In October 1994, three film students (Heather, Mike, and Josh; the real actors' names) go to Burkittsville, Maryland to make a documentary about a local legend known as "The Blair Witch." Before going into the woods, local interviews tell them about a hermit who lived in the woods and kidnapped seven children in the 1940s, supposedly killing all of them on the orders of the witch. Going deeper into the woods, Heather realizes she lost the map. They discover stick figures suspended from trees. After an unknown force violently shakes the tent, they flee in panic and hide in the woods until dawn. Upon returning to their tent, they find that Josh's equipment is covered with slime. They come across a river identical to one they crossed earlier and realize they have walked in a circle. Josh suffers a breakdown because of the dire situation and disappears the next morning, and Heather makes a tearful last will and testament into the camera (see poster). They again hear Josh's screaming and go into an abandoned house containing demonic symbols and children's bloody handprints on the walls. Mike is seen standing in the corner, ala the MO of the hermit, and Heather is attacked by an off camera force as the camera crashes to the ground.
The film, with an initial 25,000 dollar shooting budget, hits the ball out of the park in ways that films with budgets of 250 million dollars fail at (including its own sequels). Look what they're able to do with a couple papier mache dolls and an abandoned house. I feel that this film does for the woods what Jaws did for the beach. There were attacks on this film that is was "too boring" (my dad's in this corner) and I counter with thinking its a slow burn (Also its 81 minutes, which is you count it out is only an hour and 21 minutes). But I wasn't bored for a second, the first time I saw it it was genuinely tense, and the second time I saw it I appreciated it all the more on a technical level. It's one of the most stripped down films of all time, but it's hard to not be unnerved by the little things (the shaking tent) or the big things (a potentially haunted house with bloody handprints). And although the film certainly stands on its own merits, there are two distinct reasons why the film became a pop culture icon. First, the film launched the first ever viral marketing campaign. By posting "Missing" posters of the actors online, many audiences were convinced that the events seen in the film were real. And by shooting with shaky cam handheld footage, it was the first "found footage" film. Although I didn't see this film until 2015, and knew it was fake, I realized that this film wouldn't have worked with a traditional two camera setup. As a justified reward, the film would go on to gross 250 million dollars worldwide on a 250,000 dollar budget. Although these two aspects are certainly impressive, the film is nonetheless a masterpiece of tension building up unbearable suspense.
The film, unfortunately, spawned two atrocious sequels. The first, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is a complete trainwreck from start to finish. The production company Artisan immediately greenlit/demanded the original creators make a sequel right after Blair Witch made a small fortune at the box office. Rather than base the sequel on stripped down scares of the original, this film is over the top violent with a "Marilyn Manson" 90's edgy soundtrack. It's a complete 180 from the first, but it's so poorly done because Artisan demanded reshoots at the end. To the directors credit, they disowned this film, originally crafting a more interesting meditation on the effects of mass hysteria for the people who fell for the marketing campaign of the first film. But as for the released final product, it's a hackneyed disaster. It's totally incomprehensible, choppily edited, and, oh yeah, there is no "Book of Shadows" mentioned at any point in the film. Milking the first one in every way it can, Book of Shadows also featured a marketing gimmick, although this one centered on the film's video/DVD home media. Both the DVD and VHS releases came with a featurette detailing "The Secret of Esrever" ("Esrever" is the word reverse spelled backwards; bloody brilliant), a number of near-subliminal messages in the form of hidden words and images that were placed throughout the film. The featurette encouraged viewers to watch certain scenes in reverse and/or frame-by-frame in order to decode the "secret", and, through scrambled letters flashed throughout the program, offered five clues to where they could be found: "door", "water", "mirror", "rug" and "grave". Viewers could then go to the official Blair Witch website and type the words into a special search box: typing "seek me no further" would play an extra scene from the film. Maybe they could have put all this effort into making the film worth watching in the first place! If I bought the DVD and did all that work just to see a deleted scene I'd probably chuck my Windows '95 server off a bridge in frustration. Blair Witch was a sequel/soft reboot that was shot in secret, only to reveal a week before it was released in theatres in 2016 that it was a continuation (it wouldn't be a Blair Witch film without a campaign strategy). It takes number of cues from Book of Shadows in going way over the top. Overall it's just tired and hackneyed. They go in the woods, live stream on youtube, yada yada yada. The 37% on rotten tomatoes says a lot, with some reviews saying: "Nothing about the film is scary, nothing is remotely disturbing, and there’s this boring familiarity to the proceedings, namely because it’s more or less a beat-by-beat remake of the original. Another reviewer said "it lacks surprise, and without surprise, you’re left with a bunch of kind-of annoying people shakily filming themselves wandering the woods and reacting to loud noises." If you want a good old fashioned horror film to wind you up, I certainly recommend the original, but just pretend it's the only one
Ratings:
The Blair Witch Project: **** out of 4
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2: No Stars
Blair Witch: No Stars
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