I have this weird thing where I can almost always remember the details about where and with whom I saw a particular movie. Even the crappiest movies. It’s like that moment is frozen in time. That’s part of the reason why I love going to the movies! I remember movies much more than shows, probably because it’s something I look forward to and you have to pay attention. One of the movies that I’ll always remember is The Blair Witch Project. That movie scared the sh-t out of me so it was particularly memorable. I knew it wasn’t real but it still got me! I saw it with four other people my age, two of whom have sadly since passed. One couple got dropped off at the theater and so we all squeezed into my Nissan NX two door t-top to drive home (I loved that car!). I was so freaked out and everyone was so crammed I had trouble driving straight.
Blair Witch, which I have not seen since, is celebrating 20 years since it was released in 1999! (To quote a twitter friend what is time? I’ve also seen tweets/memes in which people my age admit that the 90s seem like just a few years ago. They do.) The movie, which was the first “found footage” film, may have been shot over a long uncomfortable week in the woods, but it actually took two years of planning to make. E! has one of their long format articles about it, which I found really interesting. I knew there was a lot of method acting in that the actors were actually camping and eating powerbars, but the filmmakers were hiding from the actors most of the time and the actors had a safe word for when they wanted to break character. It sounds crazy because it was. Also audiences bought into the whole BS backstory, that the actors were lost in the woods and presumed dead. The parents of the actors got condolence calls!
In 1997, two directors and three unknown actors disappeared into the woods, toting handheld cameras and a concept.
Two years later, their footage scared up almost $249 million.
Now it’s been 20 years since The Blair Witch Project in all its haunting, low-budget glory landed in theaters and launched a new genre of horror movie: found footage.
The directors met as film students in Florida
Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez met as students at the University of Central Florida School of Film. In and around 1993, they were talking about horror movies—and the recent drought of truly great ones—when they thought about the potentially terrifying consequences a group stumbling upon a house in the woods and not being able to resist going inside, despite knowing that something appalling was happening.Over the next several years, they came up with the Blair Witch lore, hired a few unknown actors who could do improv, scraped some money together and production got underway in October of 1997. The movie was shot over eight days, in Germantown, Md., Seneca Creek State Park and the Griggs House, in Patapsco Valley State Park. They wrapped on Halloween.
“There’s a common misunderstanding that not a lot went into it,” Myrick told The Guardian in 2018, “but it took two years of effort to make it look like it was just shot by three students over a long weekend.”
How they filmed
The actors slept in tents and ate less and less food each day, just as they would have if they were on a real camping trip and had gotten lost.“We didn’t have to skin squirrels or anything,” Donahue told The Week. “It was kind of a daily-use park. We had to stop shooting for families going past on their bikes.”
Leonard quipped to Broadly., “I was probably too stoned to be scared.”
One night after it had rained all day, however, the trio couldn’t get a hold of the directors and wouldn’t sleep in their soaked tents, so they made for the road and knocked on the door of the first house they saw. “They were weirdly nice enough and trusting enough to let us in,” Donahue recalled, “and they gave us hot cocoa. We ended up staying in a hotel that night.”
The actors had a code word—”taco”—they used when they needed to stop being “Heather,” “Josh” and “Mike” for a minute and return to reality. It eventually just made them hungry.
How they started the found footage lore and got backlash for it
The Blair Witch Project website treated the subject matter deadly seriously. It included a timeline of events leading up to Heather, Mike and Josh’s disappearance, as well as local news interviews about the case and fake police reports. As if it were true crime, Blair Witch enthusiasts flocked online to talk about the Witch and what happened to Heather, Josh and Mike. Before the movie had even screened, 10,000 people had subscribed to the mailing list.“The internet was new!” Williams recalled to The Week. “So if you think back, some of the things you read on the internet, you go, ‘Oh, that must be true. I saw it on the internet.’ Just like when newspapers came out. You believed what you read.”
