Film students Heather, Mike, and Josh travel to Burkittsville, Maryland to shoot a documentary about the legend of the Blair Witch. This film (the film we are watching) is supposedly their footage—all that was found after they went missing.
In the first act, the trio travel around Burkittsville asking the local residents what they make of the Blair Witch. Opinions run the gamut from skepticism to fanatical belief. We hear stories, such as the kidnapping and murder of 7 children in the ‘40s. Another tells of a young girl who went missing for 3 days in 1888 who returned to tell the tale of “an old woman whose feet never touched the ground.” Heather, Mike, and Josh embark into the supposedly haunted woods surrounding Burkittsville to see what they can dig up. At first, their trip isn’t more than two inexperienced hikers getting directed around by Heather, a marginally more experienced hiker and the force behind the documentary. But as days, turn to nights, and back to days, it’s clear the three have become lost. Worse, they become spooked by strange occurrences, such as hearing children’s voices, twigs snapping, finding small cairns, and finding their stuff rifled through. Their tension turns to paranoia as it slowly becomes clear that they’re not making it out of the woods alive.
“The Blair Witch Project” was probably one of the first horror film phenomenons I remember encountering. In a young-internet world, I remember kids actually discussing the possibility that the film was real. And while the film has faded into a punchline of sorts, I managed to always feel a bit spooked by it until I became a boring skeptic and finally developed an appetite for horror, some 20 years later.
I feel really conflicted about this film. Though the early ‘supernatural/creepy’ stuff didn’t do much for me, I did feel the tension ramp us as the film went on. The film had this sense of like, “There’s no way that there is wilderness left in the U.S. to actually get lost in, right? Right???” which worked on me as a solo amateur hiker. It was sort of like “127 Hours” this way, just without the boulder. Seeing the group come to grips with being lost and further, their fate was the source of the film’s drama and it worked for me. But the rest of it was just creepy, supernatural, jump-scare set dressing. And unfortunately, I found it boring. The actual tonal monotony of the forrest scenes and lack of information available in dark, grainy night-time footage contributed to the sense of terror—yes—but didn’t make for a particularly entertaining film.