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The Blair Witch Project

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Not to be confused with Bell Witch: The Movie.

The Blair Witch Project
Theatrical poster for The Blair Witch Project
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Produced by
Written by
  • Daniel Myrick
  • Eduardo Sánchez
Starring
Music by Antonio Cora
Cinematography Neal Fredericks
Edited by
  • Daniel Myrick
  • Eduardo Sánchez
Production
company
Distributed by Artisan Entertainment
Release date
  • January 25, 1999 (1999-01-25) (Sundance)
  • July 14, 1999 (1999-07-14) (United States)
Running time
 81 minutes[1]
Country United States
Language English
Budget $60,000[2]
Box office $248.6 million[2]

The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American supernatural horror film written, directed and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. It tells about three student filmmakers: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams and Joshua Leonard who hiked in the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland in 1994 to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. The three disappeared, but their equipment and footage is discovered a year later. The purportedly "recovered footage" is the film the viewer sees.

When The Blair Witch Project premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 1999, its promotional marketing campaign listed the actors as either "missing" or "deceased". Owing to its successful run at Sundance, Artisan Entertainment bought the film's distribution rights for $1.1 million. It had a North American release on July 14, 1999 before expanding to a wider release starting on July 30. While critical reception was mostly positive, audience reception was split. The film was widely regarded to have popularized the found-footage technique, later used by similarly successful thriller films such as Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield. A sleeper hit, The Blair Witch Project grossed nearly $250 million worldwide on a modest budget of $60,000, making it one of the most successful independent films of all time. The film spawned two sequels—Book of Shadows and Blair Witch—released in October 2000 and September 2016, respectively. The Blair Witch franchise has expanded to include novels, dossiers, comic books and additional merchandise.

Plot[edit]

In October 1994, film students Heather, Mike and Josh set out to produce a documentary about the fabled Blair Witch. They travel to Burkittsville, Maryland, and interview residents about the legend. Locals tell them of Rustin Parr, a hermit who lived in the woods and kidnapped eight children in the 1940s. After spending the night at a motel, the students explore the woods in north Burkittsville to research the legend. Along the way they meet two fishermen, one of whom warns them that the woods are haunted. He also tells them of a young girl named Robin Weaver, who went missing in 1888; when she returned three days later, she talked about "an old woman whose feet never touched the ground." His companion, however, is skeptical of the story. The students hike to Coffin Rock, where five men were found ritualistically murdered in the 19th century. Their bodies later disappeared. The group camps for the night.

They move deeper into the woods the next day and locate what appears to be an old cemetery with seven small cairns and set up camp nearby. That night, they hear the sound of twigs snapping from all directions but assume the noises are from animals or locals. The following day, they try to hike back to the car but are unable to find it before dark and make camp. They again hear twigs snapping at night but fail to find the source of the noises.

At morning, they find that three cairns have been built around their tent during the night, which unnerves them. As they continue, Heather learns her map is missing. Mike later reveals he kicked it into a creek the previous day out of frustration, which prompts Heather and Josh to attack him in a rage. They realize they are now lost and decide simply to head south. They eventually reach a section where they discover a multitude of humanoid stick figures suspended from trees. They again hear sounds that night, including those of children laughing, among other strange noises. After an unknown force shakes the tent, they flee in panic and hide in the woods until dawn.

Upon returning to their tent, they find that their possessions have been rifled through, and Josh's equipment is covered with slime. As they continue, they come across a log on a river identical to one they crossed earlier. They realize they have walked in a circle, despite thinking they traveled south all day, and once again make camp. Josh suffers a breakdown while holding the camera, taunting Heather for their circumstances and her constant recording of the events.

Josh has disappeared the next morning, and Heather and Mike try in vain to find him before slowly moving on. That night, they hear Josh's agonized screams in the darkness but are unable to locate him. Mike and Heather theorize that Josh's screams are a fabrication by the witch to draw them out of their tent.

