I recently covered the top five scientifically proven ‘scariest films of all time’ and the results, at least for me, were somewhat underwhelming. I think it’s because I tend to get scared by the idea of something more than the actual presence of something intended to be scary, I also find that the more realistic or plausible something presents itself as, the scarier it is. That’s why I’m often baulked at when I say my favourite horror film of all time, and a film that continues to scare me to this very day whenever I re-watch it (or even linger on the thought of it too long) is The Blair Witch Project.
For those of you familiar with the film you’ll probably find it funny that I consider this the scariest film I’ve ever watched because, to put it the same way as everyone else, nothing happens. It’s quite literally just a group of people wandering around the woods arguing for a little over an hour, and that’s pretty much it. In fact, for a lot of people they would consider this the most boring film they’ve ever seen, and I can certainly understand why. But to me the idea of being genuinely lost in the woods with two people I don’t know, whilst also being stalked and messed with by some unseen entity absolutely terrifies me. So I want to share with you all why The Blair Witch Project so damn scary, and why I love it so much.
Part of the charm of The Blair Witch Project lies in being swept up in the film in the lead up to its release in 1999. Now whilst I was only four at the time, and I can’t say I exactly remember that hype well, I do remember hearing stories about the film and the supposed real events that it depicted. The film was marketed primarily online as one of the first examples of using the internet for viral marketing, and to cap it all off the filmmakers actually enlisted the help of police departments in America to promote the film as real by creating missing persons campaigns for the three actors depicted in the film. Combine this with the relatively unseen phenomena of found footage (which had only been attempted a handful of times before outside of the mainstream cinema circuit with films like Cannibal Holocaust) the films premise was undeniably real to much of the public around its release.
The film opens with a block of text that indicates that in October of 1994 three student filmmakers ventured into the Maryland woods near Burkittsville and were never found. The footage that the audience is about to be shown was recovered a year later and pieced together to create what you were about to see. Heather is currently a college student who is directing a documentary about the fabled Blair Witch, who has supposedly been responsible for many strange occurrences in and around the area of Burkittsville, formerly Blair, in Maryland. She enlists the aid of Josh and Mike, two strangers she contacted through friends of friends, who act as her camera and sound crew, and the three interview the Burkittsville locals about the witch.
They get mixed accounts and most of the information unreliable, but this is after all just a folk story, right? So, they venture off into the nearby woods to document some important locations in old murder cases which have links to the existence of the witch. But after they begin to hear strange noises at night and encounter strange ritualistic items, the group get lost and begin to turn on each other as they come to terms with the fact that they are being hunted and are unlikely to make it out alive.
For those of you familiar with the film you’ll probably find it funny that I consider this the scariest film I’ve ever watched because, to put it the same way as everyone else, nothing happens. It’s quite literally just a group of people wandering around the woods arguing for a little over an hour, and that’s pretty much it. In fact, for a lot of people they would consider this the most boring film they’ve ever seen, and I can certainly understand why. But to me the idea of being genuinely lost in the woods with two people I don’t know, whilst also being stalked and messed with by some unseen entity absolutely terrifies me. So I want to share with you all why The Blair Witch Project so damn scary, and why I love it so much.
Part of the charm of The Blair Witch Project lies in being swept up in the film in the lead up to its release in 1999. Now whilst I was only four at the time, and I can’t say I exactly remember that hype well, I do remember hearing stories about the film and the supposed real events that it depicted. The film was marketed primarily online as one of the first examples of using the internet for viral marketing, and to cap it all off the filmmakers actually enlisted the help of police departments in America to promote the film as real by creating missing persons campaigns for the three actors depicted in the film. Combine this with the relatively unseen phenomena of found footage (which had only been attempted a handful of times before outside of the mainstream cinema circuit with films like Cannibal Holocaust) the films premise was undeniably real to much of the public around its release.
The film opens with a block of text that indicates that in October of 1994 three student filmmakers ventured into the Maryland woods near Burkittsville and were never found. The footage that the audience is about to be shown was recovered a year later and pieced together to create what you were about to see. Heather is currently a college student who is directing a documentary about the fabled Blair Witch, who has supposedly been responsible for many strange occurrences in and around the area of Burkittsville, formerly Blair, in Maryland. She enlists the aid of Josh and Mike, two strangers she contacted through friends of friends, who act as her camera and sound crew, and the three interview the Burkittsville locals about the witch.
