![]() ![]() It is a horror movie, but rather than breaking the illusion of realism to inspire fear, the movie holds on to the illusion of realism and inspires dread. But The Blair Witch Project is different. Even if you jump, you can always remind yourself that someone set up the situation you’re watching, that the play of shadows on the wall is the result of a man just offscreen waving a couple slats of cardboard, not whatever supernatural horror the movie claims to capture. Whether it’s Cloverfield or The Last Exorcism, the obvious artifice of the movie as a movie becomes a part of how you cope with your fear of jump scares and movie monsters. When you watch a found footage movie like Paranormal Activity, there’s no danger of ever becoming convinced that what you’re watching consists of actual footage of a real family in their home. ![]() By now, there have been enough found footage horror films for the idea to feel like a cliché, and too often filmmakers in movies are played by movie stars or wannabe movie stars and written by writers who want to signal their self-aware understanding of the film industry and film form. What holds up most about The Blair Witch Project 17 years after its premiere is its meta blend of documentary with fiction, which was a surprise as a first-time viewer, since the moment the title card flashed onscreen with the notice that the movie would follow a group of filmmakers, I reflexively cringed. So with the reactions of 1999 in mind, and with the reboot out in theaters this Friday, I pulled off the Band-Aid and experienced the Blair Witch phenomenon for myself. And I knew that, like Orson Welles’s alien broadcast, The Blair Witch Project was a horror sensation because it left its audience panicking - and barfing - that what they had witnessed was real. The only thing I did know was that The Blair Witch Project started the found footage horror film trend, in the same way that Halloween jump-started the slasher film and Saw revitalized American gore. Before typing this sentence I thought the movie starred Shannen Doherty. I didn’t want to be spoiled, so I never read about its production, I never looked up the plot, I only knew what information was available from the movie’s famous poster: that it was about a little stick and a wool beanie. ![]() I knew actually nothing about what happens in The Blair Witch Project aside from the fact that the movie follows a woman who is very scared in the woods. If you’ve met me, and we have had a conversation about The Blair Witch Project, please know that I was lying about my opinion the whole time I made it all up like Keyser Söze. Up until this weekend, I had never seen the now-landmark 1999 horror movie The Blair Witch Project. ![]()
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