When I was younger, I was always told that The Exorcist was the scariest horror movie ever made. And, while it is pretty spooky (it even got quite high up on our own list of the best horror movies of all time), I was kind of disappointed when I eventually saw it.
And, that's only because it didn’t really scare me as much as I hoped that it would. While I do consider the Exorcist series as one of the better horror franchises, I definitely think the first movie is a little overrated…
Which is just how I'm sure this younger generation feels about 1999's found-footage horror movie, The Blair Witch Project. Directed and written by (Though, we didn't know that at the time) Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, and starring (which we also didn't know at the time) Michael Williams, Heather Donahue, and Joshua Leonard, many people today may view TBWP as just a movie. But let me just tell you. I don’t think I've ever experienced a bigger horror phenomenon in my entire life than when this movie first came out. You really did have to be there to truly understand the unprecedented hype. With that said, here's what it was like when The Blair Witch Project turned the horror genre on its head.
First Of All, Because Found Footage Horror Wasn't A Genre In The '90s, Many Of Us Believed The Movie Was Actually Real
Laugh all you want, but back in 1999, found footage horror movies weren’t really common. A cursory search online will tell you that 1961’s The Connection was the very first of its kind, but after that, you really didn’t have much besides something like, say, Cannibal Holocaust, a movie so controversial that mainstream audiences weren't so readily familiar, or 1992's darkly comedic mockumentary Man Bites Dog.
So, when the promotional material for The Blair Witch Project started to roll out, a lot of us went all rube-minded and fully believed it! Months before the movie came out, we were told that in October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared while filming a documentary about a local curse, and that the movie hitting theaters compiled the footage the trio shot.
Granted, this sounds really silly today in 2024, especially considering BWP spawned an entire found footage subgenre with franchises like Paranormal Activity. But, back in 1999, we didn’t know that. If you looked online back then, there was nothing on the world wide web telling you that it was all fake, since the filmmakers employed crafty web designers to make everything seem legit.
Remember when Spider-Man: No Way Home was still in production, and there were shots of Andrew Garfield on set? People lost their minds, right?
Well, we didn’t have anything like that for The Blair Witch Project, though we did get a Syfy docu-special that doubled down on providing (fake) video evidence. Honestly, the marketing for the movie is probably the greatest I’ve ever seen, since it was fundamental in getting us to want to watch this movie. And, by the spooky end of the flick, a lot of us were genuinely perplexed (and frightened) for the people’s lives. Especially since the ending is so inconclusive.
When We Learned It Was All An Act, There Was Actually A Huge Sigh Of Relief That The Actors Were Okay
Now, you would think that when news broke that the whole Blair Witch mythos was all a hoax, that people would be upset. But, guess what. We weren't! Or at least, I feel like most of us weren’t.
In fact, I feel like the general consensus was that we were all quite relieved that the three actors were okay. At least at first, before the self-reflective shame of being duped took over.
Because, like I said before, a lot of us thought that these three young people died, as the general terror in the film felt genuine. But, when we learned that it was all just pretend, it actually made a lot of us happy, like phew. Thank God it wasn’t real.
Ah. Different times.
I Remember A Lot Of People Getting Physically Ill Watching The Movie Since It Was So Shaky
Okay, so now for the movie itself. Found footage films have come a long way since The Blair Witch Project. Nowadays, a movie like Late Night With the Devil (which we've discussed the meaning of on this site) uses the found footage concept as a form of storytelling, rather than as a budgetary necessity.
Sure, the found footage concept of The Blair Witch Project is essential to the overall plot (again, it’s what sold the film as being realistic in the first place). But, its usage seemed like it was mostly for cost-cutting purposes, and it was super rudimentary back in 1999. So much so, that the film is almost hard to watch, since all that shaking made quite a few people sick to their stomachs at the time.
I remember people telling me that they had to shut their eyes at all the parts where the characters would be running in the forest due to motion sickness. People definitely had similar complaints with a film like Cloverfield, but by that time, people knew what to expect from a found footage film.
But, back in 1999? Man, people were getting sick left and right watching TBWP.
I Also Remember People Leaving The Theater Since They Were So Scared
Now, honestly, The Blair Witch Project never scared me. It was more the idea that people died (and we were watching their impending demise) that set me on edge.
In fact, my reaction to TBWP is probably similar to how many people felt about the indie film, Skinamarink, as that was a film I admired, but I didn't really think it was as terrifying as some people did.
But, speaking of those “some people," there are moviegoers who had the everloving crap scared out of them byThe Blair Witch Project, both before and after the reality of the situation was unveiled.
For instance, I remember when I first saw the movie in theaters. When it started getting really intense in that famous night scene, there were like four or five teenage girls (back then, they were just letting anybody into R-Rated movies), who got up, shaking, and just left.
I thought it was strange that all of them would go to the bathroom together, but by the time the movie reached its admittedly creepy conclusion, I realized that they had left completely, probably too petrified to see the movie to the very end.
And, I've heard similar stories of people who didn't see the film in theaters, but saw it at home. TBWP is one of those rare examples where the small screen is arguably a better fit for a movie than the big screen since it makes the film feel claustrophobic. And I knew people in high school who said they had nightmares after watching it. And, this was after we all knew it was a hoax.
That's just the power of The Blair Witch Project, baby.
It Set A Brand New Standard For Independent Filmmaking And Marketing Hype
Do you know what the original budget was for The Blair Witch Project? Around $60,000. Do you know how much it made at the worldwide box office? Almost $250 million dollars, which is over 4,000 times its original budget.
I recently wrote about Robert Rodriguez and how important he is to cinema, where I talked about how his first movie, El Mariachi, was made for a paltry $7,000, and wound up making over $2 million.
And honestly, I’m not sure what’s a more impressive feat. Rodriguez making a movie for $7,000 and making over 2 mil, or The Blair Witch Project costing $60,000, and becoming a global phenomenon. I want to say the former, but I think I’m going to have to go with the latter, and that’s only because the marketing for TBWP was so much a part of the film itself.
There have been other interesting marketing campaigns (I particularly love the movie Chronicle’s flying people stunt), but I don’t think anything matches the marketing campaign for TBWP where many of us believed that a studio would release a movie where people actually died. The fact that it made so much money as a result is just icing on the cake.
So, that’s what it was like to be there when The Blair Witch Project released. Were you there when it happened? For more news on all things horror-related, be sure to swing by here often!
