The Blair Witch Project (1999)

 

Directors: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez

Screenplay: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez

Cast: Heather Donahue as Heather Donahue; Joshua Leonard as Joshua 'Josh' Leonard; Michael C. Williams as Michael 'Mike' Williams

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #228

Includes bonus review of The Curse of the Blair Witch (1999)

 

We will prefix this review by just giving my personal opinion ahead of time. As a film with a legacy of being a great horror film in the era, it is trapped by the inherent issues that surround found footage horror films, but as a micro budget production, it is a huge success. And in terms of regional horror from the United States, shot in Maryland, basing itself off a fictitious folk legend still steeped in the country's history, this is catnip for me. The irony is that what led to the film's legacy, its appeal and the parodies, is all that is the less interesting content, including how it still has to be a scary film in the end with its cast running in the woods at night. As a premise and even the style, in spite of the structural problems of how it's depicted, it is compelling from Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez.

We need to admittedly start off by removing a myth surrounding Blair Witch - it was not the first true found footage horror film, least in mind to The Last Broadcast (1998), and back in 1985 you can make the argument that Guinea Pig 2: Flower Of Flesh And Blood, filmed as a snuff film from a killer, is the first of the genre in terms of horror cinema.  Yes, Cannibal Holocaust (1980) as well has to be mentioned, as that is in its central premise footage of an exploitative documentary crew having been recovered from jungle where cannibals lived, but that also sets it within a fictional narrative, so it is different even if legitimately innovative, in mind that the found footage films had to challenge themselves with the burden of telling a narrative entirely through footage a cast or prop (like a drone camera) could record. In mind to this, The Blair Witch Project is pretty simple if also a lot more complicated than the premise originally suggests. Three students - named after their actors Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams - go into the woods of Burkittsville, Maryland to make a documentary about the Blair Witch, the lore to be discussed later in this review but a supernatural witch whose influence in the region has also led to horrifying events. The students, in the opening text, disappeared and the footage is what was recorded by them.

This is admittedly, truthfully, where the first breakout film in this sub-genre already has issues. Simply put, you have to get around the logic of a company licensing footage for cinema release of people who likely died, something in promotional footage said to be real. If this was a television production, playing to verisimilitude, this might have been a much easier logistical route, and a subversive one, to reach around, especially if you added an additional commentary on exploitation. Instead, this is compounded by the fact that The Curse of the Blair Witch exists, a mock television documentary on the titular figure and the trio.

Presented as entirely real, the logistical issues of how this footage would be allowed to be released to cinemas without offending their families is an issue. If this just pretended to be found footage as the later films, we would just as viewers make believe the setting. The attempt at verisimilitude, including a website that became a meme before that was ever a word, and even a soundtrack of pre-existing songs created as a fake replica of a character's compilation tape, does unravel if you think very cynically of what would happen if someone actually found footage of real terrorisation of people. Likely, it would be released online, especially if someone was killed on screen within it, and there would be additional aspects which would make you have a bleak view of modern civilisation. Films would try to deal with these issues themselves. At the time, The Blair Witch Project managed to actually surf on this without anyone asking these questions, with even the main cast's IMDB profiles for the first few years marking them as missing and presumed dead¹. The strangeness of this, which was an accident during the production of Cannibal Holocaust and infamously led to its director Ruggero Deodato being taken to court, can only be compounded by testimony from the lead Heather Donahue herself:

"“Well, it doesn’t happen much anymore, but when Blair Witch first came out my Mum kept getting sympathy cards,” she said. “It was all part of their marketing scheme so, yeah, people thought I was dead.  When people found out I was alive a lot of them were kind of annoyed with me and wanted their money back.”"¹

With mind to the spectacle and hubbub this film caused in the day, the most compelling content with the film instead for me is its prologue, initial lore itself in terms of the lead trio interviewing the community of Burkittsville, Maryland about the Blair Witch. The film's entire back story is exceptional - drawing from American history of witchcraft, the concept of the Blair Witch combines witch scares of previous centuries, urban legends and conspiracies. It never becomes too broad and uncredible as the narrative includes events having transpired over the decades and centuries, including a child killer, before the events of the film, all peppered through carefully and even in the mock documentary. The faux-documentary The Curse of the Blair Witch in fact, whilst it undermines the logic of the film's existence, is exceptional as an additional context to the world. With the one hour documentary elaborating on the lore of the Blair Witch, it never stretches itself in credibility, with talking head interviewees and even a parody of a seventies New Age/paranormal television series, working exceptionally to add back story which enriches the final film with added narrative.

Especially when, boiling The Blair Witch Project down, sticking to the original film only, it is pretty basic. It is not dissimilar to a fault to other found footage work of later years, that of three people getting lost in the woods, and with the structure of the movie informing you the viewer of the outcome of them, the reason why is the crux of the narrative instead. Credit where it is do, the film is helped by its leads, who keep the appropriate verisimilitude of three people slowly losing their sanity, and breaking down, when large portions of the film are not scares but ill ease or them becoming lost in the woods. The little touches to the sinister forces, by way of creepy stick symbols or stone piles, is appropriately realistic and ominous, and it is meaningful that, even if for budgetary reasons or on purpose, you never see the Blair Witch.

That there emphasises many of the virtues of this film, and arguably why many others that followed from it in the future subgenre, from those I have seen, do not work. This is surprisingly subtle in spite of its narrative having its cast shouting and slowly breaking down, a slow burn of character development which does mean many hysterics but built to in subtle ebbs and flows. It is credible how they get lost, three people carrying a heavy bulk of equipment and tents in obscure woods, and even how the map is lost comes from a credible moment of insanity. What you do not realise too unless you read into the back story, and is explicitly in The Curse of the Blair Witch, is that this is also set in the early nineties, so concerns like access to mobile phones and equipment are not a factor either. The film's does also have the curious touch, as a lost film being presented to us the audience, of being presented in two formats, video for the incident moments, and celluloid film in black and white for the documentary, which adds an addition to the narrative if you try to explain how we see this.

This also has to overcome the issue which plagues so many of these films, the logic of why certain footage is filmed continually, which The Blair Witch Project is not really able to deal with. It tries dramatically, with some success, with Heather's inability to stop recording footage becoming a psychologically barrier to prevent the full extent of their horror from crushing her, but this in truth is still a puncture to the reality that has to be excepted. The film in spite of aspects like this still won me over, that in spite of the many moments which have been parodied - Heather's tearful confession at night with snot on her face, the final in the basement of a house - it has a lot that returning to is compelling. It is not the masterpiece its reputation suggests for me, least returning to the film now after all this time, but recognising a film which caught lightning in a bottle, there was a lot that worked. A lot that we could have transported to the found footage horror sub-genre when it finally came a mainstream concept over the years after, a lot of the virtues of the film missed as always happens with trendsetters and found when entries did remembers to include this.

 

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1) This quote is part of a discussion, upon how the film managed to actually succeed in its marketing, HERE.