The Blair Witch Project And Existential Horror
The Blair Witch Project is one of the best horror movies I have seen in a while. Released in 1999, this movie is able to create a truly terrifying experience without any jump scares, special effects, or gore. The movie uses the “found-footage technique.” Now ubiquitous in modern horror, this technique uses shaky cam footage to make the viewers feel like they are experiencing the supernatural phenomenon with the victims. In limiting the amount of information the viewers receive, this technique when deployed effectively can create a disturbing atmosphere without the cost associated with an expensive cinematographic setup.
It’s absolutely crazy to think how well this movie did given how simple the whole setup was. To be honest, today the movie could have been shot with a decent smartphone and edited in iMovie. Case in point, this movie cost only around 500K to make, but ended up making 250 million dollars. This is the kind of profit margins most studios would kill for.
When it came out this movie became a cultural phenomenon with audience members going back to rewatch the movie in theaters with friends to experience their reactions as the horror unfolded. Today the film has a cult-like following and is cemented as one of the best horror films of all time, birthing a wave of movies like Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield that built on the found-footage technique. So what did The Blair Witch Project do so right?
Let the audience do the work
While I was reading the wiki for the movie I came upon a movie quote by film critic Michale Dodd that I feel summarizes my thoughts well:
“In an age where anyone can film whatever they like, horror needn’t be a cinematic expression of what terrifies the cinema-goer, it can simply be the medium through which terrors captured by the average American can be showcased”
First I would revise Dodd’s statement to not just include Americans, but all humans. Horror doesn’t have to create a tangible “evil.” We don’t need to see what is evil, we can do that for ourselves often to a much larger effect.
Take one of my favorite scenes from the movie. Heather, Joshua, and Michael were in the tent one night when they heard the sound of children outside, giggling. Disturbed they began running out into the night to see if they could find the children. As they ran Heather let out a blood curling scream: “What is that!”
Apparently there were deleted scenes where the movie showed a man standing in the forest staring at the three of them as they ran, but they decided to cut this scene out, instead letting audiences members fill in the darkness with their imagination. When I saw the scene I thought they saw the image of a child being hanged while someone else watching the scene with me thought it was a large stick figure construction like the one they saw earlier in the day. In this way we projected our own subconscious horror into that darkness, each of us seeing what we thought would be the most frightening thing to see that could cause Heather scream. It seems in our minds effort to rationalize Heather’s scream, it created its own monster that scares us in the most effective way possible.
It was a deliberate decision to not to show the witch in The Blair Witch Project. Why have a director tell us what to be a scared of when we can do that just fine by ourselves! And this is exactly why this movie did so well because in a sense this was a different movie for every person who watched it. We all share different experiences and have different things we are truly scared of and by allowing us to “fill in our own horror” The Blair Witch Project is the best horror for every person. Now I know some of you reading this may think this is an obvious fact, but often the most brilliant ideas are those that seem obvious to us later.
The True Horror is Within
In all honesty the witch did not do much to drive these college students insane. All the witch did was let Heather, Joshua, and Michael get lost in the forest for a couple of days with some creepy voices and weird wooden figurines. This does not sound super terrifying, but what was disturbing was their reactions and increased paranoia. At one point Michael began rocking back and forth holding his knees like a small child, while Heather began crying as she realized the crew had walked in a large circle a whole day. The feeling of helplessness, complete and utter terror was well communicated by their increasingly aggressive exchanges and it was this feeling that was truly disturbing.
MetaCommentary: Existential Horror (read if you dare)
Existential horror is not something we face everyday. It is the feeling you experience when you realize the utter scale of the universe and by effect, our small, fragile existence. Most of our days are spent watching Netflix and refreshing twitter, a far swing away from pondering our place in the universe.
One could argue that what made The Blair Witch Project truly frightening was its use of existential horror. Let me explain. When we cannot rationalize our surroundings, when we have no control over what happens next, and when we are not sure what will happen next, this is when true horror begins. With this in mind, we can look at our civilization with a new light. We as humans have built a fragile society, we create an arbitrary flow of time filled to the brim with random manmade tasks like education, gaming, and business meetings, all for what? To be more productive? Sure to some extent this could be true, but in another light it could be because we are all deeply afraid of the true horror that lies within.
Our species is like the three college students wondering through the woods in The Blair Witch Project. In all actuality we are meaningless dots in the eternal cosmos with no control over what may happen to us one day verses the next. Tomorrow an asteroid could hit our planet and exterminate all of us or Covid could get a new mutation that makes it deadlier and spread faster, we have no way of knowing. However, instead of reveling in that horrifying fact, we create tasks, relationships, and interactions to distract us and create more arbitrary layers between us and the truth. Otherwise, our species would end up like Heather, Joshua, and Michael, taken by the apathetic, merciless woes of a fundamentally indifferent universe.
Now the forest Heather, Joshua, and Michael found themselves in was definitely not indifferent as it was controlled by an all powerful witch. However, the witch in effect removed all the layers of control these students had to make them face existential horror. At first this was removing the map that they used to reassure them they were on the right path. Next, it was removing Josh from the group. And for a moment as the audience becomes more invested in the fate of Heather, Josh, and Mike, we too begin to feel the foreboding helplessness of existentialism. This is the true genius of The Blair Witch Project, forcing us to emerge from our layers of protection and brush the endless chasm of existential horror. Bravo.
