Blair Witch Project, The (1999)

“All shows till 1 a.m. sold out.” This greeting had become familiar to those of us hoping to see the cinematic sensation that swept through the US this summer. No, I am not referring to George Lucas’ overdone turkey, The Phantom Menace, nor the Will Smith stinker Wild Wild West, but to a rousing new film that is bereft of any special effects and bankable stars – no blood, violence or computer generated images either.

There is little doubt that 1999 was the year of The Blair Witch Project – a film so simple yet so unique and devastatingly effective that many multiplex cinemas resorted to showing the movie on three or more screens to accommodate the enormous interest it generated.

In New York City, 26 out of 27 theatres showing Blair Witch reported all-time attendance records. And the town of Burkitsville, Maryland, where the movie is set, was besieged by a deluge of curious visitors from far and wide. Street signs vanished virtually overnight as frenzied mementoes seekers scrambled to get a piece of Blair history. This is the stuff hysteria is made of.

Audiences jaded by watching masked killers, copious amounts of blood and gore and, of course, endless sequences of special effects cannot get enough of this tiny Indie film. In contrast, established studios churn out putrefying garbage like The Haunting – a special effects dud that incited snickers rather than jitters – which cost nearly $100 million. However, Blair Witch has captivated audiences despite being modestly budgeted at $30,000. And a few weeks after its release, it is the most profitable movie in cinema history and the most successful independent film ever made. In North America alone, it has soared past the 100 million mark.

Directed by a couple of debutantes, the film stars no one you have ever heard of. The story is simple: “In October 1994, three student filmmakers disappear in the woods near Burkitsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary… A year later, their footage is found.”

It is through this footage that the sheer terror by which the three filmmakers find themselves enveloped by is unravelled. It is shot documentary-style, with jittery hand-held cameras and is as far removed from conventionally slick Hollywood productions as can be. To reveal any more would be unforgivable.

In certain ways, the film is a throwback to the early pre-special effects days when directors tried to terrify by suggestion rather than in-your-face gore and effects that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. In Blair Witch, what you cannot see terrifies and unnerves. The eerie suggestion of inanimate stick figures and rock formations set the mind racing. The situation the students find themselves in, the sheer helplessness they experience, and the subsequent despair as an unseen evil slowly closes in on them is the terror portrayed brilliantly in Blair Witch.

Those expecting another teen slasher film like Scream will be hugely disappointed; some have found it bewildering. The Blair Witch Project is a far cry from anything that has preceded it and is undoubtedly one of the creepiest and most original films of the ’90s. It is also a masterstroke of using the internet to spin a wonderful intoxicating, convincing world of “fake news”. Small wonder that it has done for hiking what Jaws did for swimming all those years ago.