Halloween is a special date to watch and remember horror movie classics. In the 1980s and 1990s, stories that left their mark on various generations and, in turn, marked a before and after in the careers of their actors and directors.
On this note, let’s review a production that, under the idea of ’found footage’, horrified and left viewers speechless more than 20 years ago: “The Blair Witch Project”.
An expedition gone wrong
The tape premiered as if what is about to be shown were true. The public was shown images and messages, in which it was indicated that three film students, Heather Donahue, Mike C. Williams and Josh Leonard, came to the woods of Maryland in 1994 to film a documentary. After disappearing, everything they recorded served as evidence to create a horror legend.
With the internet, already a source of information, more than one wondered in 1999 if what he said “Blair witch project” was real or not. The intrigue, hand in hand with a good advertising campaign, gave life to a horror classic.
Trailer for “The Blair Witch Project” (1999)
“The website we created was very helpful. It suggested that our students really had disappeared. I even got a call from a New York cop who had worked in Maryland for years and wanted to help search for the boys. I told him it was all fake. Not many movies have had such a cultural influence as this one. He didn’t invent it, but he popularized found footage,” Daniel Myrick, the film’s co-director, told “The Guardian” in 2018.
A ‘dead’ cast, an improvised script and more secrets
In 2018, “The Guardian” brought together a part of the production team of “The Blair Witch Project” to talk about the film. At that time, Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, the directors, told little-known passages of the production.
- A script of only 35 pages: the directors indicated that actors Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams had limited access to the scenes, intending their reactions to be real.
- Concern for Heather Donahue: actor Joshua Leonard said that his partner’s parents were scared that he would go into a forest to film a “strange” movie.
- Actors went hungry: the interpreter pointed out that the tensions increased due to the hunger they felt. “Over time, the food portions got smaller. We felt uncomfortable and said things that hurt us. There’s a scene, where he yells at Heather. You can see my frustration there,” she mentioned.
- Cast reported as dead: Joshua Leonard mentioned that, after going from anonymity to fame, they were surprised that Artisan, the film’s distributor, had convinced the public that the three protagonists had indeed died. “We weren’t invited to the Cannes premiere, and for a while, we are listed as deceased on IMDb. Our parents started receiving condolence calls. I always thought that for Artisan the best thing was our real death, “he mentioned.
- A forest as a stage: co-director Daniel Myrick told Vice in 2019 that the shoot was eight days long and the cast actually camped out in the woods alone. “This was done to get a genuine response from them. We rationed their food so they would be hungry, so they would be irritated by not eating full portions. She served,” she stated.
The Blair Witch Project didn’t create found footage, but it did give it new life in 1999. With the success of the first part, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez returned to direct a sequel titled Book of Shadows. : Blair Witch 2″ (2000), but, as expected, the critics turned their backs on it and so did the fans.
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