They get mixed accounts and most of the information unreliable, but this is after all just a folk story, right? So, they venture off into the nearby woods to document some important locations in old murder cases which have links to the existence of the witch. But after they begin to hear strange noises at night and encounter strange ritualistic items, the group get lost and begin to turn on each other as they come to terms with the fact that they are being hunted and are unlikely to make it out alive.
Part of what makes The Blair Witch Project so scary to me is that I’m really good with directions. I’ve always been great at working out how to get places, and I am very quick to pick up on the geography of places I’m visiting for the first time. So, when I make a mistake and I get lost I panic very quickly, because not knowing where I am is something I don’t experience very often. I’ve also been lost in the woods, only for a couple of hours or so, but it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life because I genuinely thought I would never find my way back to somewhere I recognised.
The main terror of The Blair Witch Project, for me, is that these three people are so horrendously lost in such a large and empty place, and the thought of being in that situation myself is utterly terrifying to me.
The way Blair Witch Project is filmed allows me to be engrossed in the film and feel like I am there. It’s one of the best examples of found footage filmmaking in the genre because it’s so raw and unrefined. It’s clear that these people don’t have a huge amount of experience with a camera and are more concerned with just pointing it at where they are looking. It draws me in because I feel like I am looking with my own eyes, frantically darting around the space looking for whatever is out there.
The performances from the cast are extremely believable and part of that is because they were, for the most part, unaware of quite what they were in for. The three of them had been given the cameras and sound equipment and given a rough guide of where to go, as well as a small heads up about the fact that things were going to happen to them. Meanwhile the directors, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, set up ‘encounters’ that the actors would interact with. Whilst Heather, Josh, and Mike knew they were going to have something happen to them, or see something unsettling here and there, they didn’t know exactly what would happen, so once they did encounter whatever they saw the reactions were genuine.
Additionally, almost all of the dialogue is improvised. Sometimes the actors didn’t quite know where to take the conversation, so they repeat themselves, but it does sound like people having a genuine conversation with each other because they aren’t reading lines.
The improvised nature of the film only adds to the realism because everything you’re seeing is a realistic reaction to something that’s actually happening to the actors.
One of the most famous scenes in the film, Heather’s apology, is a perfect example of this. Whilst Heather knew she needed to do this apology to the camera, how it was done and what was said was left completely to her own devices. It’s an incredible performance that’s really driven by how exhausted and genuinely frightened the actors were, as you can see the tears coming from her eyes and the snot dribbling out of her nose; the framing too is perfect, and also a complete accident. Despite thinking Heather had got her whole head in the frame, she didn’t realise she had zoomed in, and so all we see is her nostrils and eyes as she breaks down on camera accepting that she is going to die.
The main terror of The Blair Witch Project, for me, is that these three people are so horrendously lost in such a large and empty place, and the thought of being in that situation myself is utterly terrifying to me.
The way Blair Witch Project is filmed allows me to be engrossed in the film and feel like I am there. It’s one of the best examples of found footage filmmaking in the genre because it’s so raw and unrefined. It’s clear that these people don’t have a huge amount of experience with a camera and are more concerned with just pointing it at where they are looking. It draws me in because I feel like I am looking with my own eyes, frantically darting around the space looking for whatever is out there.
The performances from the cast are extremely believable and part of that is because they were, for the most part, unaware of quite what they were in for. The three of them had been given the cameras and sound equipment and given a rough guide of where to go, as well as a small heads up about the fact that things were going to happen to them. Meanwhile the directors, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, set up ‘encounters’ that the actors would interact with. Whilst Heather, Josh, and Mike knew they were going to have something happen to them, or see something unsettling here and there, they didn’t know exactly what would happen, so once they did encounter whatever they saw the reactions were genuine.
Additionally, almost all of the dialogue is improvised. Sometimes the actors didn’t quite know where to take the conversation, so they repeat themselves, but it does sound like people having a genuine conversation with each other because they aren’t reading lines.
The improvised nature of the film only adds to the realism because everything you’re seeing is a realistic reaction to something that’s actually happening to the actors.
