At the turn of the millennium, an uncomfortable feeling spread in cinemas around the world. Many asked themselves: Is this true? Am I watching the recording of the last hours of three real people? Some were tricked into believing it, including a Norwegian reviewer. The clever marketing turned “The Blair Witch Project” into a global phenomenon. But 25 years after the premiere, it’s not just the remains of old vomit in the cinema halls that stink. This is also a story about actors who barely got paid – at the same time as they lost control over their own identities. Hell Week It’s not meant to reveal too much, but a few words must be said about the plot of “The Blair Witch Project”: Three young Americans go into the woods with video cameras to explore and document the myth of a creature called “The Blair Witch” . They get lost and buzz around the forest for days. Increasingly terrified and starving, they experience terrifying things: They find mysterious symbolic figures and are kept awake by sounds at night. We as viewers are told that the three never made it, but that we see their film footage that was found by chance. The idea was created by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez already in 1993. They dreamed of making a horror film where a) the viewer’s imagination was more important than blood and gore, and b) the audience did not know if what they saw was true or not. They had little else on their resumes other than making videos for the restaurant chain Planet Hollywood when they started writing the film’s extremely short script. But they were ambitious and brash. Even when Myrick and Sánchez tried to raise financing for the film, they had put on a poker face. They stubbornly claimed that the disappearance was a true story and that the video recordings were real. They created fictitious newspaper articles and TV spots about the disappearance which they showed to shocked investors. In 1997, the three inexperienced actors Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard were brought in. They embarked on a recording that can rightly be referred to as a week of hell. TURGLEDE: Joshua Leonard (left) and Michael Williams leave the car and head into the woods in search of the Blair Witch. The mood was to become significantly worse. Photo: Getty The trio received a few simple instructions and were sent out into the forest with a rucksack, camping equipment and two hand-held film cameras. The dialogue was improvised and they were asked to film as much as possible. They were sent to checkpoints where they found new camera batteries, food and notes with instructions on what to do. The directors stayed in the background and followed them via GPS. At night they kept the actors awake with noises. After a week in the forest, the trio were frayed and exhausted from hunger and lack of sleep. – When all the intense stuff happens at the end, they are quite skinless, and it shows well, Sánchez has said. After a few months in the editing room, the directors were ready with a film. Now all that remained was to arouse the curiosity of the public. The Great Fool’s Game Have you seen these three people? MISSING: As part of the invisible marketing of “The Blair Witch Project”, this missing poster was created. Photo: Getty Images In order to create wonder and anticipation, work was now done very systematically to build the myth that what is shown in “The Blair Witch Project” was true. A full year before the cinema premiere, the directors brought in a PR expert to build the myth. He created a website with details of the “disappearances”. There you could see a timeline, police reports, children’s photos of the three as well as photos of the recovered video cameras – all obviously fabrications. A fake documentary about the disappearance, “Curse of the Blair Witch”, was produced and shown on the cable TV channel Sci-Fi Channel. SCAM: On this website, evidence was presented that the video recordings were real. Blairwitch.com had 160 million page views during August 1999. Facsimile: BlairWitch.com FAKE NEWS: To prove that “The Blair Witch Project” was a true film, fictitious evidence was presented, including four dirty video tapes belonging to the three missing and who were found in the forest one year after they disappeared. Photo: Getty Images In order to hide all traces that could reveal that this was not a pure documentary film, it was now important to have control over the actors. They had the same name in the film as in reality and had to be kept out of the limelight. Otherwise, people would understand that they lived in the best of health. In all mention of the film – and on the film website IMDB – they were therefore referred to by their full names as “missing” or “presumed dead”. To maintain the macabre illusion, the three actors were denied participation when the film was screened during film festivals. One of them was also warned not to take other film roles in anticipation of the premiere, because it could reveal that he was alive. Heather Donahue, who was 21 years old when she took the role, experienced that her mother was sent letters of condolence from friends and strangers who had read online that she had died. At a class reunion many years later, some were shocked that she was actually alive. NAME CHANGED: Actress Heather Donahue is alive and well today under the name Rei Hance. Photo: Getty How was it possible to get people to believe in such a robbery story? The fact that the marketing campaign did not come across as a marketing campaign made it effective. Just ask then journalist Truls Seines, who discussed the film in the Narvik newspaper Fremover. “Do we really need to see this?” he wondered, wishing to “release more such true, horrifying stories.” LURT: Future journalist went five and thought that “The Blair Witch Project” was a documentary film. Facsimile: Forward “This is the one hour and twenty minute long documentary, which shows us ‘live’ what happens in the last days of the three students’ lives. No answers are given as to what really happened to them in the end,” he wrote in the newspaper. Seines says today that he does not quite remember why he wrote this. – But I remember that the film seemed like a documentary when it came out. You were a little unsure and didn’t quite know what it was all about until later. Regardless, the film achieved its intended effect on him. – I remember thinking: Is this for real? Or is it a recording of something gone wrong? It wasn’t like today, that you could Google everything, he says. The