The Blair Witch Project (1999) – Review

“In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary.
A year later their footage was found.”
And thus, with these ominous, twenty five words, horror history was made as The Blair Witch Project showed the world exactly how simple, manipulative, scary (and profitable) the genre could really be if some grit, imagination and a really scary advertising campaign were probably utilized.
And yet, for all its success, there’s a sense that these days, The Blair Witch Project doesn’t quite get the recognition it deserves and that when presented with the twin, disapproving gazes of “Elevated Horror” devotees and fans of more gory, simpler throwback movies to the 70s and 80s, people even seemed to think that it was some kind of cinematic con to be sneered at.
Well, in an attempt to offer a differing suggestion… In the July of 2023, one self-proclaimed film critic rewatched The Blair Witch Project in his flat in Catford, London while reviewing it for a film website.
Around four hours later, his opinion was posted.

Even though the title card I quoted at the top of the review is ample synopsis enough (the movie has its virtues but it’s hardly L.A. Confidential in terms of plot), the story is as follows: a trio of film students lead by the rather bossy Heather and comprising of laid back cameraman, Josh and new recruit Mike, head into the leafy area of Burkittsville (formally Blair) in Maryland in order to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. After a couple of days of interviews where they are lambasted by multiple stories from the locals who not only relate tales of a missing children and sightings of a strange woman who floats and/or is covered in thick, brown hair, but also clue them in to other happenings, like a hermit who murdered seven children back in the 40s, or the ritualistic murder of five men back in the 19th century.
With their twin camera set up already bristling with interview footage, Heather, Josh and Mike embark on the second phase of their weekend as they hike into the woods themselves to locate places of interest to further fill out their project. After a quick stop off at a place ominously named Coffin Rock they set up tents to stay the night – and that where things start to go noticably pear shaped.
Upon stumbling upon a graveyard literally in the middle of nowhere the trio start to notice creepy happenings that seem to follow them wherever they go. Little cairns of stones appear after a night of snapping twigs and unearthly sounds, they come across twig sculptures hanging in the trees and after another night that involves sounds of children laughing and their tent being violent shaken by an unseen force, it becomes obvious that the students need to get the fuck out of dodge, pronto. But how are they supposed to do that if they’re lost?

A backlash in response to Blair Witch’s release back in 1999 was fairly understandable when you look at it from a certain point of view. While the horror genre had been brought back from the dead by the release of Scream, Hollywood had followed this up by predictably launching a second age of the slasher movie upon us, with any other type of horror left struggling to gain a foothold. Then things changed thanks to one of the most impressive viral campaigns cinema had ever seen that not only took advantage of the fact that this movie had no stars, practically zero production values and didn’t even feature conventional scares, but actually managed to convince some of their early audience that this shit might actually be real. It was a masterstroke that helped the movie gain the word of mouth it needed to go on to be one of the most profitable movies ever made thanks to a shoestring budget (somewhere around $60,000, apparently) and a truly innovative shoot that blurred the lines probably more than the cast would have liked.
To put things bluntly, the movie was a phenomenon, but some claimed that the camerawork was indecipherable, the constant complaining of the cast was irritating and the scares simply weren’t that… scary. While these complaints certainly have some merit, they also smack of people missing the point a little, because compared to the endless procession of self-referential slasher flicks that were crammed full of actors and jump scares, The Blair Witch Project helped bring creeping dread and gut-gnawing frights back to horror movies that had no intest in leaping out of a closet or making a loud, sudden noise – no, the Blair Witch Project had more insidious tactics than that to put the shits up a participating audience.

Bringing the cinema verite technique to horror in an absurd degree not seen since Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust, the fact that filmmakers Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick trained their trio of actors to handle a couple of digital cameras and then actually left them in the woods with a 35 page outline and then proceeded to freak the shit out of them while they did all the filming themselves. As a cost saving, filmmaking endeavor, it was nothing short of genius and the result is way better plotted than you might think.
Sánchez and Myrick stack the first third of the story with detail, giving us numerous creepy legends to ponder that may or may not be connected to the titular witch, but that all still prove to tie into the various, unnerving happenstances that eventually befall our leads. Elsewhere, Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard not only display fine (if shouty) line in improvisation, but they even have interesting character arcs as the events build to their climax. Heather sees her outspoken confidence gradually erode as the stress eats away at her while the laconic Josh and the hot tempered Mike actually swap temperaments as the movie rolls on with Josh becoming the more aggressive of the two as numerous sleepless nights full of unexplainable instances hint at their fate.

When the shit hits the fan, the filmmakers use imagination and suggestion to their fullest, showing us absolutely nothing yet letting out imaginations run riot as Heather screams “What the fuck us that!?” over blurry images our eyeballs were never supposed to discern. To watch The Blair Witch Project with the intention to have your scares served up on a plate is an exercise in self sabotage as the fruits of the filmmakers labours get optimal traction if you buy into the first person nature of the piece, but anyone who claims that the movie hasn’t earned its place in horror history should be made to stand facing the wall. The sight of Heather Donahue, snot dripping out of her nose like a faucet, as she sobs her goodbyes to a camera lens, is as stark and haunting a shot of abject fear that’s ever been caught on film and the final moments are genuinely harrowing once you’ve invested yourself fully in the spell the Blair Witch Project casts.

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