Do you remember The Blair Witch Project?
Yeah, I know you remember the movie. I know you remember that it’s a found-footage film about three people who go into the woods to make a documentary about a legendary figure known as the Blair Witch. They end up getting lost in the woods, and then eventually two of them end up running around and finding a house where they presumably fall victim to the witch. Later, their film was found even as they remained listed as “missing.”
But do you really remember what a big deal this movie was back in 1999? In today’s cynical age, it can be easy to forget just how big a deal The Blair Witch Project was when it was first released. It was one of the first films—perhaps the first—to truly take advantage of the Internet as a marketing tool. Whereas other films, up to that point, would just have a simple webpage where you could read bios about the actors and spend ten minutes waiting for a clip from the movie to load, The Blair Witch Project had a web page that didn’t even seem to realize that it was advertising a film. Instead, it was all about the legend of the Blair Witch and how three young people were missing. Today, we’re used to viral hoaxes. In 1999, though, the Internet was still a new enough thing to most people that there was an assumption that anything you saw online had to be real. If you saw a web page saying that Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams had disappeared, then the assumption was that they had really disappeared. It can be hard to remember today, but there were once very serious debates about whether or not The Blair Witch Project was real or if it was just a film.
Today, of course, we all know it was just a film. Joshua Leonard, who was the first of the three to die and whose fingers were apparently chopped off by the witch, has subsequently gone on to be a busy character actor, and he appears to still have all of his fingers. Michael C. Williams is also still acting and apparently also worked as a high school guidance counselor after throwing away the map that would have helped him, Joshua, and Heather find their way out of the forest. Heather Donahue, who famously said, “I’m so scared,” while filming herself at night, has retired from acting but is still occasionally interviewed. They’re all alive! Yay!
Today, it’s hard to watch The Blair Witch Project without thinking about the hundreds of found-footage films that followed in its wake. Like all successful (and/or good) films, The Blair Witch Project made it look easy and, as a result, a lot of people have tried to do the same thing with varied success. (It’s also easy to forget what a big deal the first Paranormal Activity film was.) Seen today, the film’s flaws are easy to spot. The dialogue was largely improvised and, as is so often the case with improv, this leads to a lot of scenes that don’t really seem to go anywhere. And yet, there’s still a certain power to the film. It does capture the frustrating feeling of being lost, and the final run through the house is still effectively creepy. The film’s power has been diluted by 27 years of imitation, but it still works on a very basic level.
That said, the main feeling that one gets from The Blair Witch Project is one of nostalgia. For a film about a witch that kills children and film students, it’s a surprising reminder of a more innocent time. There was a time when people truly believed in the Blair Witch.