witch gets serious In the summer of 1999, “The Blair Witch Project” was shown in a few cinemas in the USA. By then it had already been shown at some selected festivals and universities and managed to become a talking point. In advance of screenings, flyers with wanted photos of the “missing” were of course distributed. Slowly but surely, the film grew into a huge talking point that spread from country to country. From a budget of half a million kroner, the film earned 2.6 billion kroner. For every kroner deposited, 4,000 came back. The vast majority of critics were very enthusiastic. “Blair Witch is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen,” wrote the reviewer in the usually sober Washington Post newspaper. At the same time, the film is divisive: Many are frightened, some are bored. On the website IMDB, the public has given the film an average score of 6.5 out of 10, which is not particularly high. Some dissatisfaction is also about the fact that the film made people downright nauseous. Not out of fear. The unstable hand-held cameras made people so motion sick that they threw up in the cinema hall. One person who made it through a cinema screening in Oslo in autumn 1999 – and definitely allowed himself to be excited – was film director Pål Øie. He is particularly impressed by how the film allows the viewers themselves to compose and fantasize about what is really happening. – That it is possible to create so much horror and tension by not really showing anything at all! He himself made “Villmark” somewhat later, often referred to as the best Norwegian horror film of all time. The story from the wasteland was compared to “The Blair Witch Project” when it came out. One of the teaser posters for “Villmark” shows actor Kristoffer Joner lighting himself up with a flashlight in the dark. – In retrospect, we see that it may look a bit like the Blair Witch poster, and that was not planned, says director Pål Øie. Øie admits that he allowed himself to be influenced. – I think “The Blair Witch Project” was inspiring in using the audience’s imagination instead of being very graphic. Especially playing in the dark and scary things happening in nature that you have no control over. It’s like Hitchcock said: It’s not about the bang itself, but the anticipation of it coming. The success was tried to be milked with the sequels “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2” (2000) and “Blair Witch” (2016). None of them struck a chord with either the public or the critics. In connection with the 25th anniversary, a new version of the original Blair Witch film will also be made. Is it necessary, then? Series on Tiktok? No, the film still works as just that, says presenter Arman Iranpour (28) in the podcast “Filmhelten”. He has seen his share of classic horror films, but considers “The Blair Witch Project” to be one of the best. Seeing it as a 14-year-old was experienced as “a fever dream”, he says. – It feels like you are with a group of friends out in the forest and experiencing exactly the same as them. You get to know them well through the real conversations they have, and that helps make everything so scary. He believes that there is much about this film that young people can identify with. – Especially filming what you do with your friends. If the film had been made today, it might as well have been launched as a series on TikTok, says Iranpour. No reason to record “The Blair Witch Project” again, is the verdict. The main characters could hardly agree more. Fruit basket in exchange for identity When the news of the remake broke, it spilled over for the actors. In the magazine Variety, they published about the trauma they have lived with after creating the mega-success. They have been praised for their believable acting, which gives the film a higher horror factor. The trio filmed and recorded the sound of practically everything. Nevertheless, they were eaten up with pocket money after the box office success. In the interview, it appears that they received an appreciation from the production company when the film had grossed 100 million dollars: A fruit basket each. – That’s when it became clear to us that we weren’t going to get anything. We were left out of something that we were very involved in creating, says Donahue, who has changed her name to Rei Hance to distance herself from the film. TODAY: When “The Blair Witch Project” is now set to be reshot, the actors fear that their faces and names will again be used in the promotion without being paid for it. Facsimile: Instagram The actors’ problem was that they were completely oblivious when they signed the film contract without the assistance of any trade union. They were admittedly paid NOK 3 million each in a court settlement with the film company. But in comparison, investors who spit in a few dollars have earned up to half a billion kroner. Everyone says they are proud of “The Blair Witch Project”, and that the film is still loved and feared by many. But they come with a clear warning to young newcomers who want to try their hand at the film industry: – Don’t do what we did! ——- “The Blair Witch Project” didn’t just leave its mark on film history. One May day in 2003, the people of Bergen woke up to the unpleasant news that a “ritual site” had been discovered by a hiker by the mountain Fløyen. The Bergen newspaper referred to this as a possible place of sacrifice and described the symbolic figures as “cut out of a horror film”. The last one was completely accurate. WITCHCRAFT CONFIRMED: The desk at Bergensavisen had a good day at work when occult symbols were discovered in the forest close to Fløyen. Facsimile: Bergensavisen The next day, four high school students told that they were the ones behind the mysterious symbols. The girls had just completed a group task in aesthetic subjects to create a geometric work of art with materials from nature. Once out in the dark forest, between huge trees, they had noticed that it was quite impossible not to be inspired by “The Blair Witch Project”. Written sources: The Independent, Rolling Stone Magazine, USA Today, Variety, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Deadline. Hey! Do you have any thoughts on this matter that you’d like to share – or ideas for other stories we should tell? Feel free to send me an email! The rest of news Kultur’s long readings can be found here. Recommended further reading:
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“The Blair Witch Project” tricked and scared a whole world – Culture
