The Blair Witch Project (film)
The Blair Witch Project is a pioneering horror film created by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, based on a fictional backstory of a witch named Elly Kedward, who allegedly haunted the town of Blair, Maryland, in the 18th century. The narrative follows three young filmmakers—played by Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams—who venture into the woods to investigate the Blair Witch legend. Their journey quickly turns ominous as they become lost and encounter unsettling phenomena, including mysterious stone arrangements and eerie sounds. The film is presented as raw footage discovered after the filmmakers' disappearance, employing a handheld camera style that enhances its authenticity and sense of dread. With a modest budget of $35,000, it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and achieved immense commercial success, grossing over $248 million worldwide. The film's innovative approach to storytelling and horror resonated with audiences, particularly among Generation X and Y, and it sparked significant media attention. While not nominated for Academy Awards, it is regarded as a landmark in independent cinema and is often cited as one of the most influential horror films in recent history.
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Subject Terms
The Blair Witch Project (film)
Directors Daniel Myrick (1964- ) and Eduardo Sánchez (1968- )
Date Released on July 30, 1999
Shot on a very low budget and marketed aggressively, this motion picture was a critical success and set a record as the most successful independent film ever produced.
The Blair Witch Project was the creation of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, two film students at the University of Central Florida. Inspired by the sensational, heavily fictionalized “documentaries” then being broadcast on television, they constructed an elaborate background story involving a witch, Elly Kedward, living in the eighteenth century Maryland town of Blair. Kedward, so the story went, was responsible for the deaths of many of the town’s children, and her malign influence has continued to the present day, apparently inspiring later atrocities.
Myrick and Sánchez then hired Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams to play three young, grungy filmmakers investigating the supposed witch. Given only the most general instructions, they ad-libbed their dialogue and spent a grueling week in the woods. The resulting twenty hours of footage were then edited down to less than an hour and a half.
The three characters, named for the actors themselves, are shown interviewing several residents of the town (renamed Burkittsville) who have fragmentary knowledge of the Blair Witch legends. Subsequently the filmmakers hike deep into the woods to find the witch’s house, shooting random footage as they go, but they quickly become lost, disoriented, and frightened. They encounter sinister arrangements of stones and constructions of sticks, and after Joshua disappears one night, Heather and Michael hear what sound like his anguished cries. Eventually the two come across a crumbling, deserted house, but as they search it frantically the film comes to a jolting, ambiguous conclusion.
Ostensibly, The Blair Witch Project—a jerky, grainy assemblage shot with handheld cameras—is the students’ footage discovered a year after their disappearance. Devoid of special effects, the film succeeds by leaving virtually everything to its viewers’ imaginations. Nothing supernatural is shown and no explanations are offered, but the film’s constantly shifting images, its characters’ banal, repetitious obscenities, and its general sense of dread are highly unsettling.
Shot on a budget of $35,000, the film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and was signed for distribution by Artisan Entertainment. Thanks in large part to a canny publicity campaign on the Internet, it grossed $248,300,000 worldwide by the end of 1999—a record for an independent film.
Impact
The Blair Witch Project was the subject of cover stories in Time and Newsweek and quickly became a cult favorite among Generation X and Generation Y audiences. It was praised by prominent critics, and although it failed to win any Academy Award nominations, it is generally acknowledged as the most inventive horror film since The Shining (1980).
Bibliography
Corliss, Richard. “Blair Witch Craft.” Time, August 16, 1999, 58-64.
Leland, John. “The Blair Witch Cult.” Newsweek, August 16, 1999, 44-49.
Smith, Sean. “Curse of the Blair Witch.” Newsweek, January 26, 2004, 56-58.