Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, and starring Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard as fictionalized versions of themselves, “The Blair Witch Project” is a found footage horror flick that rode a wave of buzz to blockbuster success. Shot for only $200,000–750,000 (the price varies), the movie hauled in $248.6 million. Why? Because people thought it was real. It might seem silly now, but before “Blair Witch” opened in theaters everywhere, a legend began to spring up around the film. The faux documentary footage was so convincing that many people thought they were seeing something genuine.
The movie opens with ominous text telling us that three filmmakers went into the woods in 1994 to shoot a documentary. They were never seen again — only their footage was found. This simple but effective set-up had some viewers thinking that Donahue, Williams, and Leonard were really missing. To play up this scenario, missing posters featuring the three leads were distributed at the Sundance Film Festival, where “Blair Witch” premiered.
In Stephen King’s “Danse Macabre,” a non-fiction book wherein King waxes about the horror genre, the legendary author writes: “One thing about ‘Blair Witch’: the damn thing looks real. Another thing about ‘Blair Witch’: the damn thing feels real. And because it does, it’s like the worst nightmare you ever had, the one you woke from gasping and crying with relief because you thought you were buried alive and it turned out the cat jumped up on your bed and went to sleep on your chest.”
But that’s not all King had to say about the movie. He also revealed that his first watch of the film scared him so much he had to turn it off.
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