Article: Disaster Artistry - The Blair Witch Project

 

In October of 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary...A year later their footage was found.

The Blair Witch Project was once the highest-grossing film picked up at a film festival. Twenty-seven years later, the record was surpassed by shock hit Obsession. Curry Barker's breakthrough feature arrives at a moment when cinema's future is being mulled over by muttering cinephiles and film buffs. The fragmented state of modern media has posed heavy questions about cinema-going, and Obsession’s popularity has suggested that the kids are all right. Audiences still enjoy munching on popcorn in a darkened auditorium and glaring at the silver screen. But by outgrossing The Blair Witch Project, it feels like a baton is being passed. 

Movie hype has been with us since The Arrival of a Train, but Blair Witch’s marketing campaign defined movie promotion for years to come. In some ways, it set a precedent. Hollywood only came around to the idea that the worldwide interweb could sell movies after The Blair Witch website showed them the way. Before we knew the name and tools, The Blair Witch and its early internet space, rich with the film’s fictional mythology, created what we now know as virality. Reading the multitude of fan theories and extended lore of Obsession that litter social media only highlights the foundations built by The Blair Witch Project and its multimedia assault.

The tagline is perhaps the most succinct way to describe the film’s story. But to elaborate, Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard and Mike Williams head to the Maryland backwoods near Burkittsville to film a documentary about the notorious Blair Witch. They wander around the town and film some pithy interviews with some of the colourful characters before heading into the woods to film the rest of the documentary. Things go awry when the trio lose their bearings in the woods and find themselves stalked by an unseen presence. The collected footage was allegedly found, assembled chronologically and presented to the viewer as the last documented footage of the filmmakers.

The Blair Witch Project is not the first found-footage film. Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is noted as the forefather of the genre. However, it was banned in countries like the UK, and notoriety kept it in stasis. From a release perspective, The Last Broadcast (1998) pipped The Blair Witch to the post by a few months. Yet it remained a lesser-seen curiosity of video stores as the marketing hype attained elsewhere eclipsed anything that feature could provide. These earlier movies never marked the genre aesthetic the way Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez's film managed. No matter the genre, every Found Footage film from Cloverfield (2008) to Project X (2012) to Project Almanac (2015) seems to look to The Blair Witch Project as the main source. Notable successes like Paranormal Activity (2007) and Rec (2007) not only became popular franchises in their own right but also pushed the bar in what the genre could do. Yet as more of these films came about, the mechanics behind them became more “produced”. These later projects are entertaining (I absolutely adore Cloverfield), but all share a taste of the theatrical that affects the immersion The Blair Witch Project provides.

The seeming lack of artifice found in The Blair Witch Project, along with its unique placement in time, still makes the film stand out today. Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez took a distinctive guerrilla approach to filmmaking to get what they wanted for the production. The duo asked their trio of actors to improvise their performances through messages left for them each day. The two camps communicated via walkie-talkie while the actors filmed their footage each day. During the day, the actors were deprived of food.  At night, the filmmakers would unnerve the actors by disturbing them in their sleep. The combination of elements resulted in the cast becoming disoriented, distressed, and more susceptible to the fictional nightmare forming around them.

The blend of vérité-style filmmaking and improvisational boot camp set The Blair Witch apart from its predecessors. This experimental blend of elements makes it the best example of a student film gone wrong. Praise was heaped on the film as a great showcase of creating maximum tension with minimal material at their disposal. But the film owes so much to its cast, who suffer the director's unconventional treatment to become the disparate trio of youths thrown together into a wooded existentialist hell. From the start, the three characters already hold an open hostility towards each other. Mike, the baby of the bunch, is only on board the project as a favour to Josh, in that typical student style. Heather’s upbeat assertiveness is misinterpreted and soon attacked for directorial hubris. Josh comes across as the cool kid who thinks he knows it all.   Perhaps the most horrific aspect of the film is that Blair Witch doesn’t need to be seen or perform any wild spectacle on her victims.  The group lose their way unusually. Perhaps supernaturally led astray by unseen forces. Yet the group's charged egos do little to help matters. The film becomes an update of Sartre’s No Exit. The Witch may be manipulating the woods, but the trio don’t help themselves. They wear themselves down, allowing their bodies to be mentally tenderised for an unseen presence. Remove the supernatural element, and this is an accurate takedown of an amateur film disintegration. The things that go bump in the night are unsettling, but the ease with which these three emotionally tear each other down becomes equally disconcerting.

