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The Blair Witch Project.
It's easy to forget decades later
what a seismic shift this film represented
for independent horror.
Beyond being an effective horror thriller,
the movie developed a life of its own,
even going so far as to become an urban legend
in its own right.
So what happened?
How did all of that turn into this?
How many Heather Donahues does it
take to screw in a light bulb?
How many?
Just one!
Just one of them!
Released in 1999, The Blair Witch Project
popularized the found footage horror film, Using.
The visual language of a documentary in a way few films
had before it.
This deliberately irregular camerawork
is an incredibly effective artistic choice
that leads to iconic imagery, such as the shot
of actress Heather Donahue holding the camera
under her nose, tears and mucus pouring down her face,
whispering into the lens--
I'm scared to close my eyes.
The raw production value is part of what made The Blair Witch
Project so effective at convincing audiences
that what they were seeing was actual real footage
of a doomed camping trip.
This feeling was even reinforced by the filmmakers, who went out
of their way to immerse audiences in the fiction
with pleas for tips on the missing persons of the film.
The film's credits on the earliest version of IMDb
were withheld to avoid revealing the people were actors and not
actual doomed campers.
It also needs to be acknowledged how much
the early days of the internet played
a role in the film's marketing.
The Blair Witch Project had an official website
that added to the urban legend nature of the movie, further
building the fictional disappearance
of the film's central group.
The people behind the website went to great lengths
to make the disappearances of the film's leads
seem like a true unsolved mystery.
On the site, you could find diary entries,
photos of discovered belongings, and a timeline of events.
It was one of the earliest examples of viral marketing.
Without the aid of modern social media,
The Blair Witch Project became a phenomenon
of mystery and intrigue before many people even
saw a second of footage.
The movie ended up grossing over $200 million
on an incredibly small budget of only $60,000.
Many critics, such as Roger Ebert,
gave the film stellar reviews.
The Blair Witch Project is creative and inventive and
original and surprisingly disturbing.
And even after seeing the film, the discussion and debate
over the truth behind the movie continued.
So how did things go so poorly for the franchise so quickly?
The hype machine ended up being perhaps the best and worst
thing to happen to its sequel.
You're walking into the official Blair store.
This is where it all begins.
This is the epicenter of the Blair Witch hunt website.
Book of Shadows Blair Witch 2 scored a C+ cinema score after
its opening.
It was clear that many felt underwhelmed by the film,
and there's no doubt that the legend of the movie
had begun to overshadow the actual film itself.
The sequel chose to take radical new directions
in terms of the film's structure and presentation.
One of the major departures from the original to the sequel
was that Book of Shadows is filmed
as a traditional narrative film rather than a found footage
film.
Attempts were made to pass the film off
as dramatizations of real events that
happened after the original film's release,
including a block of text in the sequel's opening,
but it became obvious immediately
that the original Blair Witch Project was a true lightning
in a bottle moment.
The sequel not only had to live up
to the impossible to recreate hype of the original,
but it also had to overcome its radical departure
in tone and style.
As critic Roger Ebert said, "everything
that made The Blair Witch Project an indie masterpiece
has been falsified and trashed in this spectacularly bad
sequel."
The sequel only ended up grossing $26 million
on a $15 million budget.
Without the hype, the mystery, and the curiosity
that the original managed to stir up on filmgoers,
the sequel never stood a chance.
An attempt to make a third Blair Witch film
would wallow in development hell for a decade and a half.
Book of Shadows had killed the once hugely promising franchise
stone dead.
I haven't killed anybody.
Ironically, the end of Blair Witch
did not mean the end of found footage horror films.
The style would prove itself to be wildly popular with films
like Cloverfield and VHS providing
an awe inspiring scale of horror within the intimate confines
of found footage, or the Paranormal Activity
series, which sought to find new unsettling ways to find
the mundane horrors of its ghosts.
Including six sequels with a total franchise gross
of over $400 million, one could easily
imagine this could have been the same fate of the Blair Witch
Project franchise had things gone differently.
Beyond the filmmaking techniques,
these movies also emulated The Blair Witch Project
in another key way--
marketing.
Cloverfield famously released only its mysterious teasers
of a decapitated statue of liberty,
allowing speculation about just what
the movie was about for months before its release.
Paranormal Activity had a unique rollout,
setting up a website where people could demand the film be
screened in their town before the film received
its official nationwide release.
These marketing techniques showed an understanding
of the appeal of The Blair Witch Project.
The original film became more than just a movie.
It became an experience.
The sense of excitement audiences
had to unravel the film's secrets was proven to be
a vital part of its success.
With all this excitement over the found footage genre,
a return to the Blair Witch universe seemed inevitable.
And what about the legends?
Legends?
Yeah, do you believe at all in the stories about the Blair
Witch?
In 2016, up and coming indie horror director
Adam Wingard's new film entitled The Woods
premiered at San Diego comic-con.
What the unsuspecting audience at the panel
discovered as they watched the film
was that The Woods was actually a secret sequel
to The Blair Witch Project, released under the name
Blair Witch.
The studio even went as far to decorate the San Diego
comic-con halls with massive banners
for a film called The Woods, only to quickly switch them out
during the film's first screening
so audience members would see the new Blair Witch
poster after the film.
All of this was clearly an attempt
to recreate the original film's viral hype,
and it paid off somewhat.
The film's reviews were on the whole
far more positive than Book of Shadows,
but this good word of mouth could not
be converted into box office success.
Blair Witch ended up only grossing $45 million.
The film's grosses were ultimately
seen as a disappointment for the studio when
compared to other low budget horror films.
And once again, the Blair Witch franchise was laid to rest.
All right, that's it.
Come on.
Turn it off.
Ultimately, The Blair Witch Project
could be deemed a victim of its own runaway success.
Few films have captured the attention and imagination
of filmgoers since, but the movie
was also released at perhaps the last possible time where
a film could genuinely surprise-- and for lack
of a better word-- deceive filmgoers
with the truth of its production.
In today's world of internet film fandom,
just about every film production is
held under a microscope with set leaks and endless trailer
breakdowns.
The contemporary internet sleuths
would likely uncover the truth of The Blair Witch Project
almost immediately.
The lesson to be learned here is that not everything needs
a sequel or a franchise, and artistic triumph can and should
be allowed to exist in finality without trying to reboot
or revive it every five to ten years.
The Blair Witch Project is a cautionary tale
of what can happen when a film becomes
a victim of its own success and tries to conjure up
a sequel when maybe leaving a franchise at one beloved film
would have been enough.
But what do you think?
Is the Blair Witch franchise as finished as it seemed?
Or is it possible that the witch could make a return?
Let us know what you think, and don't forget to like, comment,
and subscribe to Nerdstalgic.