The Blair Witch Project

Second Sight

The first time I saw The Blair Witch Project –– indeed, the first five or six times I saw The Blair Witch Project — it was on a bootleg VHS given to me before its British release by a colleague at the comic shop where I was working at the time. All I knew about it was “it’s a horror movie, but it’s all shot like it’s real”. Nobody said “found footage” at the time, because the genre didn’t exist yet — but, for reasons that would become very apparent very soon, it was about to.

According to the film’s creators, Daniel Meyrick and Eduardo Sanchez, who wrote, directed (well, kinda — more on those first two roles later) and edited the film, this was indeed the best way to watch it, and how they had imagined it would be seen. I didn’t know this — as far as I was concerned I was just getting to see a new horror movie early.

And it freaked the piss out of me. And for the next couple of weeks, as word spread about this weird, terrifying little horror movie, various people came round or invited me over to watch it. Every time it still worked. When it finally hit cinemas, I took my then-girlfriend to see it — and while she loved it, I was disappointed. I thought maybe the charm had worn off from repeated viewings, but then watched it at home again and BOOM, suddenly it was scary as shit again.

What worked perfectly on a sketchy VHS at home suddenly seemed to fall flat on the big screen. It’s all about the suspension of disbelief — being able to believe something you know intellectually is a fiction is real. Turns out it’s easier to do that when you’re not in a building whose very existence is predicated on showing people things that don’t exist, and when you’re not in the company of hundreds of people eating popcorn.

Ironically, this act of low-level piracy was well in keeping with the movie’s commitment to kayfabe. In order to keep up the illusion of reality, the cast were kept out of sight (and, sadly, out of pocket) as it became a genuine phenomenon, and due to a lack of unionisation were treated fairly shabbily overall by Artisan Entertainment, but that’s another story.

The Blair Witch Project was a truly punk rock movie, proving that you could make a classic on a budget — IF (and this is the part too many of its copyists forgot) — you had the passion and performances to make it work. And those three actors — Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C Williams — for their part brought both in spades.

If you haven’t seen it, then first WTF; but apart from a few brief interview segments at the beginning with a mixture of random strangers and actors, Heather, Josh and Mike are the only on-screen characters for the duration. For a lot of the time they were left to their own devices to improvise in character, based around a series of waypoints, prompts and dirty tricks played by Meyrick and Sanchez, and to film themselves — which is another reason the illusion holds up so well.

Found-footage movies since The Blair Witch Project have a tendency to break their own rules for cinematic effect, but here they genuinely were doing all the filming themselves. Initially the film was supposed to be a mockumentary about the three filmmakers going missing, but after looking at the hours of tape, Meyrick and Sanchez realised they could go one better, and just show their footage.

Which is unsurprising when you look at the performances. Unlike a lot of later found-footage shovelware, The Blair Witch Project actually has great characters: the laid-back Josh, the intense and driven Heather and the “just doing my job” (until he isn’t) Mike form a perfect dramatic triangle. As they slowly lose their shit in the woods, it all seems very relatable in a way a lot of scripted media just doesn’t.

There are four versions of The Blair Witch Project on this new collection: a new restoration by Second Sight, the Festival Cut and Original Cut (both remastered) and the original release version. There are also HOURS of extras. Of course, one of these is Curse Of The Blair Witch, a TV show made to promote the movie, but which works perfectly well as a movie in its own right, and is ironically pretty much what Meyrick and Sanchez intended the film to be like before they realised they’d captured lightning in a bottle in the process. It is, of course, a mockumentary about the missing filmmakers.

Deleted scenes have a longer running time than the movie itself, there are alternate endings, a directors’ interview and some new audio commentaries, but for me the most fascinating extra was The Blair Witch Documentary. Coming in at nearly twice as long as the actual film, it’s a fascinating look at the process behind the movie, including the organic nature of a lot of its best scenes — That Ending, for example, was unscripted, and impressed Meyrick and Sanchez so much that they inserted the subtlest of foreshadowing at the beginning.

I love That Ending, because it’s one of the most devastating in all of horror, but it’s very much a blink-and-you-miss it kind of deal that only becomes more chilling once you consider the early interviews. For a movie a large part of which is three people shouting at each other, it’s beautifully subtle. I was pleased to learn, however, that the mother and baby scene was entirely spontaneous. Because for me that was one of the creepiest parts of the film, even before the trio venture into the woods themselves.

The limited edition release also contains a hardback 184-page book (none of your “booklet” nonsense for The Blair Witch), art cards and Heather’s journal.

The Blair Witch Project’s always been a divisive movie — reactions tend to be either “terrifying” or “boring” (though the box office receipts show that taking the second angle is something of a minority pursuit), but for those for whom the magic of the Blair Witch is strong (and believe me, it’s lost none of its power) then it’s well worth a punt.

And if you’re in the second camp? Then go stand in the corner.

-Justin Farrington-