Horror was in a bit of a funk in the late 90s. Then 25 years ago, in July 1999, The Blair Witch Project came along and changed everything.
In a 1996 article published in The Philadelphia Enquirer, critic Desmond Ryan bemoaned the state of mainstream films. Citing such movies as Independence Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Eraser, and that year’s hurricane thrillride Twister, Ryan argued that Hollywood had become more interested in special effects than logic or character.
“It all began,” Ryan wrote, “when Twisterās killer tornadoes sucked up everything in their path ā tractors, cows, common sense, continuity, plausibility, and the quaint notion that movies should have characters you care about.”
By the end of the 1990s, the horror genre appeared to have descended into a creative funk of its own. Of the horror films released toward the end of the decade, many of the most high-profile examples were remakes (1998’s Carnival Of Souls and Psycho, 1999’s The Haunting) or sequels in somewhat tired franchises (Halloween H20, Phantasm IV). The knowing humour that made 1996’s Scream feel fresh had also begun to feel played out by the time other self-aware slashers had spawned their own mini-franchises (see 1998’s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer ā or better yet, don’t.)
Worse still, the success of Jurassic Park in 1993 triggered a wave of monster B-movies and horror flicks that over-relied on special effects. Some, such as Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty, were great; others, like Anaconda and Deep Rising, were entertaining enough but seldom scary.
A few great horror films came out of America in the late 90s ā David Koepp’s Stir Of Echoes, based on the Richard Matheson story, deserved far more attention than it got ā but for the most part, genre fans were better off looking over to Japan and the renaissance sparked there by such films as Ring (1998) and Audition (1999).
The impact The Blair Witch Project had when it emerged in US cinemas on the 14th July 1999 was truly seismic. Made for at most $60,000 by indie filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, it was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January that year, and had caused such a fuss that distributor Artisan Entertainment bought the rights for around $1.1m. It eventually went on to make that investment some 250 times over.
About three documentary filmmakers who venture into woodland in Burkittsville, Maryland to investigate a local legend, The Blair Witch Project was shot over the course of eight days with handheld cameras and a minimal script. Actors Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard all appeared as themselves, largely improvising their dialogue, and its tension came not from gore or special effects, but through its suspense.
The film follows the lead characters as the stress of camping out in the haunted woods sees their relations crack and their sanity unravel. Its filmmakers wrung convincing performances from their inexperienced leads by depriving them of sleep, leaving contradictory notes intended to mess with their heads, or lurking outside their tents, making eerie noises. The actors were then instructed to film their own increasingly terrified reactions.
The Blair Witch Project didn’t invent what would soon be called the found footage genre ā it was anticipated by the likes of 1980’s unabashedly nasty Cannibal Holocaust, the similarly infamous mock documentary Man Bites Dog (1993) and 1998’s The Last Broadcast. But Blair Witch had the advantage, first of all, of an ingenious marketing campaign that sold it as a genuine documentary ā missing persons posters and a website all helped create the myth that the three people at the heart of the story had genuinely vanished.
The main factor in The Blair Witch Project’s success, however, was that it was the opposite of the other horror films mentioned above. Where 1999’s The Haunting featured a starry cast (Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Owen Wilson), the actors in Blair Witch were largely unknown to just about everyone but their family and friends.
Read more: The Blair Witch Project | Where the franchise could go next
Late-90s horror had also begun to take on a self-aware tone that had the side effect of holding audiences at arm’s length. It was fun to spot all the cameos and genre nods in 1997’s Wishmaster ā Robert England, Kane Hodder, Tony Todd and more besides ā but there’s also a safety in knowing humour and in-jokes. If there’s one thing that saps the horror out of horror, it’s giving audiences a safe refuge.
In Blair Witch, there’s nothing to distance the viewer from its characters’ plight. The immediacy of its handheld camerawork puts us right in the woods with the three leads, sharing in their growing confusion and fear. It’s hard to overstate just how different all this felt to a generation of movie-goers in 1999. A self-shot scene in which Heather Donahue delivered a despairing apology into the lens (“I was very naive. I am so sorry for everything that has happened…”) became one of the decade’s defining horror images because it was so lacking in artifice. Capping off a decade of too-cool-for-school detachment, it felt honest and real.
By the time The Blair Witch Project appeared in UK cinemas in October 1999, its cover had been blown: most people who went to see it knew that its marketing was a hoax and that its three characters were all alive and well. All the same, the film’s verite style and naturalistic performances made it feel engrossingly real, and its makers’ tendency to suggest the supernatural rather than show it only added to its tension.
Detractors may have (rightly) pointed out that not a lot happens for much of Blair Witch’s lean 81 minute duration, and that its scariest moments occur in the final seconds. But Myrick and Sanchez’s film hit a nerve with audiences as few other 90s horror movies had; that it went from a shoe-string production to making almost a quarter of a billion dollars is still remarkable today.
Nor was Blair Witch’s some zeitgeist-grabbing blip. Its success spawned an entire subgenre of imitators that ranged from low-budget knockoffs (The St Francisville Experiment) to expensive studio films with their own viral ad campaigns (Cloverfield).
In 2007, filmmaker Oren Peli made a few modifications to his house, set up a digital camera, and made Paranormal Activity ā essentially, a domestic Blair Witch Project. Made for just $15,000 (with more spent on reworking the film later), it made $194m worldwide. Its runaway success helped establish Blumhouse Productions and its low-budget horror formula that is still making money in 2024.
The echoes of The Blair Witch Project are therefore still being felt a quarter of a century later. As a franchise, its sequels and spin-offs haven’t recaptured the lightning-in-a-bottle success of the original, but it’s still going: in April, a new film was announced as being in development ā fittingly, with Jason Blum producing ā at Lionsgate.
Cultural significance aside, The Blair Witch Project also has another, more depressing legacy. In April, several people involved in the original film said they hadn’t been told that a sequel was in the works. Worse, actor Joshua Leonard wrote on Instagram that, despite Blair Witch being a $248m hit, the actors who spent eight arduous days in the woods only received $300,000 between them ā and that only came about after the performers collectively sued Lionsgate and received a settlement in 2004. He also said that co-star Michael Williams was “back moving furniture” a year after Blair Witch came out, just to make ends meet.
In April 2024, both the film’s actors and its co-directors wrote open letters to Lionsgate ā which now owns the rights to Blair Witch, having bought up Artisan Entertainment in 2003 ā arguing that the actors deserved residual payments from the franchise’s huge profits.
“As the literal faces of what has become a franchise, their likenesses, voices, and real names are inseparably tied to The Blair Witch Project,” Sanchez and Myrick wrote. “Their unique contributions not only defined the film’s authenticity but continue to resonate with audiences around the world.”
The accusations of unfair pay have only grown in recent weeks. In a June interview with Variety, the three actors described their years-long battle to receive proper compensation for their work. Their names and identities had been used in 2000’s Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 and 2016’s Blair Witch, but because none of them were members of the SAG-AFTRA union when the first film was made, they weren’t entitled to any residual profits.
“I’m embarrassed that I let this happen to me,” a tearful Williams said. “…your wife is in the grocery line and she can’t pay because a check bounced. You’re in the most successful independent movie of all time, and you can’t take care of your loved ones.”
“Is there value there or not?” Donahue added. “If there’s value, compensate us accordingly, and if there’s no value, then just stop using us.”
The 25th anniversary of The Blair Witch Project’s US cinema release is therefore a distinctly bittersweet one for the people at its creative heart. Its history is a stark reminder that human nature ā or more specifically corporate greed ā is as dark a force as any supernatural entity lurking in the woods.