The Blair Witch Project

I find myself deeply depressed at how horror’s reputation has been torn to shreds in the mind of the modern moviegoer. Whenever I suggest watching a horror film to a layman of the genre, they have a tendency to lift their snooty noses and make very clear to me their opinion on how the horror film market is a rancid pool of schlocky detritus that only caters to a demographic of mindless idiots. The problem is, on the whole, they’re generally bang on the money, especially in this day and age. Horror movies have become so drearily manufactured, predictable and commercially superficial that people have practically forgotten how good a really good horror film can be, and how a well-made piece of horror can burrow into your psyche and lurk there for weeks, keeping you up at night and exercising your subconscious like any successful work of art should do. In all fairness, there’s been a rash of acclaimed horror films recently that are starting to fight back against the genre’s PR nosedive, but to me, the last bold, interesting, divisive but strikingly effective horror film to fire-axe its way through the door of pop culture is 1999’s The Blair Witch Project.

For all the adoration I have for it, Blair Witch carries with it a fair amount of baggage. For one thing, people blame it for the ‘found footage’ subgenre of cinematic wankery that followed in its wake, all of which took the original’s unique and interesting concept and chucked away everything good about it, believing repeating Blair Witch’s central premise without any of the craftsmanship would be enough to keep people interested (which, inexplicably, they were kind of right about). There are also a number of complaints that the film is ‘boring’, or that ‘nothing happens’ and ‘nothing gets explained’. I like to use whether or not people identify with any of these statements as a litmus test of their emotional stupidity. See, horror has had a schism lately into two distinct categories: the modern approach, where much of the ‘horror’ comes from cheap, startling jump-scares and O.T.T. sadism – mostly enjoyed by children – and then there’s the true horror, frequently categorised as ‘psychological horror’, which affects you slowly, subtly; getting under your skin rather than shoving entrails in your face. Blair Witch, to me, is a master class in creating something truly haunting, which, believe it or not, was the original objective of the horror genre before it became the equivalent of popping a balloon next to someone’s head while they’re falling asleep.

Blair Witch’s legacy has been overshadowed in popular consciousness by its shrewd marketing campaign, which created, from our modern perspective, a completely bewildering word-of-mouth semi-rumour among idiots that the low-budget film was actual ‘found footage’ documenting the final moments of genuinely missing people. It’s hard to believe that anyone would fall for this, but I can only assume this must’ve been due to the primitive minds of the people of the 1990s, and it was commonly proclaimed that the film’s terror came entirely from the actual belief of actual human beings that what they were seeing was ‘real’, and that this was the driving force of the film’s ability to scare. To me, this is all totally irrelevant. Blair Witch isn’t terrifying because I think what I’m seeing is real, although its realistic qualities are an important part of its effectiveness – it’s terrifying because it’s a straight-up well made, original, and more importantly (my favourite word in the universe): SUBTLE film. No jump-scares, no blood splatters, no ancient demons named ‘Bagul’; just a bare-bones production and some brilliantly-executed set-pieces and attention to detail. Blair Witch is more than its seminal marketing campaign, more than its timely and original gimmick – it’s a fucking great film, and it’s probably one of my favourite films ever made, regardless of how many people look at me every time I say that as if I’ve just announced that I’m a registered sex offender.

In case you don’t know, the story of the film concerns three young, twattish film students setting out to make a documentary on a mysterious figure of local folklore known as the ‘Blair Witch’. They set off into the woods to grab some incidental footage of a few historical murder scenes before quickly becoming lost and finding themselves set upon by an unseen supernatural entity that spends the entire film fucking with them in various ways, pushing them to the brink of insanity before leading them towards an ambiguously sticky ‘end’. The reason that this film works is that it’s never clear what the supposed ‘Blair Witch’ actually is, what it wants, or how it even operates. It’s not a ghost or a ghoul or a literal ‘witch’. You never even catch a glimpse of it. This should go without saying, but the less you explain in a horror film, the better. There’s nothing more frightening than the unknown, and there’s nothing that turns a horror film flaccid faster than having someone explain the precise details of what, why and how everything is happening. Blair Witch takes this to the next level by explaining absolutely nothing. All there is to go on are interviews with the locals at the beginning of the film, who waffle, Fight Club-style, about all the million different rumours they’ve heard, and passing mentions of historical kidnappings and ritualistic murders. Nobody knows what’s out there in the woods, but these accounts still linger in the back of your mind. The occasional clue is left as the story unfolds, and at reaching the point of its weird-ass conclusion, you’re left to fill in the blanks yourself as to what exactly went down.