The next day, outside her tent, Heather discovers a bundle of sticks tied with a piece of fabric from Josh's shirt. As she searches through it, she finds blood-soaked scraps of Josh's shirt as well as teeth, hair and what appears to be a piece of his tongue. Although distraught by the discovery, she chooses not to tell Mike. That night, Heather records herself apologizing to her family and to Mike's and Josh's families, taking full responsibility for their predicament.

They again hear Josh's agonized cries for help and follow them to a derelict, abandoned house containing symbols and children's bloody hand-prints on the walls. Mike races upstairs to find Josh while Heather follows. Mike says he hears Josh in the basement. He runs downstairs while a hysterical Heather struggles to keep up. Upon reaching the basement, an unseen force attacks Mike, causing him to drop the camera and go silent. Heather enters the basement screaming, and her camera captures Mike facing a corner. Something unseen attacks Heather, causing her to drop her camera and go silent as well. The footage continues for another moment and ends.

Production[edit]

Development[edit]

Development of The Blair Witch Project began in 1993.[3] While film students at the University of Central Florida, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez were inspired to make the film after realizing that they found documentaries on paranormal phenomena scarier than traditional horror films. The two decided to create a film that combined the styles of both. In order to produce the project, they, along with Gregg Hale, Robin Cowie and Michael Monello, started Haxan Films. The namesake for the production company is Benjamin Christensen's 1922 silent documentary horror film Häxan (English: Witchcraft Through the Ages).[4]

Myrick and Sánchez developed a thirty-five page screenplay for their fictional film, intending dialogue to be improvised. A casting call advertisement in Backstage magazine was prepared by the directors, and Donahue, Williams and Leonard were cast. The film entered production in October 1997. The principal photography took place in Maryland for eight days, overseen by cinematographer Neal Fredericks. About twenty hours of footage was shot; this was edited to eighty-two minutes.

In developing the mythology behind the film, the creators used many inspirations. For instance, several character names are near-anagrams: Elly Kedward (The Blair Witch) is Edward Kelley, a 16th-century mystic, and Rustin Parr, the fictional 1940s child-murderer, began as an anagram for Rasputin.[5] The Blair Witch is said to be, according to legend, the ghost of Elly Kedward, a woman banished from the Blair Township (latter-day Burkittsville) for witchcraft in 1785.

The directors incorporated that part of the legend, along with allusions to the Salem witch trials and Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible, to play on the themes of injustice done to those who were classified as witches.[6]

The directors also cited influences such as the television series In Search of..., and horror documentary films Chariots of the Gods and The Legend of Boggy Creek.[7][8] Other influences included commercially successful horror films such as The Shining, Alien, and The Omen. Jaws was an influence, as the film hides the witch from the viewer for its entirety, increasing the suspense of the unknown.[3][7]

Pre-production[edit]

A photograph of a smiling middle-aged Caucasian man with thick beard and combed hair, wearing glasses and a dark blue suit and shirt.
Joshua Leonard played a fictionalized version of himself in the film.

Pre-production began on October 5, 1997.[9] In talks with investors, the directors presented an eight-minute documentary, along with newspapers and news footage.[10] The documentary was aired on the defunct television series Split Screen hosted by John Pierson.[7] T

The directors advertised in Backstage magazine for actors with strong improvisational abilities.[11] The informal improvisational audition process narrowed the pool of 2,000 actors.[7][8]

According to Heather Donahue, auditions for the film were held at Musical Theater Works in New York City. The advertisement said a "completely improvised feature film" would be shot in a "wooded location". Donahue said that during the audition, Myrick and Sánchez posed her the question: "You've served seven years of a nine year sentence. Why should we let you out on parole?" to which she had to respond.[11] Joshua Leonard, said he was cast due to his knowledge of how to run a camera, as no omniscient camera was used to film the scenes.[12]

Filming[edit]

Principal photography began on October 23, 1997 and lasted eight days.[4][13] Most of the film was shot in Seneca Creek State Park in Montgomery County, Maryland. A few scenes were filmed in the historic town of Burkittsville. Some of the townspeople interviewed in the film were not actors, and some were planted actors, unknown to the main cast.[13] Donahue had never operated a camera before and spent two days in a "crash course". Donahue said she modeled her character after a director she had once worked with, noting her character's "self-assuredness" when everything went as planned, and confusion during crisis.[14]