The cast regretted using their real names for the film. Despite the film becoming a huge hit, none of the actors broke into Hollywood. Their filmographies are scant, with Josh Leonard being the most successful of the three. Heather Donoughe quit acting, changed her name, and became a weed seller. The film was presented to people as a true story, with the film's marketing going through the roof with the idea that all three were missing, presumed dead. The marketing campaign drew a vast amount of critical attention towards the cast, who were both praised and derided in equal measure, while the cast picked up Razzies for perceived bad acting. Yet what makes The Blair Witch Project stand out from its counterparts is the unique rawness that stems from the performances. Although you can mimic the aesthetic easily, most imitators never dream up the same cocktail of chemistry and improvisation the ensemble served. Its cast, handpicked for their ability to improvise, were asked to rely on their wits while the crew of the film quite literally fucked with them in the dead of night. This bizarre mixture of elements hasn't been replicated nearly as well by other films, except perhaps REC. Also, with the thrall of hype and marketing now further removed, the performances are even stronger, despite some of the narrative's bizarre features. Such aspects are best written off as witchy manipulation.

Rewatching The Blair Witch Project in 2026 can have viewers seeing Heather as the original Skyler White (Breaking Bad). Original reviews labelled Heather as an egotistical bitch, whose self-serving personality was leading these poor, harmless boys to certain doom. In fact, Heather, for her faults, was derided for trying to preserve order. It is both fascinating and saddening to see Heather as a prototype for modern female creators now. Watching Heather now reminded me of director Anna Biller detailing her troubles making The Love Witch (2016). In interviews, Biller details the deep scrutiny that her filmmaking decisions faced. I found Heather to be under similar scrutiny. Plot revelations expose the unwanted pressure she was under. Josh and Mike’s obnoxiousness contrast fiercely with Heather’s self-conscious need for influence. From the start, the boys snipe and needle her over little things. They rattle Heather's cage even when the shit really begins to hit the fan. The film points towards the future in one telling moment, when Josh, at the end of his tether, makes a pointed statement about Heather’s love of being behind the camera:

“It's not quite reality. It's like a totally filtered reality. It's like you can pretend everything's not quite the way it is.”

It’s a moment that triggers both Heather and us now that we live in a world consistently filtered through cameras and screens.

The films muddying the waters of reality didn’t help matters. People saw this fictionalised version of Heather as the real person. The relationship between actress and audience became parasocial. For me, the animosity Heather managed to create exposes just how potent her performance is. At one point, she is berated for her desire to keep shooting despite clearly being stalked by an unknown entity. She screams that this is all she has left. It’s a moment that hits home since the rise of incident as media content. Now all we do is document everything that happens to us. Heather's desire to keep documenting the supernatural events around her is now riffed on in found-footage films for now and beyond. Famously, the character Hud, played by TJ Miller in the sci-fi found-footage film Cloverfield, also notably highlights his need to keep filming. A film that would not exist without The Blair Witch Project. And Hud is a far more annoying character than Heather ever was. However, he got none of the hate.

Heather Donahue decision to quit acting and reinvent herself was an unfortunate fallout from the film's release. Finding a female horror performance as powerful as Heather's turn is tough. Is this hyperbole? Well yes. But the infamous apology, where the young wannabe filmmaker's wide-eyed, teary visage faces the camera while grimly accepting accountability for this tragic chain of events, has been one of horror’s most iconic images for a quarter of a century now. And for good reason. Think of The Blair Witch Project, think of that scene. All the imperfect components make the moment so distinctive. The awkward composition, dripping snot and quivering voice make the scene. Every time I watch that monologue, I’m completely immersed. In that moment, I believed her. I feared for her.

But I feared for all the characters. This is thanks to the publicity, which did a great job of creating concern. Now that the media shenanigans have subsided, I still love the rawness of the performances and how well Myrick and Sánchez crafted a one-of-a-kind product of controlled chaos. My favourite example may be from the early vox-pop interviews the students hold with the Burkittsville townsfolk. The interview involving a mother and child (Susan Gooch and Ingrid EmGee) is a wonderfully unscripted moment of serendipity. As an infant, Ingrid actively tries to silence her gossipy mom from telling a scary story in a way that couldn’t be captured if “planned”.  Yet in simply deciding to keep an unknowing child's instinctive reaction becomes the perfect primer for the events that proceed later.

