“THE WITCH IN THE WOODS: THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF ‘THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’” (BY KERI O’SHEA)
More than 25 years after its release, The Blair Witch Project (1999) is now widely acknowledged as a significant part of horror cinema history — so much so, perhaps, that some of its most radical elements may get overlooked today. However, when it was released, and indeed prior to its release, the film made a singular, indelible impact, one which has shaped so much about the films that have followed in its wake. This wasn’t only due to the tenacity of filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, who wanted to resurrect a feeling of real, childlike fear in their film (a sensation which had been eroded in the era of big-budget, big hitters like Scream and From Dusk Till Dawn). There was more to it than that: The Blair Witch Project owed a great deal to a strange coming-together of circumstances. Many of these things may have been beyond Myrick and Sánchez’s control, but they certainly used them in ways that elevated the finished film above many of its blockbuster genre-mates, and arguably changed the horror landscape forever.
In the late ’90s, society was on the cusp of a number of changes to how we communicated, recorded, and shared information, and not only does this find its way into The Blair Witch Project, but arguably lends the whole film a kind of veritas that would itself change dramatically as technology continued to develop in the years to come. Whilst it was made in 1999, the film is based on “found footage” from 1994; as it turns out, the mid-1990s was a watershed moment. Analog and older ways of doing things were still important (the documentary filmmakers are reliant on maps, a compass, and battery packs), but relatively new, lightweight camcorders now allowed for the whole idea of going to the woods to shoot a documentary in the first place. A few years either way, and this would have felt very different, if not seemed impossible. There was a purpose behind filming, and modern technology made the project doable. This is true of Heather’s proposed documentary, and the feature film itself.
Outside of the world of the film, old continued to meet new in a range of fortuitous, compelling ways. Not only did the continued presence of analog lend credence to the very idea that someone could, one day, find a buried duffel bag of film canisters (found footage of this kind would be much less likely if it was stored on buried memory cards), but in a broader sense, the film exists in a liminal state between different worlds, which lends The Blair Witch Project much of its charm and impact.
The film features non-actors as lead actors; it is partly scripted and partly improvised, and its performers quickly had to learn to navigate the divide between anonymity and exposure. The interview footage that Heather records comes from a blend of hired performers and regular townspeople, one of whom, unprompted, claimed to know about the Blair Witch legend. On-set relationships were also unorthodox. There was a crew, but the cast also filmed themselves, and communication between cast and crew was kept minimal. The film blends mythology and hearsay with — at least initially — a rational, detached structure. It brings the age-old idea of folklore into the modern day via its (briefly) cutting-edge technology, and ultimately, it’s the archetypal indie film which, despite its ethos, metamorphosed into a blockbuster (making around a $250 million worldwide profit). So far, so unusual. But there was something else that was absolutely key to the success and legacy of the film: the Internet.
It's one of those things which we just take for granted today: Films rely on the interest they can drum up online, with successful and not-so-successful social media campaigns, flashy websites, and attempts to go viral in order to get films seen. In the ’90s this was a new concept, and one that wasn’t fully exploited until The Blair Witch Project — which also, via luck and judgment, developed an internet presence that extended far beyond the film’s official site. The Blair Witch website made a huge impact on a generation of film fans just getting to grips with the World Wide Web. It also allowed those astute filmmakers to blur the lines between real/plausible and unreal/invented, with a supposed timeline of key events in the fictionalized history of (the very real) Burkittsville and testimonies from people who had witnessed supernatural phenomena in and around the town, together with an evidence archive about the supposedly missing filmmakers: Heather, Josh, and Mike.
It’s entirely fitting that in this new age of unprecedented possibilities, computers soon proved that they were just as useful for perpetuating half-truths and outright lies. Soon, fans — either entranced by Blair Witch world-building or convinced of its veracity — were building GeoCities sites of their own, then discussing the case on message boards, so that notions of a “real” spate of disappearances and a “real” Blair Witch became entrenched. It was a fascinating time, watching this example of life imiting art: People’s imaginations were running rampant months before anyone actually saw the film in question. It also feels oddly fitting that this story, one reliant on uncertainties and blurred lines, took on such a life of its own beyond the film. But arguably, something else is absolutely key to the film’s legacy and impact, and it relates to its subject matter. This may be a film where old meets new, and it is very much a film made on the precipice of a new era, but its story is as old as time.
“Hungry, cold — and hunted.”