The movie premiered at a midnight screening during the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 25, 1999. The actors, all of them making their feature-film debuts, were described as “missing, presumed dead” in promotional materials. Once it had acquired the rights to distribute the film after Sundance, Artisan Entertainment even got IMDb to play along. The actors’ parents started receiving condolence calls. A police officer called Myrick to offer his assistance in finding out what really happened to the lost filmmakers. The actors got to witness the movie blow up at Sundance, but they weren’t invited to the screening at the Cannes Film Festival that May.
And even after people were aware that it was just a movie, plenty still thought it was a movie about something that had really happened.
I didn’t see the follow-up to this, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, which wasn’t a critical success although it did well at the box office. E! has the details about that if you’re interested. They weren’t able to capture lightning in a bottle again, which isn’t surprising. Also I’ve avoided found footage movies after seeing this! I freaking love horror (I just saw Crawl this weekend and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it) but I’ve never seen Paranormal Activity. I’m not going to give up on horror movies, but those pseudo real movies filmed with a shaky cam are too much. I don’t care if it’s obviously not real, it feels real and that’s what gets you.
Here’s the lead in the movie, Heather Donahue. She went into the cannabis business. I covered that in 2011 when she put this book out. As E! points out, only one of the actors, Joshua Leonard, is still working in the industry.
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Yes, I remember. I was with my first husband and he wanted to leave about 20 minutes in, but i said no I heard it’s good, let’s wait! Then at the end of it the lights came up and I sat there stunned. I actually thought it was terrible. And I said, wow that’s it? And my husband said, I told you we should have left. And the man sitting behind us with his wife, piped up and said “you should have asked me I would have left with you!” LOL I mean, the whole theater I saw it sat in stunned, stupefied silence when it was over. Then, some booed. And i never heard the end of it from my husband, until eventually I divorced him and married someone else and he is probably still telling this story to his now gf.
LOL. I was just like you, Alexis, except I fell asleep towards the end! I kept thinking, “This is SO boring….Where’s the scary part?” When the lights came up, practically the entire audience was looking around at each other asking, “This is it???” Everyone was stunned, and yes, then booed! lol. We ALL bought into the hype of the movie.
That close up photo of her with the blue hat is iconic. I remember what a sensation it was but I remember less about the film itself. I actually think maybe I didn’t see it because it was released the day after my son was born, lol.
Funny to hear them talk about the “early internet.” I remember it well, the novelty, but I feel like like it was pretty easy to detect BS. I feel like it was almost easier to figure out what was “fake news” when the web was less sophisticated and big marketers hadn’t yet exploited it. The sophistication of things like social media and targeted ads have really evolved since then. I miss the quaint early days, sigh.
Yes this post is pure late 90s nostalgia I should have opened with that! I agree about the early internet being easier to detect BS because it was less sophisticated. Also Snopes has been around forever I love that site.
It’s really amazing how new the internet is. My kids can barely fathom that I had a childhood with so very little technology and even made it through college and my first few years in the working world with no internet. We played Solitaire on the computer when we were procrastinating, lol.
I love Snopes, too, although it’s hard to evoke them in an argument with a deplorable because they immediately dismiss it as biased. Because facts do tend to have a liberal bias, I guess.
My son asks me “what did you do without Internet growing up mom” and I’m like books, TV, we got a VCR when I was in eighth grade and that was a game changer. It’s hard for them to grasp not being able to figure anything out immediately. I love that he grew up that way though. They have things we only dreamed about, even in the early 2000s our phones didn’t have internet but we knew it was coming.
Yes, it is cool that kids are “digital natives.” I do think they will help get us out of this mess that technology has wrought on the older generation that doesn’t get what’s happening. For example, mindlessly posting memes as fact.
To this day, all I remember is the shaky cam in this movie made me sick and I threw up in the garbage can leaving the theater.
Were you the lady sitting next to me?? I had the same experience. The woman sitting next to me (total stranger) and I spent the movie holding hands and staring at the floor, willing ourselves not to vomit until it was over.
SO yeah, I remember it pretty vividly.