As more time has passed since its release, the film's contrivances are now more obvious. The cynical eye of the present would provide a higher level of scrutiny, especially of the marketing hype. The website and surrounding fake documentaries were unique when they were created. These days the marketing lore wouldn't look out of place on a creepypasta wiki, next to the likes of Slenderman, an internet legend that owes a lot to The Blair Witch. However, the “raw footage” that became The Blair Witch Project still holds water. The filmmakers' use of form sows deeply embedded seeds of doubt. The performances don’t feel “performed”. It's easy to get wrapped up in the fear and confusion on display. None of it works if anyone knew more than they did. Something that feels impossible to pull off now.

The theme that stands out most in 90s American Horror is postmodernism. This ranges from Candyman's (1992) then-modernised commentary on race and class to the meta-winking references featured in Scream (1996). The Blair Witch Project lands at the decade's end as an exclamation point. Scream toyed with the idea that everyone was hip to cinematic lore. They knew what they were watching. Which was part of the fun. The Blair Witch Project shifted things into a different gear, pushing through the fourth wall and throwing everyone into a realm where no one is sure what is real or fake. It demolishes the media riffs of Scream or Urban Legend (1998) and rebuilds horror cinema into something uncannier: A mutated hybrid of urban legend, audience participation, and cinema verité.

The Blair Witch caused a storm on its release and looks very quaint now. Many scoffed at the time, and it is easy to dismiss now. Modern films operating in the same sphere have eclipsed what it did. Just look at Obsession or even the famous imitator Paranormal Activity. But undeniably, The Blair Witch changed the game. Even now, with the marketing removed, something about the film still lingers for fans like me.  The film worked on me as a 15-year-old on my first viewing. That time, I had walked to the cinema via a shortcut through the woods. The film ensured I got a lift home rather than walking back through the woods. But the most striking example of Blair Witch's effectiveness was in my third viewing. I was in college only 3 years after its original release. I was studying film and one of the few students (possibly the only one) who had seen it previously. These other students had heard of the film but had no idea what to expect. That frame of reference was missing. No marketing hype for these kids. The class watched the film on VHS on a tiny-screened, big-backed television. It was that long ago. The film finished, and the audience was silent. Once we left the lecture theatre and daylight hit our eyes, the group began chatting emphatically about what they just watched. For all the conversation Obsession has generated recently, let's hope it still holds the power to have film students debating so ardently in 2050, as my colleagues and I did 20 odd years ago.  

The Blair Witch Project can currently be found on various streaming channels

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Article: Disaster Artistry - Living In Oblivion

Creating art is hard. With that in mind, filmmaking is perhaps one of the most complicated artistic enterprises. Crafting a motion picture is an absolute ball-busting endeavour, often fuelled by chaos, with little fanfare upon completion. At the end of every Filmcast podcast episode, host David Chen remarks that, whether you enjoyed the main review or not, at the end of the day, it’s pretty impressive that a film was made. He’s not wrong. Media creation has become more accessible, but coming up with a feature film from scratch with a full cast and crew that appeals to an audience? There are still a lot of dreamers who pretend it’s easier than it is.

The film Living in Oblivion expertly depicts the frenzied bedlam of low-budget filmmaking. Steve Buscemi plays Nick, a long-haired, wide-eyed director who seems a hair's breadth away from a full-on manic episode. Such is independent filmmaking. As the low-budget project begins to crumble around him, Nick struggles with maintaining on-set equilibrium. The production is riddled with dilemmas that could hamstring a production. Nick valiantly fights to preserve his sanity against a creative world focused on losing the plot, both literally and figuratively.

Tom DiCillo, a filmmaker who studied alongside Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee, is the brainchild behind Living in Oblivion. While Jarmusch and Lee are household names among the dwellings of typical cinephiles, DiCillo had a quieter career. It’s not hard to see why, when DiCillo described making a film as “one of the most tedious, boring, painful experiences, and that just when something goes right.” This became the origin of Living in Oblivion, capturing the madness and anxiety of making a film. This is perhaps what makes the film so enjoyable. While many other fictional “filmmaking” movies have an air of notable smugness (are we surprised when they do so well at awards season?), Living in Oblivion captures the worst fears of making a movie, and does so with a charming, offbeat wit, smart direction and stellar performances. One must wonder if DiCillo dislikes the process because he knows how to nail it.