During filming, the actors were equipped with CP-16 film and Hi8 video cameras provided by cinematographer Neal Fredericks. They were given clues as to their next location through messages hidden inside 35 mm film cans left in milk crates they found with Global Positioning Satellite systems. They were given individual instructions to use to help improvise the action of the day.[11][13][15] Teeth were obtained from a Maryland dentist for use as human remains in the film.[11] Influenced by producer Gregg Hale's memories of his military training, in which "enemy soldiers" would hunt a trainee through wild terrain for three days, the directors moved the characters a long way during the day, harassing them by night, and depriving them of food.[10]

The final scenes were filmed at the historic Griggs House, a 200-year-old building located in the Patapsco Valley State Park near Granite, Maryland.[16] Filming concluded on October 31, Halloween.[17]

Post-production[edit]

After filming, the twenty hours of raw footage had to be cut down to two-and-a-half hours; the editing process took more than eight months. The directors screened the first cut in small film festivals in order to get feedback and make changes that would ensure that it appealed to as large an audience as possible.[3] Originally, it was hoped that the film would make it on to cable television, and the directors did not anticipate wide release.[3] The final version was submitted to Sundance Film Festival.[18]

After becoming a surprise hit at Sundance, during its midnight premiere on January 25, 1999, Artisan Entertainment bought the distribution rights for $1.1 million.[3] Prior to that, Artisan had wanted to change the film's original ending, as the test audience were puzzled although being scared. (Donahue screams in terror and finds Michael C. Williams facing a corner in the basement before she is knocked to the ground.)[19] The directors and Williams traveled back to Maryland and shot four alternate endings,[20] one of which employed gory elements. Ultimately, they decided to keep the original. Myrick said, "What makes us fearful is something that's out of the ordinary, unexplained. The first ending kept the audience off balance; it challenged our real world conventions and that's what really made it scary."[19]

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Sánchez revealed that when principal photography first wrapped, approximately $20,000 to $25,000 had been spent.[15] Richard Corliss of Time magazine reported a $35,000 estimated budget.[21] Other figures list a final budget ranging between $500,000 and $750,000.[15] By September 2016, The Blair Witch Project has been officially budgeted at $60,000.[24]

Marketing[edit]

A black and white missing person poster, with the text "MISSING" in upper-case bold typeface, placed atop the images of three young Caucasian individuals. The photo on the left shows a woman in her early 20s; the middle shows a bearded man in his mid-20s, wearing a cap which obscured half of his face from sunlight; and the right shows a man also in his mid-20s, wearing an army hat. Below each of the photos contain their personal information such as age, height, and weight. The bottom of the poster contains a message appealing to contact authorities, followed by an emergency hotline.
A missing person poster showing Heather Donahue (left), Joshua Leonard (middle), and Michael C. Williams (right) as part of the film's marketing campaign tactic to portray its events as real

The Blair Witch Project is thought to be the first widely released film marketed primarily by the Internet. The film's official website featured faux police reports as well as "newsreel-style" interviews. These augmented the film's found footage device to spark debates across the Internet over whether the film was a real-life documentary or a work of fiction.[25][26] During screenings, the filmmakers made advertising efforts to promulgate the events in the film as factual, including the distribution of flyers at festivals such as Sundance, asking viewers to come forward with any information about the "missing" students.[27][28] The campaign tactic was that viewers were being told, through missing persons posters, that the characters were missing while researching in the woods for the mythical Blair Witch.[29] The IMDb page also listed the actors as "missing, presumed dead" in the first year of the film's availability.[30] The film's website contains materials of actors posing as police and investigators giving testimony about their casework, and shared childhood photos of the actors to add a sense of realism.[31]

USA Today has opined that The Blair Witch Project was the first film to go viral despite having been produced before many of the technologies that facilitate such phenomena existed.[32]

Fictional legend[edit]

