I need to talk about what it was like to be alive during the Blair Witch Project phenomenon

I was always told this when I was younger Exorcist was the scariest horror movie ever made. And despite being pretty creepy (it even made it pretty high on our list best horror movies of all time), I was a bit disappointed when I finally saw it.

And that’s only because it didn’t really scare me as much as I hoped it would. Although I think Exorcist series as one of the best horror franchisesi definitely think the first movie is a bit overrated….

That’s how I’m sure this younger generation feels about the 1999 found-footage horror film, The Blair Witch Project. Directed and written (though we didn’t know it at the time) by 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 simply film. But let me just tell you. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a more horrifying phenomenon in my entire life than when this movie first came out. You really had to be there to truly understand the unprecedented hype. That being said, here’s how it was when The Blair Witch Project turned the horror genre upside down.

Joshua Leonard holds the camera in The Blair Witch Project. — (Image credit: Artisan Entertainment)

Laugh all you want, but it’s 1999 found footage of horror movies were not actually common. A cursory internet search will tell you that 1961 Connection was the first of its kind, but after that you had nothing but something like Cannibal Holocaustand the movie is so controversial that mainstream audiences weren’t so easily familiar with, or the 1992 dark comedy mockumentary A man bites a dog.

So, when the promotional material for The Blair Witch Project began to spread, many of us thought about it and fully believed it! A few months before the film’s release, we were told that in October 1994, three student filmmakers had disappeared while filming a documentary about a local curse, and that the film, which was released in theaters, compiled footage shot by the trio.

Of course, today, in 2024, that sounds pretty silly, especially considering BWP spawned an entire subgenre of found footage franchises like Paranormal phenomenon. But in 1999, we did not know this. If you looked on the internet back then, there was nothing on the world wide web to tell you that the whole thing was fake, as the filmmakers hired dodgy web designers to make everything look legit.

Remember when Spider-Man: No Way Home still in production, and there were shots Andrew Garfield on set? People have gone crazy, haven’t they?

Well, we didn’t have anything like that The Blair Witch Projectalthough we did get Syfy special documentation that doubled down on providing (fake) video evidence. Honestly, the marketing for the movie is probably the best I’ve ever seen, as it was fundamental to making us want to see this movie. And by the movie’s creepy end, many of us were genuinely confused (and scared) for people’s lives. Especially since the ending is so unconvincing.

Michael K. Williams speaks to the camera in The Blair Witch Project.

(Image credit: Artisan Entertainment)

When we found out it was all an actress, it was actually a huge relief that the actors were okay

You’d think that when news broke that the whole Blair Witch myth was a hoax, people would be upset. But guess what. We were not! Or at least I feel like most of us weren’t.

In fact, I feel the general consensus was that we were all very relieved that the three actors were okay. At least at first, before the self-reflective shame of being duped took over.

Because, as I said before, many of us thought that these three young people diedas the overall horror of the film felt real. But when we found out that it was all just pretend, it actually made a lot of us happy. Thank God it wasn’t real.

Ah, different times.

Crazy run through the forest in the project

(Image credit: Artisan Entertainment)

I remember many people becoming physically ill while watching the film because it was so shaky

Okay, now about the movie itself. Found footage films have come a long way since then The Blair Witch Project. Nowadays, cinema is like Late night with the devil (the meaning of which we have discussed on this site) uses the concept of found footage as a form of storytelling rather than a budgetary necessity.

Of course, the found footage concept The Blair Witch Project there are essential to the overall plot (again, this is what sold the film as realistic in the first place). But it seemed to be used mostly to cut costs and was very basic in 1999. So much so that the film is almost hard to watch, as the shaking makes many people sick. at that time

I remember people telling me that due to motion sickness they had to close their eyes during all the parts where the characters are running in the forest. People definitely had similar complaints about a movie like this Cloverfieldbut by then people knew what to expect from a found footage film.

But in 1999? Man, people were getting sick left and right watching TBWP.

Heather Donahue sees something creepy in the woods in

(Image credit: Artisan Entertainment)

I also remember people leaving the theater because they were so scared

Now to be honest The Blair Witch Project never scared me. Rather, the thought that people died (and we watched their inevitable demise) made me nervous.

In fact, my reaction to TBWP is probably similar to what many people have experienced indie film, Skinamarinkbecause I admired this movie but didn’t really think it was as terrible as some people did.

But, if we talk about those “some people”, then there are moviegoers who were scared by eternal shitThe Blair Witch Projectboth before and after the disclosure of the real situation.

I, for example, remember the first time I saw a movie in cinemas. When it started to get really intense and the famous night scenethere were four or five teenage girls (back then they just let everyone into R-rated movies) who got up, shaking, and just left.

I thought it was strange that they all went to the bathroom together, but by the time the movie reached its admittedly creepy conclusion, I realized that they had completely left, probably too petrified to see the movie through to the end .

And I’ve heard similar stories from people who didn’t see the movie in a theater but watched it at home. TBWP it’s one of those rare examples where the small screen probably works better for the film than the big one, as it creates a claustrophobic feel to the film. And I knew people in high school who said they had nightmares after watching this movie. And it was after we all knew it was a hoax.

It’s just power The Blair Witch Projectbaby.

A brave soul strolling through an abandoned house in The Blair Witch Project.

(Image credit: Artisan Entertainment)

It set a whole new standard for independent film and marketing hype

Do you know what the original budget was? The Blair Witch Project? About $60,000. Do you know how much it collected at the global box office? Almost $250 million, 4,000 times the original budget.

I recently wrote about Robert Rodriguez and how important he is to cinemawhere I talked about my first film, El Mariachiwas made for a paltry $7,000 and ended up grossing over $2 million.

And frankly, I don’t know which is a more impressive feat. Rodriguez makes a movie for $7,000 and earns more than $2 million, or The Blair Witch Project worth $60,000 and became 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 just because marketing is for TBWP was part of the film itself.

There were other interesting marketing campaigns (I especially like the movie Chronicle flying people trick), but I don’t think anything lives up to TBWP’s marketing campaign when many of us believed the studio would release a movie where people actually die. The fact that he ended up making so much money is just icing on the cake.

So, this is what it was like to be there when The Blair Witch Project liberated. Were you there when it happened? More news at all things horrorbe sure to check here more often!