Living in Oblivion accurately pinpoints the calamitous pain of creating with no money. Its opening segment has two crew members debating the freshness of some milk that has been sitting outside for a week. The innocuous conversation kickstarts a series of predicaments that gradually increase in importance, while Nick tries to capture the emotional resonance of a pivotal scene. The scene in question involves an emotional conversation between mother and daughter, played by Nicole (Catherine Keener) and Cora (Rica Martens). Nick envisions one elegant long take drifting between the actors. The reality is very different. The sequence gets spoiled by various mishaps occurring around him. Lights get blown. Boom mics drop into shot. The shot itself falls out of focus. These events lead to both actresses fumbling lines that came to them so well at the beginning. Nick slowly loses his placidness with each slip-up, then suddenly, due to a small gesture of reassurance from Cora, Nicole finds the emotional crux in the scene. The crew are spellbound as the two actresses hit the scene straight out of the park…Only for everyone to realise that nothing was recorded because the cinematographer, Wolf (Dermot Mulroney), was puking his guts out in the bathroom. His illness? Caused by the week-old milk he put in his coffee. DiCillo’s film captures how easily tiny drops of misfortune swell into disastrous calamities on a no-money production.

If Nick isn't dealing with vomiting cinematographers, then he's contending with self-centred leading men. Living in Oblivion's second segment has brash lead actor Chad stumble into proceedings. The intention of Chad? To hog every bit of the limelight at the expense of everyone else. Chad is wildly obnoxious, creatively reckless, and a stunningly accurate representation of the types of creatives who litter the lower end of the humanities. The female crew adore him, but unknown to them, Chad sleeps with co-lead actress Nicole, who bluntly cools things down before they go to work. In retaliation, Chad begins to suggest a series of useless improvisation ideas to Nick. These are not only designed to diminish Nicole's on-screen presence but also inflate Chad's ego.  Quite simply, the guy is an ignorant prig, played wonderfully by James LeGros. Chad's character was assumed to be based on Brad Pitt, who DiCillo had worked with on his troubled debut Johnny Suede (1991). However, DiCillo squashed those rumours, stating an emergency junket for the film Legends of the Fall (1994) stopped Pitt from taking up the role of Chad. While it’s easy to see why people see Chad as a send-up of the future A-lister, LeGros’ performance is more of a composite of spiteful clowns who invade creative projects and make it all about themselves.

Hell is other people. And filmmaking is something that usually pulls in quite a few people for a product to exist. Living in Oblivion enjoys pointing out that while the film should be the end goal for everything, the quirks and agendas which lie in the recesses of each crew member will gladly hamper that objective. Steve Buscemi has stated that Nick is one of his favourite roles, and that’s understandable. In a career full of memorable performances, this hapless indie director is a role Buscemi shares an affinity with as a performer and director. Seen here as often bemused, bewildered or sarcastic, this is the actor at his best. He revels in a role that has him constantly frustrated by those around him. Be it Wolf’s ego and fraternising, which stops the cinematographer from framing the damn film, or Nicole’s bleakly insecure acting. The performer's anxiety is only being accelerated by the needless gossipy chirps which she hears off set. If you’ve ever tried to put on a production of any sort, none of this should surprise you. What makes the film so entertaining is how keenly observed DiCillo captures everything.  It’s funny because you’ve been there.

As a film about a production going awry, Living in Oblivion strikes a perfect tonal balance. It manages to be both laugh-out-loud funny and painfully honest about the multitude of predicaments that fall upon Nick's production. To top things off, DiCillo even wraps much of the film in dream sequences. Filtering the indie film world through the subconscious mind of those who live it is an amusing nod to the liberal use of dream logic as a crutch in movies. DiCillo uses a unique conceit on dream logic, with the film narrative fragmenting into the dreams of those who inhabit the world. Dreams are a well-used cinematic trope, and here it becomes a subversive fuel which drives each person on set in one way or another. DiCillo plays this all out Run Lola Run style. Amusingly, the final act is one of a dream sequence being shot. This segment is the movie Nick is trying to make. What came before it? Anxiety nightmares of what could have happened? Future apprehensions of what may happen? DiCillo never lets us in fully. The film that Nick is making? The audience is never given a full description. Nevertheless, Living in Oblivion understands the filmmaking process so well that it does not matter. You only need to know that the crew is so tied to what's being made that you are invested.

We don’t know how good we have it now. Filmmaking is so ubiquitous that influencers are shilling guides to how easy it is to make a film on your own, without a crew. You can bring something together in about a month and probably find an audience soon after. Living in Oblivion is a smart, witty reminder that filmmaking, at one point, is more like herding cats. Creating art is hard, and for many, filmmaking is still an endeavour for the ultra-loopy. But to paraphrase David Chen, as I did earlier, it’s pretty impressive to make a cinematic project that all comes together. It seems it’s even more satisfying when said project is about the absolute madness of filmmaking.

Living In Oblivion can currently be found on YouTube

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