The backstory for the film is a legend fabricated by Sánchez and Myrick which is detailed in the Curse of the Blair Witch, a mockumentary broadcast on the SciFi Channel in 1999 prior to the release of The Blair Witch Project.[33] Sánchez and Myrick also maintain a website which adds further details to the legend.[34]

The legend describes the killings and disappearances of some of the residents of Blair, Maryland (a fictitious town on the site of Burkittsville, Maryland) from the 18th to 20th centuries. Residents blamed these occurrences on the ghost of Elly Kedward, a Blair resident accused of practicing witchcraft in 1785 and sentenced to death by exposure. The Curse of the Blair Witch presents the legend as real, complete with manufactured newspaper articles, newsreels, television news reports, and staged interviews.[33]

Release[edit]

Theatrical run[edit]

The Blair Witch Project premiered on January 25, 1999 at the Sundance Film Festival, and had a limited release on July 14 before going wide on July 30 after months of publicity, including a campaign by the studio to use the Internet and suggest that the film was "a record of real events". The distribution strategy for the film was created and implemented by Artisan studio executive Steven Rothenberg.[35][36] The film earned $1,512,054 in its limited release opening weekend.[2] The film went on to gross $29,207,381 from 1,101 locations and placed at number two in the United States box office third opening weekend, surpassing the science fiction horror film Deep Blue Sea which cleared $19,107,643 weekend gross.[37] The film secured its second place in its fourth weekend, behind another horror film The Sixth Sense, which cleared $26,681,262.[38] The film descended at number three in its fifth weekend,[39] at number five in its sixth weekend,[40] and number eight in its seventh and eighth weekend during Labor Day.[41][42] The film dropped out of the top-ten list in its tenth weekend until its last screening in 107 theaters in its seventeenth weekend, grossing $28,866 and placing in number sixty-three.[43][44] By the end of its theatrical run, the film grossed $140,539,099 in the US and Canada in its total screening and produced $108,100,000 in other territories, having an overall gross of $248,639,099 (over 4,000 times its original budget).[2][19] The Blair Witch Project was the tenth highest-grossing film in the US in 1999,[45] and has since earned the reputation of becoming a sleeper hit.[46]

Because the filming was done by the actors using hand-held cameras, much of the footage is shaky, especially the final sequence in which a character is running down a set of stairs with the camera. Some audience members experienced motion sickness and even vomited as a result.[47]

Critical reception[edit]

"At a time when digital techniques can show us almost anything, The Blair Witch Project is a reminder that what really scares us is the stuff we can't see. The noise in the dark is almost always scarier than what makes the noise in the dark."

—Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times[48]

The Blair Witch Project drew very good reviews from critics.[49] Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 86% based on 154 critics, and an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Full of creepy campfire scares, mock-doc The Blair Witch Project keeps audiences in the dark about its titular villain – thus proving that imagination can be as scary as anything onscreen."[50] Metacritic gives a weighted average score of 81 out of 100 based on 33 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim."[51] Audience reception to the film, though, were ambivalent,[52] with CinemaScore giving it an average grade of "C+" on a scale ranging from A+ to F based on audiences polled during opening weekend.[53]

The film's found footage technique received near-universal praise. Although this was not the first film to use it, the independent film was declared a milestone in film history due to its critical and box office success.[58] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a total of four stars, and called it "an extraordinarily effective horror film".[48] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called it "a groundbreaker in fright that reinvents scary for the new millennium".[59] Todd McCarthy of Variety said, "An intensely imaginative piece of conceptual filmmaking that also delivers the goods as a dread-drenched horror movie, The Blair Witch Project puts a clever modern twist on the universal fear of the dark and things that go bump in the night."[60] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave a grade of "B", saying, "As a horror picture, the film may not be much more than a cheeky game, a novelty with the cool, blurry look of an avant-garde artifact. But as a manifestation of multimedia synergy, it's pretty spooky."[61]