I worked with kids on probation and so I took a bunch of them to go see the movie that summer. One kid got sick from the shakiness. I couldn’t really see what was happening, and then it was over, so I didn’t have time to get scared before I was like, “what was that? what just happened?” I appreciated the point of it all, and when they first got lost I was pretty scared, but the rest of the time I was just confused
I saw it for the first (and only) time on TV when I was living by myself for the first time, and all I remember about it is that I was totally freaked out! Horror movies obviously aren’t my thing LOL
I was and still am such a scaredy cat that I have no idea what possessed me to go see that movie, but it absolutely scared the $hit out of me and I’m sure if I would watch it today it would still scare the $hit out of me. This was fun to read, thanks CB!!
I remember seeing it with my best friend. The shakiness has me queasy, I don’t think I’d be able to handle it today since I’m even more prone to motion sickness. BUT…it terrified me and I thought it was 100% legit. I remember going home and calling my bf (now husband) and telling him about it and how sad it was that these people were missing…lol.
Pretty much the only thing I remember about it is one of the last shots of the film – the girl runs into a room and we see one of her companions is in there with his back to her, just standing there facing the wall.
I don’t know why that image was so effectively creepy and disturbing but it definitely made a strong impression on me.
eta – This is the shot:
https://townsquare.media/site/442/files/2017/04/the-blair-witch-project-ending.jpg
Same here. The final scene was the creepiest part of the movie.
What I loved was that you scared yourself. We never really saw anything so it was your imagination in that situation that scares the bejeezus out of you. Well that is what happened with me. Once in awhile when I’m in Maryland I will pass the exit for Burkittville on the interstate and get a chill
It was creepy but stupid. The corner thing was because of the psycho who lived in the woods and kidnapped kids or something (like I said, I only saw it once.) It was mentioned once in the movie and then it was how it ended, but it didn’t really have anything to do with the plot and the Blair Witch. I think.
Yep, she just screams and he doesn’t move. Very creepy and memorable.
It scared the crap out of me back then! I think leaving so much to the imagination was really effective. I remember people debating if he was hanging there, or if he was standing.
I think this was a really creative effort by a group of people, and I will forever applaud their work. Taking a park and some actors and making $250M with it is INCREDIBLE.
That image still scares me! The movie had a lot of faults, but that last scene was so scary.
I remember watching this movie in the theatre and being very disappointed that it was not scary at all. The website and marketing for this movie was incredible and definitely made me want to watch it. However seeing the movie was a let down.
I totally agree with you.
I was almost 15 at the time and loved the first Scream, which was kind of a big deal among my group. So when the marketing and promotion for TBWP started I was utterly fascinated and scared and becamw obsessed with it.
Then the movie came out, I saw it a few months later on dvd with a couple of friends at home and we were left absolutely disappointed. I couldn’t believe that a movie that had been so hyped up could end up being a total snoozefest. We all sat there in silence until someone barged in with a “is that all?”.
I believe to this day that 90% of the iconic legacy of TBWP is about the marketing and colletive experience. The movie does not stand on its own.
Omg!!! Just came here to say, I also had a Nissan NX with the t-top. I loved that car!!!
YES!! I wish I still had that car I loved it so much. I felt like such a badass driving it and listening to Joan Osborne cassettes on full blast. When my kid is old enough to start driving (less than a year my god) I am buying a convertible hard top.
Haha yes!!!!! I had a black NX 1600. I felt very cool in it. For a girl who was a nerdy type in high school, it was a big deal. Mine had the cassette player too. I needed to play CDs in the car, so I got a “discman”. Paid extra for the “skip resistant” type, which didnt actually work, and got the audio cassette adapter so I could play it through the car speakers.
I wish still had that car too.it was a great car.
I watched it on VHS with a bunch of girlfriends (or DVD? Was it DVD yet? Can’t recall) at a sleepover and we all screamed into pillows. I found it so fun! And scary.
To me the scariest parts were in the beginning when local people talk about the legend and the urban legend type stuff. That kind of thing always gets me, so creepy.
I know it’s not a lot of people’s cup of tea. But I’ve always been here looking for a good scare! And it was very unique at the time, too.
Worst film ever. The wonky camera made me want to throw up.
Haha I remember going to see it with my best friend. I had turned 17 but she hadn’t yet, and we had to find a theater that wasn’t carding. I grew up near Patapsco Valley State Park so it was a super popular movie around us and the theaters were really strict about being 17.
