It’s found footage month here at Horror Press, and we couldn’t just let it go by without honoring what is perhaps the most influential elder statesmovie of the subgenre, 1999’s The Blair Witch Project. One of the most profitable independent movies of all time (it made $248.6 million off its roughly $750,000 budget – that’ll buy you a lot of Tamagotchis), the movie thrived off the back of one of the first and best viral marketing campaigns, in which a large number of people, many of whom probably lied about it later, were convinced that it was assembled from the last footage ever shot by a trio of film students who went missing in the woods outside Burkittsville, Maryland.
The Blair Witch Franchise Ranked
Given its profitability, it’s no surprise that The Blair Witch Project launched a film franchise. Admittedly, it’s a little sparse. You couldn’t start a baseball team with the Blair Witch movies, unlike some other horror franchises I could mention. Regardless, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a franchise in possession of the good fortune to last longer than two entries must be in want of a ranking. So that’s what we’re going to do!
As far as Blair Witch “canon” goes, there is a bunch of multimedia ephemera that we won’t be dealing with here. This includes the video games, the comic books, promotional documentaries beyond the original Curse of the Blair Witch, and the eight-part young adult tie-in novel series (which definitely deserves its own article).
#4 Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
There has been something of a push recently to reclaim Book of Shadows as a Halloween III-esque aberration that nevertheless has something compelling to offer when considered separately from the franchise proper. Whether or not you agree with that (I personally don’t, but no matter), it is still the least Blair Witch-y of them all, necessitating placement at the bottom of the list.
For one thing, it lacks the found footage element, immediately shattering the reality of the original movie, which was still fresh in the public consciousness in 2000. The “reenactment of true events” line is a cop-out, it would have been cheaper and more effective to have made it found footage style. While Book of Shadows is an excellent time capsule of turn-of-the-millennium genre tropes and Gen X fashions, as well as providing a nostalgic trip back to Burkitsville, its tale of Blair Witch obsessives just kinda hanging out in an abandoned factory while vaguely eerie shit happens to them doesn’t benefit from being anywhere near the franchise it ostensibly continues.
#3 Blair Witch (2016)
You’re Next, and The Guest director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett weren’t necessarily the obvious duo to make a Blair Witch movie. I think their entry, which follows a young man and his friends on the hunt for his missing sister, makes plenty of other not-obvious choices along the way, which is much to its benefit. It perhaps has a few too many ingredients thrown into the pot, but quite a few of them deliver a movie that will more than appease those who complain that not enough of the terror of the original BWP shows up onscreen.
It’s more modern and in-your-face scary, which is a totally valid approach to the material, especially for the aforementioned audience. However, it’s a little difficult to justify the droning score they use to try and highlight spookier moments, something that does take you out of the vérité feel of the thing, try as they might to make it sound like some sort of eerie diegetic haunted forest noise, hoping you won’t notice.
#2 Curse of the Blair Witch (1999)
This promotional documentary, created to emphasize the “reality” of the viral marketing campaign around The Blair Witch Project, is surprisingly effective. It walks a tightrope that many supplemental pieces in multimedia campaigns would tumble right off of in the future, offering material that enhances and deepens the experience of watching the movie without giving the game away or over-explaining anything. It explores the origins of the main characters and posits more possible sources of the Blair Witch myth, without actually committing to any single explanation. It’s also a parade of the kookiest 1990s eyewear you ever did see, which is a benefit in and of itself.
#1 The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Call it a gimmick, if you want. Complain about how “nothing actually happens,” if you want. But there’s something primordially effective about the original Blair Witch Project. Whether or not you approach it with the belief that it’s a real-life document (something that I’m fairly certain hasn’t happened this century), there is something potent and compelling about three totally believable kids getting lost in the woods and having their sense of security slowly crumble around them.
It’s viscerally real, and the stars at its center don’t get enough credit for convincingly portraying real-life people without any sense of cinematic polish or winking to the camera. Sure, it’s not going to deliver if you’re coming to it expecting a scare-a-minute roller coaster ride. But if you sit down with The Blair Witch Project ready to let it ooze revoltingly all over you with its low-fi VHS quality and urgent sense of how fucked up and dangerous the American woods can be, it’s a powerful, unforgettable experience.