In 1999,The Blair Witch Projectturned into the most successful independent film ever made. People made lines all around the block and internet forum moderators couldn’t keep up with the film phenomenon that literally changed the genre film landscape. Suddenly, a small studio film was able to break all records, with what appeared to be zero effort, and the best of all? It was the single cheapest film that had ever been shown in so many theaters across the country.
Sometimes, you have to plant a virus, and using the psyche of a hungry audience, your next film could become a viral phenomenon above everything. Such is the case ofThe Blair Witch Projectandthe story behind its success.
How The Blair Witch Project Came to Be
Before people went berserk out of their collectively morbid wish to see a real film in which people basically died. It all started when directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez decided to get together and come up with an idea of what they considered to be really scary. At least, scarier than the average horror films released in the early ’90s.
They loved documentaries, so they decided to put together a screenplay with zero dialogue. Everything hadto be improvised. The curious thing is the treatment had only 35 pages, to begin with. A couple of years passed, and a couple of auditions later, the production would begin. In absolute secrecy, of course.
The Blair Witch Projecthad been produced by Haxan Films, a production company founded by the directors and some friends of theirs who believed in the project. When it came time to find a distributor, Artisan Entertainment snatched the film while demanding a new ending to be shot.
Surely, the filmmakers wouldn’t miss this opportunity, so they accepted, and before the film totally blew away the Sundance Festival attendees, a couple more thousand dollars were spent on providing Artisan with more footage. It’s not clear how pricey the reshoots were, but what makes this part of the process stand out, is that it was still a cheap movie to make. Was it time to release it?
However, producers would not stay put. What followed Sundance was a genius marketing campaign that totally revolutionized Hollywood and media arts in general. Suddenly, a new player in the form of the World Wide Web had entered the game and a small film was proving that sometimes it’s not only about saying something is real.
The Power of the Internet
Most of the film’s budget was dedicated to the marketing campaign that ran alongside the film’s limited release. Numbers vary, but the film’s exact production budget has never been clarified. What we do know is that the business plan created by Louise Levison, the famous indie film consultant, included marketing as a huge companion to the film’s approach of being real.
This paved the way for a website created specifically for “helping find the missing students.” In the times when being viral wasn’t a thing,The Blair Witch Projectwas in everyone’s minds as the film that dared to show victims being haunted by a supernatural entity. It was like seeing the first real evidence of ghosts.
Internet wasn’t in every household, and even with those limitations, the film’s website had been visited by more than 150 million users worldwide one month after the premiere. There was no algorithm. You had to type in “www.blairwitch.com” to visit the only place where you could get more information.
From police reports to crime scene photos, this had the power to convince users that these students were really missing and the events in the film were true. People almostwatched the film on repeatto see if they could come up with clues and theories.
Related:Is The Blair Witch Project Still One of the Scariest Horror Movies More Than 20 Years Later?
Similar to what Ruggero Deodato did withCannibal Holocaust, there was an agreement for the actors to not make public appearances. For some time, the IMDb page listings reflected information about them being missing. The morbid curiosity was definitely stronger than people’s objectivity considering some documentary shorts had been shown in Sundance, and they showed the film’s production with other actors playing Heather, Michael, and Joshua (these documentaries were made available in The Criterion Channel in recent years).
It was almost like people wanted the film to be real, and that hunger was displayed through the communication highway that the internet represented in the early 2000s. If someone had cracked the case, if bodies were found, and if more footage was made available, it would have been on the film’s website.
The “Not-Trailers” and Documentaries
The film’s release schedule was still pretty limited during the summer of 1999. This meant people craved watching the film or at least knowing more about the case. The marketing campaign included leaking trailers and releasing mockumentaries, both strategies that proved to be very successful.
The trailer only showed Heather’s famous close-up and audio, and people were even more intrigued than before. After all, the film’s tagline didn’t even have to include the famous phrase “based on true events” because it didn’t have to be clarified. Again, this was real.
When you actually got around to watching the film, you could evidence the last moments of regular people, and no other film ever offered that chance. Snuff films have always been an urban legend in the movie industry. Weirdly nobody seemed to ask the most important questions: how did the filmmakers get away with doing this?
They were actually hand-delivering flyers in film festivals, asking for people to come forward about the fate of the people they had just seen being attacked by an inexplicable entity. The folklore aspect of the film became more prominent with the releaseof a mockumentarythat was broadcast on The Sci-Fi Channel. People tuned in immediately.
The Curse of the Blair Witchis not even that good. But people were hooked on the legend. It told the story of the killings in Blair, Maryland (the fictitious town that’s actually in Burkittsville, Maryland), and people blamed the ghost of Elly Kedward, the witch who had been sentenced to death. However, the show also gave more information about the alleged victims, and that’s what people wanted more information about.
“It’s Real!”
For found footage movies, marketing is more than essential. It needs to be part of the film itself because that’s what people like about these films: the fact that you could be watching a real person go through something horrific. So far, there have been no cases in which what we see is real, but this hasn’t stopped found footage filmmakers from weaponizing a film.
The legacy ofThe Blair Witch Projectis much more than thefilm being extremely scary. It has to do with why we fell under the spell of the whole media outburst. It’s horrible to think people want these films to be true, but then how can you explain the popularity of reality TV and every other media that shows the intimacy of strangers? Curiosity can go places.
Related:15 Best Horror Movies From The ’90s, Ranked
The Blair Witch Projectincluded a great marketing strategy that should be studied in film school. Many other films tried something similar, and they were actually very successful in those campaigns. Examples include mysterious VHS tapes showing up in random places when the American remake ofThe Ringwas released (the DVD menu of the film had a secret combination that when entered, the horrible video played, and you could only stop it by unplugging the DVD player). Or the website www.whatisthematrix.com that featured insightful information about the theory ofThe Matrix’splot.
It was definitely a combination of factors. The film was extremely effective in scaring people out of their minds, but this didn’t mean you could watch it and forget it. In 1999, and the following years,The Blair Witch Projectwas everywhere. Every horror film conversation addressed it and to this day, some people believe it to be true. How’s that for legacy?
You can streamThe Blair Witch Projecton Paramount+ and Freevee.
