![]() ![]() Spiritual Content: The very title and premise of the film fixates on witchcraft and the occult. Also, Heather and Michael care enough for their friend that they put aside their own fear to search for Josh when he is abducted. Positive Elements: Unlike the glamorized portrayals of witchcraft presented in much of popular media (think of shows such as Charmed), this film convinces viewers that witches are scary, evil and undesirable. ![]() Then the camera is knocked to the ground and the credits roll. They race to investigate the elusive sound. Finally the two remaining filmmakers stumble (at night) upon an abandoned, rundown house from which emanates moaning and screaming. Then Josh disappears and a bloody bundle of twigs is “delivered” which contains what they believe to be a part of his body. Needless to say, they get lost, and each night scary things happen. (The legend involves a witch who abducts and kills both children and adults). ![]() ![]() After interviewing a few local townsfolk about the Blair Witch legend, the three young adults hike deep into the nearby woods to get footage of locations associated with the legend. But don’t be fooled by Artisan Entertainment’s efforts to convince the average moviegoer that this film is true. One year later, their footage was found.” The remaining 79 minutes of The Blair Witch Project is “extracted” from that footage, all of which is shot with handheld camcorders and a 16 mm camera. This was, of course, hysteria, hype, and a bit of fun in the times when water-cooler conversations drove public interest before memes and hashtags, but it's a testament to just how successfully The Blair Witch Project's ending achieved its objectives.The movie begins with text which reads, “In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittesville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary. The ambiguity was pulled off with such aplomb that horror aficionados, none of whom were numb to the found footage genre's real-but-not tricks and tropes, legitimately questioned whether the whole release wasn't actually just part of the Blair Witch monster's curse – one to which they'd now succumbed just by watching it. The final shots of The Blair Witch Project left 1990s audiences leaving theaters with a genuine sense of unease (which is why it's still the best Blair Witch movie). By now, the legendary status of The Blair Witch Project is undebatable, but the movie wouldn't have reached it without the ending. It was the first found-footage movie pertaining to the supernatural that genuinely had audiences questioning its status as fiction. Then, The Blair Witch Project came along and changed everything. The found footage format was used to attempt this with movies like Cannibal Holocaust and equally controversial The Faces of Death, but the conceit was always "how close to a snuff film can we make without actually making a snuff film", relying on visceral disgust more than creating fear from psychological realism. There she sees Mike facing the corner, just like Kyle Brody did when Parr killed the children, and Heather screams as she’s attacked by something and drops the camera, leaving lots of open Blair Witch Project questions. Mike is attacked by something off-camera, leading to Heather picking it up and heading into the basement. The duo enters the house, following Josh’s screams and finding strange symbols and hand prints on the wall. While The Blair Witch Project has three alternate endings, the following events are considered canon in the franchise. The Blair Witch Project's ending finds Heather and Mike coming across what appears to be Rustin Parr’s abandoned house, which should be impossible since it was burned down following his execution in 1941. As a side-note, the “real footage” viral marketing was so effective at fooling people that the Maryland town of Burkittsville suffered from the association with such gory happenings on its back doorstep. His screams are later heard coming from the woods, with Heather finding the aforementioned bloody thing seemingly filled with his remains. The nerves of the group fray as the days pass and Josh eventually goes missing. They hear strange noises in the woods at night and find stick men suspended from trees. The group then hikes into the woods near Burkittsville only to quickly find themselves lost. One interviewee even claims to have seen the Blair Witch, describing her as a half-human, half-animal creature. The Blair Witch Project features the students investigating the legend of the witch, including interviews with locals about the various myths that have cropped up around her. ![]()
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