie since, and experiencing The Blair Witch Project in theatres back in the ‘90s has become the equivalent of a scary story we old folk tell the kids around the campfire.
So there you have it, our look back at one of the most influential horror movies in cinema history. Where do you stand on The Blair Witch Project? Did it scare you, or is it just a bunch of people running around in the woods? Let us know your thoughts!