Some critics were less enthusiastic. Andrew Sarris of The New York Observer deemed it "overrated," as well as a rendition of "the ultimate triumph of the Sundance scam: Make a heartless home movie, get enough critics to blurb in near unison 'scary,' and watch the suckers flock to be fleeced".[62] A critic from The Christian Science Monitor said that while the film's concept and scares were innovative, he felt it could have just been shot "as a 30-minute short ... since its shaky camera work and fuzzy images get monotonous after a while, and there's not much room for character development within the very limited plot."[63] R. L. Schaffer of IGN scored it two out of ten, and described it as "boring – really boring", and "a Z-grade, low-rent horror outing with no real scares into a genuine big-budget spectacle".[64]

Home media[edit]

The DVD for The Blair Witch Project was released on October 26, 1999 by Artisan, presented in a 1.33:1 windowboxed aspect ratio and Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. Special features include the documentary Curse of the Blair Witch, a five-minute Newly Discovered Footage, audio commentary, production notes, and cast and crew biographies. The audio commentary presents directors Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, and producers Rob Cowie, Mike Monello and Gregg Hale, in which they discuss the film's production. The Curse of the Blair Witch feature provides an in-depth look inside the creation of the film.[65][66]

The film's Blu-ray version was released on October 5, 2010 by Lionsgate.[67] Best Buy and Lionsgate had an exclusive release of the Blu-ray made available on August 29, 2010.[68]

Accolades[edit]

The 20th Golden Raspberry Awards gave Heather Donahue their Worst Actress award, and nominated producers Robin Cowie and Gregg Hale for the Worst Picture award.[69][70] At the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film won the Biggest Disappointment category and received three nominations: Worst Picture (Cowie and Hale), Worst Actress (Donahue), and Worst Screen Debut (Heather, Michael, Josh, the Stick People and the world's longest running batteries).[71] At the 1st Golden Trailer Awards, it received a nomination for Most Original Trailer and won two categories: Best Horror/Thriller and Best Voice Over.[72] The Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award awarded The Blair Witch Project its Best Film.[73]

Legacy[edit]

An array of other films have relied on the found footage concept and shown influence by this film.[74][56] These include Paranormal Activity and REC (2007), Cloverfield (2008),[74] The Last Exorcism and Trollhunter (2010),[75] Chronicle, Project X, V/H/S , and End of Watch (2012),[56][76] and The Den (2013).[75] Some critics have also noted the film as being strikingly similar to Cannibal Holocaust (1980), and The Last Broadcast (1998) in terms of basic plot premise and narrative style.[54][55] Although Cannibal Holocaust director Ruggero Deodato has acknowledged the similarities of The Blair Witch Project to his film, he criticized the publicity that it received for being an original production;[77] advertisements for The Blair Witch Project also promoted the idea that the footage is genuine.[3] Despite initial reports that The Last Broadcast creators—Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler—had alleged that The Blair Witch Project was a complete rip-off of their work and would sue Haxan Films for copyright infringement, they repudiated these allegations. One of the creators told IndieWire in 1999, "If somebody enjoys The Blair Witch Project there is a chance they will enjoy our film, and we hope they will check it out."[78]

Film critic Michael Dodd has argued that the film is an embodiment of horror "modernizing its ability to be all-encompassing in expressing the fears of American society". He noted that "In an age where anyone can film whatever they like, horror needn't be a cinematic expression of what terrifies the cinema-goer, it can simply be the medium through which terrors captured by the average American can be showcased".[79] In 2008, The Blair Witch Project was ranked by Entertainment Weekly as number ninety-nine on their list of 100 Best Films from 1983 to 2008.[80] In 2006, the Chicago Film Critics Association ranked it as number twelve on their list of Top 100 Scariest Movies.[81] It was ranked number fifty on Filmcritic.com's list of 50 Best Movie Endings of All Time.[82] In 2016, it was ranked by IGN as number twenty-one on their list of Top 25 Horror Movies of All Time,[83] number sixteen on Cosmopolitan's 25 Scariest Movies of All Time,[84] and number three on The Hollywood Reporter's 10 Scariest Movies of All Time.[85] In 2013, the film also made the top-ten list of The Hollywood Reporter's highest-grossing independent films of all time, ranking number six.[86]

