Ten years after its release, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is still a cultural touchstone – it is still widely parodied (a Google search of “Blair Witch Project parody” will turn up over 33,000 hits), consistently imitated (the use of the “shaky” cam style in all sorts of horror films), and instantly recognizable (I dare you to find me someone who doesn’t recognize the above image of Heather Donahue). TBWP is also one of the most profitable movies ever made – it cost less than $100,000 to make, but has made over $250 million worldwide. It was also one of the first films to utilize the power of a viral online campaign.

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT was the first movie I remember seeing on opening night. I was completely obsessed with it. The online campaign hooked my friends and I, capturing its prospective audience on a very personal level – any information you could dig up felt like gold. The human capacity for curiosity, coupled with the sudden immediacy of being able to find things out through the internet, gave the film an awareness level most indie films still can’t muster. Add that to the fact that people seemed to endlessly debate whether the film was real or not, and you’ve got a formula for absolute success, if only through the pull of spectatorship. The main center of the online presence was a website created by co-director and writer Eduardo Sanchez, which created and expanded on a mythology that felt more and more real the deeper it got.

But all of that – the marketing, the buzz – is pure icing on the BLAIR WITCH cake. Fundamentally, it is a scary story, scarily told. As Sanchez explains it, “We had this very basic and very primal foundation, which was fear of the woods…The woods at night is a place where humans maybe used to feel at home there, but I think that now we fear them. It transmits not just culturally, but to people of all ages.”

And the film didn’t back down from making its fictional story feel as real as possible – the three main actors (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Mike Williams) did operate their own characters, adding a layer of authenticity to the conceit that they were actually documentary filmmakers. They were consistently asked to improvise their lines. And the actual “producers terrorized the cast during darkness, depriving them of food and sleep.” Anyone can be scared in the dark, but when the lines between reality and fiction can get blurred, the effect is indelible – there is a palatable undercurrent of true fear in BLAIR WITCH.

The film was, predictably, followed up by a shoddy sequel released a year later (BLAIR WITCH: BOOK OF SHADOWS). Though not objected to by Sanchez or fellow co-writer and director Daniel Myrick (they received producers and character creation credits on the film), it was a far cry from the original magic of the first film. However, Myrick and Sanchez are apparently now working on a new sequel. But fans of the original should not look for a TBWP reboot, as it’s likely that the film won’t even take place in the modern age, and our original characters are probably gone for good (or just making mumblecore movies). In honor of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’s ten year anniversary, why don’t you toss it on your Netflix queue and give it a watch. And then, tell me, are you still scared?

Source BBC News