Sep

29

“The Blair Witch Project” Is 10 Years Old

Filed Under Movies 

blair1I remember seeing the trailer for “The Blair Witch Project” while I was briefly living in Orlando. In an age when movie trailers often gave away too much, that one didn’t. But I still can remember being genuinely creeped out by a few pull quotes and spooky black-and-white footage of the deep, dark woods. I knew then that I’d have to see the flick as soon as it hit theaters. Of course, this was 1999, and online ticketing was in its infancy. I ultimately having to make three trips(!) to the theater before I was able to get into a screening that wasn’t sold out.

I really enjoyed “The Blair Witch Project” the first time I saw it. I found the film incredibly effective and a touch hilarious. I’m still in awe of how video and black-and-white come across as more visceral than 35mm color film stock. My only problem with the film is that it doesn’t hold up on repeat viewings. It’s also far less effective at home on TV.

A full decade after “The Blair Witch Project” came out of nowhere and walked away with $140 million domestic haul, the film’s influence is still being felt; I just bought my ticket for the midnight showing of the Blair Witch-style film “Paranormal Activity” on Thursday. Unfortunately, the directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez became victims of their own success, and their subsequent output has been paltry at best. The stars of the film also didn’t catapult to superstardom, either.

(On a side note, I actually met Heather Donahue at Amoeba Music back in 2003. She was a real bitch on wheels.)

“Blair Witch” mania reached its saturation point relatively quickly. A rushed sequel, “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2,” materialized in theaters a little over a year after the first film’s release. Directed by documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger, the film is a creatively compromised slasher pic about fans of the first film going out the wood and acting like assholes. On television, MTV began running the show “Fear,” which plunged dumb teenagers into supposedly haunted locations with cameras rigged to their person, so we could watch them freak out and run around in the dark. Theatrically-released knockoffs like “Halloween Resurrection” soon followed. Thankfully, the trend burned itself out by the early-’00s.

There were a dearth of Blair Witch-style flicks for a number of years. But they’ve slowing begun trickling out again. “Cloverfield,” “Diary of the Dead,” and “Quarantine” are recent examples of “found footage” scare flicks. They’re more polished and high-concept than “Blair Witch,” but nowhere near as successful. “Cloverfield” in particular piqued everyone’s interest when its trailer ran before “Transformers” in the summer of ‘07. But by the time the film finally opened the following January, everyone was already burned out on it.

So will “Paranormal Activity” be the next “The Blair Witch Project?” Is Paramount’s handling of the film’s release, platforming it on the midnight movie circuit, creating a level of interest that’ll catapult the film to a $100 million gross, making it the next super-successful ultra-low-budget indie? Or will that level of popularity remain as elusive as the heretofore unseen witch herself?

-Brad Lohan

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