Director Eli Roth has cited the film while promoting his own 2002 horror film Cabin Fever through the Internet.[87] The Blair Witch Project was among the films included in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.[88]

After the film was released, in late November 1999, the historic house where it was filmed was reportedly being overwhelmed by film fans who broke off chunks as souvenirs. The township ordered the house demolished the next month.[16]

Media tie-ins[edit]

Main article: Blair Witch

Books[edit]

In September 1999, D. A. Stern compiled The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier. Building on the film's "true story" angle, the dossier consisted of fabricated police reports, pictures, interviews, and newspaper articles presenting the film's premise as fact, as well as further elaboration on the Elly Kedward and Rustin Parr legends. (Another "dossier" was created for Blair Witch 2). Stern wrote the 2000 novel Blair Witch: The Secret Confessions of Rustin Parr. He revisited the franchise with the novel Blair Witch: Graveyard Shift, which features original characters and plot.[89]

A series of eight young adult books, entitled The Blair Witch Files, were released by Random subsidiary Bantam from 2000 to 2001. The books center on Cade Merill, a fictional cousin of Heather Donahue, who investigates phenomena related to the Blair Witch. She tries to learn what really happened to Heather, Mike, and Josh.[90]

Comic books[edit]

In July 1999, Oni Press released a one-shot comic promoting the film, titled The Blair Witch Project #1. Written and illustrated by Cece Malvey, the comic was released in conjunction of the film.[91] In October 2000, coinciding with the release of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Image Comics released a one-shot called Blair Witch: Dark Testaments, drawn by Charlie Adlard.[89]

Video games[edit]

In 2000, Gathering of Developers released a trilogy of computer games based on the film, which greatly expanded on the myths first suggested in the film. The graphics engine and characters were all derived from the producer's earlier game Nocturne.[92]

The first volume, Rustin Parr, received the most praise, ranging from moderate to positive, with critics commending its storyline, graphics and atmosphere; some reviewers even claimed that the game was scarier than the film.[93] The following volumes, The Legend of Coffin Rock and The Elly Kedward Tale, were less well received, with PC Gamer saying that Volume 2's "only saving grace was its cheap price",[94] and calling Volume 3 "amazingly mediocre".[95]

Documentary[edit]

The Woods Movie (2015) is a feature-length documentary exploring the production of The Blair Witch Project.[96] For this documentary, director Russ Gomm interviewed the original film's producer, Gregg Hale, and directors Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick.[97]

Sequels[edit]

Main articles: Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 and Blair Witch (film)

A sequel entitled Book of Shadows was released on October 27, 2000; it was poorly received by most critics.[98][99] A third installment announced that same year did not materialize.[100]

On July 22, 2016, a surprise trailer for Blair Witch was revealed at the San Diego Comic-Con.[101] The film was originally marketed as The Woods so as to be an exclusive surprise announcement for those in attendance at the convention. The film, distributed by Lionsgate, was slated for a September 16 release and stars James Allen McCune as the brother of the original film's Heather Donahue.[102][103] Directed by Adam Wingard, Blair Witch is a direct sequel to The Blair Witch Project, and does not acknowledge the events of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. However, Wingard has said that although his version does not reference any of the events that transpired in Book of Shadows, the film does not necessarily discredit the existence of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.[104] In September 2016, screenwriter Simon Barrett explained that in writing the new film, he only considered material that was produced with the involvement of the original film's creative team (directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, producer Gregg Hale, and production designer Ben Rock) to be "canon", and that he did not take any material produced without their direct involvement—such as the first sequel Book of Shadows or The Blair Witch Files, a series of young adult novels—into consideration when writing the new sequel.[104]

Television[edit]

In October 2017, co-director Eduardo Sánchez revealed that he and the rest of the film's creative team are developing a Blair Witch television series, though he clarified that any decisions would ultimately be up to Lionsgate now that they own the rights to it.[105][106] In February 2018, it was announced that the series will be released on the studio's new subsidiary, Studio L, which specializes in digital releases.[107]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

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  24. ^ [2][22][23]
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External links[edit]

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