Did they really go missing?? Why "The Blair Witch Project (1999)" was so compelling.

In 1994, three film students went missing in the woods of Maryland after attempting to make a documentary based on a local legend. This is what The Blair Witch Project (1999) filmmakers made the audience believe even before the film came out, making this low-budget horror film unforgettable. Audience members walked into theatres thinking they were about to witness REAL found footage, since crew members put up missing posters of the main actors around the city before the premiere. As well as, releasing a mockumentary called Curse of the Blair Witch (1999) that goes over the mythology of “The Blair Witch” and interviews people who knew the three amateur filmmakers who supposedly went missing. Curse of the Blair Witch proved a believable, compelling, and ultimately successful marketing device for The Blair Witch Project.  I think this is just one of the many things that makes this low-budget film so special, not too many filmmakers set up their audience to this calibre and not too many have since. Before people even sat down to watch the film, they were invested in the characters and what had happened to them.

The film starts off introducing the three main characters, Heather, Micheal and Josh, who are presumably playing themselves and are convincingly naturalistic. They are neither like-able or dislike-able and instead feel like real people you would meet on the street. They begin interviewing locals in Maryland, asking them to recount their experiences with “The Blair Witch”. Most of the interviews were not scripted as the directors asked some of the “locals” to make up their own experiences with the town’s legend, adding to the “person next door” type of acting the film had so far. To boot, most of the interviews as well as most of the film was shot by the actors themselves. Although they had been given a brief crash course on using the 16mm camera, they struggled with using it for the first few days of filming. This is why the interviews in the beginning of the film are of such poor focus and incredibly grainy. It all makes perfect sense though because the filmmakers cleverly set up a rationale for why the film is so cheaply made. A few college students hike into the woods for a few days to shoot a documentary, with very minimal equipment, and are determined to capture the whole experience on video. They cannot carry any sort of lights, tripods or dollies, so everything we see is either lit by raw daylight or by a single light fixed to the camera, which lights up what is just a few feet in front of them. The film brilliantly creates its own excuse to be cheap (made with a mere budget of $35,000-60,000).

Now, I’m not saying that there haven't been other low-budget horror films that have been as captivating. For example, Paranormal Activity (2007) was a huge success and was made with even less of a budget. But I think the aspect of The Blair Witch Project that really made it the most unique, comparatively speaking, was that it wasn't about ghosts, demons or a weapon wielding killer. It was about a completely original entity that filmmakers made people believe in all over the world (including my younger self). Even the actors believed in the legend of “The Blair Witch”, though of course they knew the film was going to be fake. Only after the film's release did they discover that the entire mythology was made up by the filmmakers. 

Once you start to get into the thick of the The Blair Witch Project, there is a lot of improvised mayhem that I believe made the film unforgettable. The three actors were essentially given a 35 page outline of the plot before shooting began. All the dialogue was improvised, nearly all of the events during the film were unknown to the actors till moments before they called action and there were often on-camera surprises. To give an instance, in a scene where the main actors are sleeping in a tent at night, the tent suddenly shakes violently and they all get scared. This was unscripted and the director shook the tent; the actors were actually scared. Also, the actors were really camping in the forest for the duration of the shoot, the scene where the trio is frustrated because they've been walking in a circle all day is genuinely what happened. These tactics did not cost any extra money but were what made The Blair Witch Project so terrifying. I personally had such a visceral reaction when watching this film and I give that credit to the very REAL fear the actors were experiencing on camera. 

The Blair Witch Project may not have been made with state-of-the-art CGI or high-end film equipment, but the indie filmmakers who created it definitely proved that you don't need any of that to make a film that has such an impact on people. All they needed was a great concept, a simple location and a cast and crew that was down to get freaky. For me (as a horror short-film director), the idea that that's all you need to make a film, is so deeply inspiring. Films like The Blair Witch Project are why I’ve always loved horror and wanted to create within the genre.