#Blair witch project real footage movie#
#Blair witch project real footage tv#

They all pale in comparison to the original, as a recent re-watch of the 1999 version proved the sturdiness of its scares, relying on spare sound design, handheld shots, tight editing, and a willing audience who involuntarily filled in the blanks with their own fears. Joshua Leonard and Michael C Williams in Blair Witch Project.

#Blair witch project real footage tv#

and nearly $250 million worldwide, spawning a sequel, TV series, comics, novels, a video game, lore-related merchandise, and even a 2016 sequel that ignores the inferior 2000 cash-in, Book of Shadows.

#Blair witch project real footage movie#

Its $60,000 budget earned a $1 million distribution deal, and the movie has gone on to make about $150 million in the U.S. Widely imitated shots in the still-potent third act - Heather delivering a monologue of teary regret Mike facing the corner in the basement of abandoned house - pay off every scene that led up to them.Ĭapping a decade in which indie filmmakers repeatedly proved their box office draw and creative vitality, The Blair Witch Project heralded a new breed of quasi-guerilla, entirely meta movie-making. The hopelessness of their situation is panic-inducing and painfully intimate, told in ragged breaths, distorted screams, and little else. Williams), and Josh are too slow to realize their fate on this weekend camping trip to film a documentary about the mythic Blair Witch (not a historical figure, but rather a lean and inventive fiction created by the film's directors, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, and embellished by its creative team). Famously, its actors were dropped into the woods and encouraged to improvise while being regularly fucked with by the filmmakers, which led to scenes of terror so authentic and pulse-pounding that Blair Witch sits among the greatest showbiz hoaxes of the 21st century, from Orson Welles' War of the Worlds to cult flicks like 1980's still-shocking Cannibal Holocaust.Īs anyone who's seen the original knows, Heather, Mike (Michael C.

That scene, and so many others in this movie that's celebrating its 20th anniversary on July 14, speak to not only Donahue's pushy, arrogant documentarian and the emotional tourists it indicted, but the behind-the-scenes making of a widely influential, low-budget horror classic. Think of the joy of being in a really good film.' 'Think about how cool the fucking cemetery is going to be when we get there. 'Just breathe and don’t look down,' she barks from behind her always-on VHS camera. A few days before the shit truly hits the fan in The Blair Witch Project, Heather (Heather Donahue) films one of her doomed compatriots, Josh (Joshua Leonard), as he struggles to cross a log over a frigid, brown expanse of creek in the woods around Burkittsville, Maryland.