The Blair Witch Project is a supernatural horror. It contains no CGI; it is almost completely bloodless, save for the contents of Josh’s plaid shirt bundle and the handprints on the walls, and even those are only briefly glimpsed. In a few short years, the horror genre would swing into the so-called “torture porn” era where filmmakers strove to outdo one another with elaborate, visceral set pieces of human torment. In The Blair Witch Project however, the only torment is psychological, and the filmmakers understood the immense power of never revealing the monster, because of the risks to atmosphere from including more gratuitous content. However, make no mistake, there is a monster, out there in the dark in that timeless setting of the deep, dark woods, and its great resurgence here is in itself fascinating. It is entirely apt, in the year 1999, that the figure of the witch was back, underpinning such a groundbreaking, remarkable horror film as this.
It’s apt, but perhaps unsurprising, that witchcraft — not the glammed-up, Hollywood witchcraft of close contemporaries The Craft or Practical Magic — finally found its way back to the horror genre as such a horrifying, vindictive presence. The figure of the witch has a long and varied relationship with cinema, but by as early as 1922, a European silent film called Häxan had already established some of the tenets used by Myrick and Sánchez, not least the semi-documentary format (the filmmakers also named their production outfit Haxan Films). Made at a time in history where the world was rapidly changing, Häxan examines the history of witchcraft, spending most of its time with medieval archetypes: Witches as poor, downtrodden, and isolated, but often malignant, powerful entities. These kinds of witches manifest unease and disquiet, and it was a conscious and inspired decision on the part of Myrick and Sánchez to choose this kind of witchcraft for their first feature film.
This sort of witchcraft is key to the fictionalized folklore of The Blair Witch Project, with its tales of a figure named Elly Kedward — never mentioned in the film, but part of the film’s surrounding mythos. She was allegedly an outsider who lured children to their deaths, before being exiled and likely executed by an outraged local community. However, in the world of the film, this isn’t enough to subdue her. Blurring the lines once more, now between life and death, the so-called Blair Witch can allegedly manifest as a ghost, or a mist; she can still persecute children, and (in a neat nod to the occult delusions of a number of infamous serial killers) she may also be behind the actions of another local killer, a man named Rustin Parr, who blamed his own murders on the “old lady ghost.”
Whilst in many respects the Elly Kedward mythology could be seen as reactionary — an insalubrious throwback to misogynistic legends and rumors that harmed women — then it also points to ancient fears of feminine power, whilst also extending it, granting the figure of the witch a kind of vengeance in perpetuity, as well as mastery of her own domain. If the Blair Witch herself is only ever partially understood — unseen, but present — then that’s completely in keeping with the history of witchcraft, itself so partial and subjective. Yet, Elly Kedward is able to break out of the Burkittsville chronology, because horror cinema itself has the semi-supernatural power to flip the script, allowing its fictional characters the kinds of powers which, even as whispers, would have once been enough to consign women to death. Here, the witch prevails, and here, the story never safely ends, even when the camera finally drops to the ground. It’s a legacy shared with a number of subsequent witchcraft-themed horror, particularly the comparable sylvan dread of The Witch and The Lords of Salem.
Making the best of a range of chances, as well as the technology and media available to the team at the time, The Blair Witch Project was able to come together in ways which occur incredibly rarely. The entire genre of found footage — whilst arguably born with Cannibal Holocaust (1980), a film which had been seen by far fewer people at this time due to severe distribution issues and outright bans in several countries — owes its sudden proliferation almost entirely to Myrick and Sánchez’s groundbreaking movie. Thousands of found footage films began to appear, some amazing, some not so much, but all making some use of The Blair Witch Project’s shooting style and what soon became found footage tropes. Just as the team behind The Blair Witch Project were able to utilize cheaper, more portable cameras in order to film a whole host of supernatural phenomena, so too could filmmakers like Oren Peli, Matt Reeves, Elliot Goldner, Jaume Balagueró, and Paco Plaza, to name just a few.
As time has moved on, filmmakers have adapted the format to include even newer technology: mobile phones, social media and even smart glasses have since been used to capture footage. Furthermore, independent horror has continued to inhabit the internet, adapting to include creepypastas and web series which, from time to time, break out to enjoy significant fandom and critical acclaim. These films are in many respects the progeny of The Blair Witch Project, born of the great democratization of horror which it brought about, albeit probably just within memory of many of the filmmakers now making movies of their own.
But, above all else, The Blair Witch Project did something which, at the time when it came out, seemed to have faded away into obscurity. It helped to transform and reinvigorate the long-standing figure of the maligned witch, using old ideas and new tricks to make her completely terrifying again: a presence, unseen but formidable, out there in the woods, defying rational study, ready to stalk, to trick, and ultimately to harm the living. That confidence to reach for imaginative scares owes a great deal to the witch, and the film chose its monster very wisely. Thanks to The Blair Witch Project, the witch was able to cross over into the cinema of a new century and a new millennium, bringing with her both a long and noxious history and elements of pervasive folklore, half-known but, finally, feared again, as she dragged her shadow into the new dawn — where she’s with us still.