Editorials
Why ‘Blair Witch’ is so Important and Exciting to so Many People
Last night brought one of the most exciting horror announcements in probably the last decade: The Woods is actually Blair Witch, the third film in the franchise that began in 1999. Our own Brad Miska saw it several months ago and hailed it as the, “…game-changer horror fans desperately have been waiting for” and saying that it, “…breaks the mold of traditional horror and pushes the boundaries to the absolute brink.” You can read his full review right here.
This news set off what can only be described as a detonation of excitement across social media. There was a frenzy of people powering through incredulity and the vast majority of them arriving at a place of sheer glee and wonder.
As I watched this mass explosion of passion and delight, I found myself going back to when the first film came out and thinking about why it still has such an impact today. What follows are my own personal thoughts and opinions.
I remember when The Blair Witch Project was coming out. They hype around the movie was absolutely insane. It was written about in high-profile magazines, it was spoken about on talk shows… It was the water cooler hot topic discussion for a while and all for very good reason. The push was that this movie was groundbreaking, that it was the most terrifying movie in a long, long time.
But what set this movie apart was that the push wasn’t just how scary it was but also the attempt to keep up appearances that the events in the movie actually happened. This tactic was done through absolutely genius marketing that simply cannot be replicated these days.
You see, when they were pushing The Blair Witch Project the internet was a vastly different place. Google had been around for only a year and people were still using services like AOL or search engines like Yahoo, AskJeeves, Lycos, etc… Something to keep in mind about these search engines is that they weren’t exactly too hot at bringing the most accurate search results. The search engine game was still being worked on, something that Google was nailing but still building the user base for.
Not just content to create their own website, which is still around, I remember there being other websites created that corroborated the events in the film and added to the mythology. So what happened is that I went to search for “The Blair Witch Project fake or real” and the results made it seem like it was actually real. Furthermore, if you went to IMDb and searched for the stars of the movie, they were listed as “missing, presumed dead” (source). The studio planned it all this way and pretty much everyone fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. It was nothing short of incredible.
The marketing ploy worked and the film, which had an estimated budget of $60,000, went on to earn nearly $250 million worldwide, making it one of the best return-on-investment films ever released.
These days, search engines are so efficient that any attempt at creating a hoax will quickly be sniffed out and labeled as such. Snopes is almost always the internet user’s best friend but sometimes, just sometimes, it can be a real stick in the mud.
One question that I saw come up a few times (not often, mind you) on social media was essentially a rephrasing of, “Who cares? What does it matter?” After all, Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows was critically panned (although there are those who defend it), so why should people be excited for a third film that took 16 years to arrive? Honestly, those are fair questions. For many people, The Blair Witch Project wasn’t something they were a part of. Perhaps they were too young to appreciate the brilliance of the marketing. Maybe they never watched the original until found footage became a huge thing, so it felt like it couldn’t really compete against films like Paranormal Activity or [REC], which moved at a far brisker pace and definitely brought more in the way of visual trickery.
But what I’m seeing here is much the same as what I saw when Jurassic World or Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out. The high school and college kids who saw the first film in theaters have aged to the point that they might have kids that are old enough to see Blair Witch with them. It’s not just a horror movie, it’s a celebration of nostalgia while simultaneously passing the torch on to a new generation. For many, that alone is something worth celebrating. That is something to be excited about because it’s a chance to connect to our own youth and relive those days when we felt terror. Only this time we’re not alone.
Last night the horror community bonded over this reveal and it was a glorious sight. It was the kind of event that reminded me how our passion can surpass our differences. Sure, we may not agree on the worth of remakes and we definitely don’t always see eye-to-eye when it comes to the use of CGI over practical FX. But those can all be put to the side when we recognize that there is the potential for a great story, one that will shake us to our core.
That’s the power of Blair Witch. That’s what it awoke in all of us. Whether the world agrees with Brad’s review or not after September 16th doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that nearly all of us came together in joy and hope that we’d be seeing something special. That right there made it all worthwhile for me.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
Looking for New Episodes of “Chucky” on Peacock? Here’s What Changed
‘Mountain Man’ – Joe Manganiello Will Battle Zombies in Upcoming Horror Movie
‘The Blair Witch Project’ – Original Stars Release a Statement Asking Lionsgate for Residuals & Recognition
‘Trap’ – Official Trailer Previews a Wild New Horror Experience from M. Night Shyamalan
‘Longlegs’ – New Teaser Video for NEON Horror Movie Is Soaked in Cryptic Eeriness
You must be logged in to post a comment.