The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Directed by

Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick

Genre

horror film, psychological horror fiction, mystery film, found footage film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 21m

Rated

R

Rating

6.4 of 10 from 5,510 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Three student filmmakers hike into the Maryland woods to make a documentary about a local legend called the Blair Witch. As they get lost, strange events and escalating fear tear their group apart.

tenseunsettlingrawclaustrophobicanxiouscreepyvisceralslow-burn

What happens

The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American found footage psychological horror film written, directed, and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. It is a pseudo-documentary in which three young students (Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard) hike into the Appalachian Mountains near Burkittsville, Maryland, to shoot a documentary about a local myth known as the Blair Witch. Myrick and Sánchez conceived of a fictional legend of the Blair Witch in 1993. They developed a 35-page screenplay with the dialogue to be improvised. A casting call advertisement on Backstage magazine was prepared by the directors; Donahue, Williams, and Leonard were cast. The film entered production in October 1997, with the principal photography lasting eight days. Most of the filming was done on the Greenway Trail along Seneca Creek in Montgomery County, Maryland. About 20 hours of footage was shot, which was edited down to 82 minutes. Shot on an original budget of $35,000–$60,000, the film had a final cost of $200,000–$750,000 after post-production and marketing. The film was released in the UK by 20th Century Fox. When The Blair Witch Project premiered at the Sundance Film Festival at midnight on January 23, 1999, its promotional marketing campaign listed the actors as either "missing" or "deceased". Due to its successful Sundance run, Artisan Entertainment bought the film's distribution rights for $1.1 million. The film had a limited release on July 14 of the same year, before expanding to a wider release starting on July 30. While the film received highly positive reviews from critics, audience reception was polarized. One of the most successful independent films of all time, The Blair Witch Project was a sleeper hit that grossed $248.6 million worldwide. The film was also ranked the best found footage movie of all time by editors from both IndieWire and Entertainment Weekly. Despite the success, the three main actors had reportedly lived in poverty. In 2000, they sued Artisan Entertainment claiming unfair compensation, eventually reaching a $300,000 settlement. The Blair Witch Project launched a media franchise, which includes two sequels (Book of Shadows and Blair Witch), novels, comic books, and video games. It revived the found-footage technique and influenced similarly successful horror films such as Paranormal Activity (2007), REC (2007) and Cloverfield (2008). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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