One of the most famous scenes in the film, Heather’s apology, is a perfect example of this. Whilst Heather knew she needed to do this apology to the camera, how it was done and what was said was left completely to her own devices. It’s an incredible performance that’s really driven by how exhausted and genuinely frightened the actors were, as you can see the tears coming from her eyes and the snot dribbling out of her nose; the framing too is perfect, and also a complete accident. Despite thinking Heather had got her whole head in the frame, she didn’t realise she had zoomed in, and so all we see is her nostrils and eyes as she breaks down on camera accepting that she is going to die.
The final sequence is also genius and really brings together almost all the mythology brought up throughout the film. As Heather and Mike follow Josh’s cries for help they come across an abandoned dilapidated house. When they enter, they find that the walls have children's handprints all over them, and once Heather reaches the basement, we see the chilling final shot of Mike standing in the corner of the room facing the wall.
The mythos of the witch, coffin rock, the kidnapped children, and of Rustin Parr, all culminate in this short sequence and really bolster the mostly improvised accounts from the townspeople earlier in the film to make everything seem more real.
The sound design is incredible too, and best experienced in surround sound. Due to the sound equipment needing to be portable and actually being controlled by one of the three actors in the film, you'll often get this awesome effect of hearing things the people filming can't hear, as well as hearing audio in a different space from what the actors are inhabiting. The final sequence is another very clear example of this as Mike has the sound equipment, so we are hearing what he is hearing, but the camera remains with in Heathers viewpoint; so when Heather speaks it sounds very far away and we can hear things going on that we can't see because the two actors are in different rooms of the house. It distorts reality in a way and makes the house seem much more labyrinthian and otherworldly than it really is.
As to whether the trio were being stalked by a supernatural presence, or whether the townspeople had hunted them down, or whether Josh and Mike turned on Heather and were the ones responsible for everything that happened is still hotly debated to this day; which again, like all great urban legends, only makes the inconclusive ending so much more exciting and terrifying. Was it something supernatural, or was it just vindictive twisted murderers toying with their prey?
There’s nothing I’m not really keen on, to me the film is damn near perfect. But many of these positives I have put forward will be things that others sometimes find off-putting. It’s always been a divisive film and it will always continue to be a divisive film. But The Blair Witch Project is something I think you should check out if you haven’t seen it as it is such an important film in cinema history. Without it studios wouldn’t have been prepared to gamble on smaller independent horror films, and we also wouldn’t have seen the emergence of a new style of filmmaking in found footage. Whilst the genre certainly has been abused in the years since The Blair Witch Project, it’s well worth revisiting the one that brought the genre to the masses.
The mythos of the witch, coffin rock, the kidnapped children, and of Rustin Parr, all culminate in this short sequence and really bolster the mostly improvised accounts from the townspeople earlier in the film to make everything seem more real.
The sound design is incredible too, and best experienced in surround sound. Due to the sound equipment needing to be portable and actually being controlled by one of the three actors in the film, you'll often get this awesome effect of hearing things the people filming can't hear, as well as hearing audio in a different space from what the actors are inhabiting. The final sequence is another very clear example of this as Mike has the sound equipment, so we are hearing what he is hearing, but the camera remains with in Heathers viewpoint; so when Heather speaks it sounds very far away and we can hear things going on that we can't see because the two actors are in different rooms of the house. It distorts reality in a way and makes the house seem much more labyrinthian and otherworldly than it really is.
As to whether the trio were being stalked by a supernatural presence, or whether the townspeople had hunted them down, or whether Josh and Mike turned on Heather and were the ones responsible for everything that happened is still hotly debated to this day; which again, like all great urban legends, only makes the inconclusive ending so much more exciting and terrifying. Was it something supernatural, or was it just vindictive twisted murderers toying with their prey?
There’s nothing I’m not really keen on, to me the film is damn near perfect. But many of these positives I have put forward will be things that others sometimes find off-putting. It’s always been a divisive film and it will always continue to be a divisive film. But The Blair Witch Project is something I think you should check out if you haven’t seen it as it is such an important film in cinema history. Without it studios wouldn’t have been prepared to gamble on smaller independent horror films, and we also wouldn’t have seen the emergence of a new style of filmmaking in found footage. Whilst the genre certainly has been abused in the years since The Blair Witch Project, it’s well worth revisiting the one that brought the genre to the masses.