The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American independent horror film directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Saánchez. The narrative is presented as documentary pieced together from amateur footage and has virtually no music. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company. The film features Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams all as themselves.
The Blair Witch Project, set in 1994, tells the story of three young student filmmakers who get lost in the woods while filming a documentary about the eponymous local legend. After being terrorized by an unseen presence for several days, they mysteriously disappear. Neither the students nor their bodies are ever found, although their video and sound equipment is eventually recovered, several feet under a building foundation that was laid at least a century earlier.
The release of the film on July 16, 1999 came after months of publicity, including a ground-breaking campaign by the studio to use the Internet to suggest that the film described a real event. It was very positively received and went on to gross over US$248 million worldwide. It was followed by a sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.
Plot
In October, 1994, student filmmakers
Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard travel to Burkittsville,
Maryland to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch.
According to legend, a woman named Elly Kedward was accused of witchcraft in 1785
in the Blair Township (currently known as Burkittsville). After her death, residents
experienced signs of supernatural phenomena, notably the disappearance of many
local children. Years later in the early 1940s, the deaths of more local children
were attributed to a serial killer named Rustin Parr, a hermit living in the Black
Hills woods near Burkittsville, who would kidnap two children at a time. He would
then take them to his basement, force one to face the corner and kill the other.
Parr claimed he was forced to kill by "an old woman ghost". It was widely
believed that this ghost was that of Elly Kedward.
Symbols found by
the filmmakers in the woodsThe filmmakers visit Burkittsville, Maryland, where
they interview local citizens who relate further details of the Blair Witch legend.
They then hike deep within the woods, where unusual events begin to unfold. Mysterious
sounds from the woods awaken the filmmakers at night, such as twigs and branches
cracking. In the morning they find that three piles of stones have been placed
outside their tent. Believing the group's map to be useless, Michael kicks it
into the river, causing anger and frustration among the group. They eventually
agree on walking south to get out. They become lost in the woods, and discover
an abundance of totems hanging from the trees, shaped like stick figures.
The next night the group wakes up to groans and children's voices. The noises continue and the tent is battered from outside, which causes the trio to flee deep into the woods. In the morning they find that Josh's possessions have been thrown around and scattered. That day, after hiking for hours, they realize they have ended up in the exact same place they were the day before, despite traveling south the entire time by direction of a compass. The group slowly begins to realize escaping from the woods is hopeless. As the group grows increasingly paranoid, Josh disappears one night. Shortly afterwards, a bloody cloth that appears to be from the missing Josh's shirt is found, with teeth and chunks of flesh wrapped in it. Heather and Mike grow increasingly cold, worried and hungry, and in what may be the film's best-known sequence, Heather records an apology to the trio's parents, claiming responsibility for the hardships they have endured.
One night, they hear a man screaming. Thinking it to be Josh, Mike chases the voice into the woods, Heather calling for him to come back. After running blindly, they discover an abandoned, dilapidated house. The duo enters the home after hearing voices and search for Josh, but are soon overwhelmed by the sounds of screams. Mike runs downstairs to the basement. Heather flees to the basement in search of Mike, only to find him in the corner of the room, facing the wall, referencing the earlier scene in which a town local describes a similar series of murders decades before the filming. The camera falls; Heather's screams are heard before being cut short.
[edit]
Release and reaction
The teaser poster and other advertisements for the film
were designed to reinforce the 'documentary' concept, leading many people to think
the film was an actual documentary, and that the three protagonists really had
disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. To reinforce this idea,
the Sci-Fi Channel aired a fake documentary, Curse of the Blair Witch, that claimed
to investigate the legend surrounding the movie right before the film's release.
The program contained "interviews" with friends and relatives of the
missing students, paranormal experts, and local historians. This was done so extensively
that the three main actors were listed for a time as "missing, presumed dead"
on IMDb.
The film is arguably the most profitable film in history. With a budget of US$22,000 and a worldwide gross of over US$248 million, the film's gross was more than 11,000 times its original budget.
Cinematic and
literary allusions
One of the film's best-known scenes: Heather's apologyThe
film draws on several influences to create the backstory of Elly Kedward, The
Blair Witch, including allusions to the Salem Witch Trials and The Crucible to
play upon the themes of injustice done on those who were called witches.
The directors were also influenced by The Shining, Alien, The Omen and Jaws for the technique of showing the antagonist as little as possible to create a compelling psychological drama.
It is also notable that the fictional film The Navidson Record in Mark Z. Danielewski's contemporary horror novel House of Leaves is also entirely filmed using documentary equipment, and even records the similar fearsome, shaky movements of the camera during the expeditions described in the novel. The "witch" in The Blair Witch Project has been compared to the frightening physics experienced in House of Leaves, and the similarity of the experiences by the teams from both works has also been noted.
Jim Knipfel of the New York Press noted the similarities between Blair Witch and the widely banned 1980 Italian exploitation film Cannibal Holocaust. In the first part of this film, a rescue team ventures into the jungles of South America to search for a missing group of filmmakers that previously traveled there to film a documentary about cannibalistic tribes. Their footage is eventually found and viewed, which makes up the second half of the film.
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