I found it terrifying but only saw it the one time.
Saw it in NYC.. had nightmares. Put me off camping for years.. when we were renovating a house in California with woods that hadn’t been cut in years, I keep finding these big dead branches that looks they they had been arranged.
Yeah, I remember it
i remember feeling too sick in the theater to be scared b/c of the motion of the camera but the final scene scaring the ever living hell out of me. this kicked off the found footage craze that is STILL a huge horror trope…as well as the documentary style TV shows. it kind of changed movies. wild to think about.
I never saw it in theaters but I’ve seen it multiple times since it was released. The first time I watched it, I thought it was dumb, but as I got older I really enjoyed it’s simplistic horror. It does a great job at building tension and let’s your mind do the work for you. Kind of brilliant, actually.
The PROFIT made off this property is amazing. AND it was the first movie to use the internet to promote. All of a sudden business sat up and took notice.
I remember and I also remember what I saw after watching it. Those words were, ‘That’s it’.
I’m so sorry for the 2 friends you’ve lost. The 6 years between 1993 and 1999 are so much bigger for me than the 20 years since. It’s simply unfathomable how much time has passed and how much our lives and world have changed.
The first two Paranormal Activity movies were really good. Worth it to check them both out.
I am Italian and I was in the Us on holiday when the movie came out. Me and a friend of mine – we were teenagers – wanted to go to the movies and we picked the BWP without knowing anything about it. So we believed the footage and the story were real and it scared the hell out of us! At that time we did not have internet and American movies arrived in Italian theaters AT LEAST with 6 months of delay, so it took us a long time before knowing the truth.
Does anyone remember the A&E (maybe?) documentary that went along with the movie. It was scary AF, but when I saw the actually movie in the theater it was SO boring.
Just saw the first 10 minutes or so, by then I was feeling so sick from the shaky cam that I gave up.
I remember this being the first (and only?) movie where my local theater had a sign up saying they don’t give refunds! I thought “hmm . . . ?” and then, like a chump, paid to see Blair Witch. But, they did warn me up front, so I can’t be made at the theater. I am mad at the “film”makers (and I use that term very loosely). This movie shouldn’t even cost 5¢ — it is a total non-movie: cheap, dumb, not scary, physically nauseating, waste of 90 minutes of my life that I will never get back.
This *would* be one of the wort movies I’ve ever seen, except as I said above, I barely consider it a “movie.” This is more of a hoax/fraud piece of unwatchable, poorly filmed footage, than a “movie.”
This movie scared the ever-lovin’ hell outta me.
It was genius, the way the terror came from one imagining oneself wandering around in the woods just like those kids.
I feel like people who didn’t or don’t find it scary must somehow not be really into empathizing with other people. The actors were completely convincing & the filming method was new & totally believable.
That final scene, man, and the way the camera just bonks over.
I remember seeing it in the theatre too, who i saw it with, who we ran into, how completely freaked out I was the whole time.
My only regret was that by the time I got to see it the word was out that it wasn’t actually real 😉 Ah, to be one of the very first who truly wondered 😉
All I remember is realising my hearing isn’t the best because 90% of the scares of that movie were apparently sounds in the distance and I didn’t really hear any of them, really ruined the tension. Damn tinnitus.
I laughed during some parts and got dirty looks from the people in front of us. They now – ex that I was with laughed a little, too.
Thought it was an awful movie. Even tried to watch it later on cable or something and it was just as bad.
That movie scared the mess out of me – and I totally agree about the last scene! I’ve seen the sequel a few times and still can’t tell exactly what the hell happened. It’s a weird disjointed mess.
I watch a lot of horror and this movie wasn’t scary at all.
Ahhhh I remember seeing it very clearly. A friend had gotten a screener copy from some friend of a friend with connections to Hollywood and we all watched it at her condo at the edge of Santa Cruz overlooking a giant ravine. I was always scared to watch horror movies and given the spooky circumstances figured the movie would totally freak me out. Luckily I was so annoyed with the characters that by the end of the movie I was actively rooting for the Blair Witch, which served to make everything much less frightening. 😀