How about a nice camping trip to the woods for Night 3 of 13 Nights of Halloween Horror? Just you, a camcorder, and two friends on a mission to learn a little bit about a local legend…
The Blair Witch Project (1999) follows Heather, Josh, and Michael as they aim to make a documentary about the Blair Witch, a bogeyman figure disappearing people in the woods. (Fun fact: Burkittsville, Maryland, where the movie is set, is only 42 miles away from DC!) After interviewing some locals, Heather and team decide to head to the ominously named Coffin Rock, the site of a ritualistic murder.
Once there, strange things start occurring in the forest. Human-like figures made of sticks and twine appear in the trees around their campsite. Strange noises occur in the forest at night. Stone cairns litter the underbrush. And when the crew finally gets scared enough to convince Heather to leave, they just keep walking in circles…
The Blair Witch Project may be outdated now, but when it came out in 1999, it not only revolutionized horror movies with a new style—hello shaky handheld/found footage horror—but also created one of the first truly viral marketing campaigns for movie promotion. The producers handed out missing flyers and hosted a website asking people for help finding the three main characters. Even their IMDB pages listed them as “missing, presumed dead.”
Truly a novel way to use the new internet.
The Blair Witch Project is available for members of the American University community to borrow on DVD from Bender Library.
Come back tomorrow to see our pick for Night 4 of the 13 Nights of Halloween Horror.