Too many horror antagonists are things that are recognisable to us – ghosts, for instance, or crazed murderers, or aliens. Sure, these things are inherently ‘scary’, but they’re still familiar. The antagonist of Blair Witch is far more abstract. It’s more like the characters are at the mercy of the setting itself, the austere American woodland, so remote and endless that it begins to feel like the hapless students are trapped in a dream world, wandering in circles, plagued by an overbearing sense of dread, as things go from weird to bad to worse. And the best part is how the characters react to all this; at first they’re bickering with each other, then they’re at each other’s throats regarding their confidence in each other’s map-reading abilities, and soon they’re spiralling into terrified hysteria. There’s something darkly satisfying about watching their miserable descent, night after night. In fact, the film’s not so much about the ‘Blair Witch’ and its spooky designs as the psychology of its characters – witnessing their despair, their hopelessness. The most famous scene of all is Heather’s snot-laden confession to camera, utterly broken, wide-eyed with terror. It’s bare, human fear in the face of total oblivion. And that’s the beauty of the film, in my opinion. There’s no tense orchestral score or special effects. Everything about this movie is so authentically raw. In a world of slickly-produced, ‘oh-no-don’t-go-in-there’ horror movies, Blair Witch is a breath of fresh air; bleak, horrifying air.

The amateurish veneer of the film hides the creativity that went into it. The no-name actors were chosen based on their improvisational skills, ordered in the audition process to react immediately to whatever the directors threw at them; if they hesitated, they were passed over. They were given GPS systems and sent into the woods to film everything themselves, having instructions left for them in milk crates specific to each actor as to what their motivations were, unbeknownst to the others. The actors, basically, had very little idea what was in store for them – Michael C. Williams, for instance, was genuinely frightened by the children’s laughter played to them from a boombox brought out by the directors. They were intentionally starved and deprived of sleep. ‘Taco’ was their safe word for when they wanted to speak out of character. In short, the authenticity of the film was carefully orchestrated, nearly all of the dialogue was improvised, and there were times when the characters genuinely had no idea what was going on and were actually being fucked with by the directors. The fear you witness is, at least in part, real fear. And that’s what gives Blair Witch such an edge, and its achievement of this is undoubtedly what fuelled the water-cooler bullshit about its honest-to-god realism. When most people think of horror, they think of ghouls, vampires and zombies, but Blair Witch strips away the bullshit clichés and presents you with something genuinely, bleakly compelling.

Okay, I’ll admit I might've been a little harsh earlier; as much as I adore it, and I do adore it, The Blair Witch Project may not be for everyone. If you aren’t taken in by the soft touches of characterisation, or the slow pace and the build-up of the first two-thirds of the film, I can see why you might feel like moaning about it, especially if you’ve heard all the hype about how pant-wettingly frightening it’s meant to be. But, in my eyes, it’s just brilliant, and as I said, it’s brilliant because it’s so fucking raw. The creeping finale, especially, is just so nauseously strange, and best of all, left completely ambiguous, as all the most effective works of psychological horror should be. It’s the unanswered questions that keep a movie in your head long after it’s ended. The stripped-down nature of the film, its lightness on visual impact and spectacle, is undoubtedly what turns people off from it. It’s no Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s no Saw. But it is, in my mind, uniquely creepy, gripping, and, having been filmed on a pitiful $30,000, a testament to the power of subtlety and suggestion, a reminder that it’s not what you pack into a movie that makes it great, but what you do with it.