The Blair Witch Project

The 1999 smash about three film students lost in the woods is an enduring and deeply scary (mock-)found-footage folktale.

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As unrepeatable pop-culture phenomena go, The Blair Witch Project is worthy of every thesis paper written about it. Yes, its marketing harnessed the internet brilliantly, seeding the web with the possibility that Myrick and Sanchez’s found-footage smash was actual 16mm and video “evidence” of three film students who’d disappeared in the Maryland woods while researching a documentary on a local myth. But that marketing campaign was in the service of a devastating study in mounting dread, as an inexplicable force consumes its young, unprepared heroes slowly and completely, ending on a wrenching climax that forces us to share the experience with them. A good deal of The Blair Witch Project’s impact comes from the character Heather (Heather Donahue). Her colleagues Josh (Joshua Leonard) and Mike (Michael C. Williams) aren’t much help, hiding their panic with macho posturing; it’s Heather who sees everything all too clearly, and her sympathetic relationship with the camera she’s holding keeps the audience connected to the story as the film moves towards that very unhappy ending.

NORM WILNER

Content advisory: frightening scenes, coarse language, not suitable for young children; shaky camerawork may be uncomfortable for some viewers