By Sean Kelly
There is currently a lot of buzz going around for the film Paranormal Activity, out now in limited release, which some are pegging as “the next Blair Witch Project”. It’s kind of congruent, since that film is currently in the midst of celebrating its tenth anniversary (having been released July 16th, 1999). As a Halloween-related feature for October, I thought I would reminisce on the legacy of The Blair Witch Project and what has made it so successful.
It would probably be agreed that the sensation around The Blair Witch Project was built upon hype. The directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez created a detailed mythology on the legend of the Blair Witch (you can still read that mythology on the official website) and the film was marketed as being the actual found footage of students that disappeared while making a documentary based on the mythology.
It was really up to how much someone believed the hype that contributed to whether or not they actually found the film scary. Truth be told; not all that much happens throughout the film and it follows a repeated pattern of travelling through the woods during the day and escalating scary situations happening at night.
The film also depends on the “less is more” philosophy of horror films. That is, the theory that the stuff that you don’t see is scarier than what you do. Most of the scary moments of the film involve noises and screams coming from the woods. It would be understandable that if someone was unable to suspend their disbelief, they would end up finding the film lame. However, these scary disturbances do escalate throughout the film and I still find the final sequence quite chilling.
However, I don’t think even Myrick and Sánchez would have even guessed the response that the film received. The response to the film was polarized, but those that believed the film was real, really believed the film was real. People stormed the poor town of Burkittsville, Maryland (population 200) looking for signs of the Blair Witch and went as far as to take twigs and rocks as souvenirs. It was this huge hysteria over the film that formed the basis of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.
That film is another story all-together. Released in 2000, Book of Shadows was as obvious a cash-in as there ever has been. In an ironic twist, documentary director Joe Berlinger was brought in to direct this more conventional horror film. The film plays on the hysteria caused by the original film by featuring a group of young people participating in their own Blair Witch hunt in which they end up blacking out and the rest of the film is spent with them trying to piece together what happened from the footage on their tapes.
Berlinger’s goal with the film was to create an ambiguity about whether or not the creepy occurrences that happen within the film were really the work of the Blair Witch or just a result of a collective delusion. This question was developed by having scenes shot on digital and film that show conflicting events. However, the ambiguity Berlinger was going for was undercut by the studio wanting more shock value in the film. As a result, interrogation scenes that were supposed to be all at the end, were spread throughout the film, along with repeated imagery of graphic violence. The changes added by the studio were so profound that Berlinger found the need to include a statement detailing what he had intended to do with the film in the liner notes of the DVD.
Back to the original film, it has to be agreed that The Blair Witch Project is an accomplishment (even if it did result in a less than stellar sequel). The film was made for a very modest budget of only around $30,000 but ended up making a worldwide gross of nearly $250 million. It’s unlikely that there will ever be another film with a similar cost-to-profit ratio.
In the years since its release, more films came out using the faux-documentary POV format of Blair Witch, including Cloverfield, [Rec] (and it’s remake Quarantine), and Diary of the Dead. As such, it can be argued that Blair Witch Project was a creatively influential film long after the hype wound down. I almost regret never having seen the film in theatres, especially since my first viewing of the film was hampered by TV commercial breaks. Then again, I would have probably been one of the many to get sick from the shaky camera. It seems that rather than merely being noteworthy for hype, a decade after the fact, we’re still looking for the next Blair Witch Project.
