Editorials
Spooky World-Building: Looking Back on the Sci-Fi Channel’s ‘Blair Witch’ Mockumentaries
In professional wrestling, the concept of “Kayfabe” refers to an unspoken agreement between fans and performers to never acknowledge the fictional aspects of the sport. In the horror genre, we have something similar with the way Found Footage movies invite audiences to play along with the scares to enhance their viewing experience. And when it comes to Found Footage, no movie handled this blending of reality and fiction better than The Blair Witch Project, which was accompanied by an ingenious viral marketing campaign featuring websites, dossiers and even missing person posters.
Among this supplemental material was an infamous mockumentary known as Curse of the Blair Witch, which premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel and was instrumental in convincing audiences that the film’s footage was meant to be taken seriously. A year later, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 had its own lesser-known tie-ins with Ben Rock‘s The Burkittsville 7 and Shadow of the Blair Witch. It’s been over two decades since these TV specials first aired, but I think they’re still worth talking about after helping to solidify the Blair Witch franchise in popular culture.
Directed by the same duo behind its parent production, Curse of the Blair Witch originally hit television screens in the summer of 1999. Through archival footage and interviews with friends and family of Heather, Mike and Josh, the hour-long special presents itself as a serious documentary about the “real” story behind the (then) upcoming Blair Witch Project. While there are occasional excerpts from the film to hype up its release, the meat of the special consists in expanding the mythology behind the titular witch and the crimes inspired by her story.
Watching supposed experts comment on the history of witchcraft and Elly Kedward’s cruel demise makes for some surprisingly entertaining television, especially with the spooky illustrations and tongue-in-cheek inclusion of faux ’70s programs. While these details aren’t really necessary to enjoy the film, they enhance the viewing experience by making the lore feel more fleshed-out and believable.
It’s also fun to see investigators discuss details from both the film and Dave Stern’s The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier like fragments of a True Crime incident. Like the film, the special still doesn’t offer up a concrete explanation for the disappearance of these young filmmakers, but piecing together the interconnected story and forming your own theories is half the fun here. In fact, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez‘s narrative puzzle-box likely inspired viral ARGs like Marble Hornets and TheSunVanished despite predating them by literal decades.
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Elly Kedward did nothing wrong!
The added characterization of the film’s protagonists also enhances the experience from an emotional standpoint. Having loved ones comment on the victims’ personal lives before the ill-fated project makes the movie’s horrific ending hit that much harder despite being a foregone conclusion. It’s a lot easier to understand Heather’s insistence on completing her movie once you’re aware of her personal ambitions, and it’s hard not to root for Mike once you find out that he’s a lovable underachiever. The eerie revelation that the film’s footage was inexplicably found within the ruins of the Rustin Parr house also adds an extra layer of mystery to the story, with the special implying that the tapes were somehow already there when the house burned down in the 1940s.
It may lack the raw scares of the feature film, but I appreciate Curse of the Blair Witch as an exercise in spooky world-building and often revisit it alongside the main attraction. Some viewers might be bothered by the lack of a proper resolution, but I think the subtle suggestion that the events of the movie might be real are much scarier than any concrete answer, making this a worthy companion piece to the original film.
A year later, the world would see another expansion of the Blair Witch mythos through Joe Berlinger‘s strange sequel. While Book of Shadows was critically panned and more-or-less disowned by its director, the film has undergone a recent reappraisal as fans realize that it has a lot to say about mass hysteria and the negative effects of media while also serving up some quality scares and a kick-ass soundtrack. It’s still no masterpiece, but I think Blair Witch 2 is an underrated horror flick with its own peculiar backstory.
To me, the most interesting part of this sequel is the studio’s choice of director. While Artisan Entertainment must have thought that hiring the co-creator of HBO’s true crime opus Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills would result in an even more believable Found Footage production, it turned out that Berlinger was vehemently opposed to the sub-genre. An experienced documentarian, the director believed that it was unethical to mislead audiences to sell more movie tickets, resulting in a traditional horror film simply “based on true events.”
However, that wouldn’t stop the movie’s supplemental material from blurring the line between fiction and journalism like the original film. This time, director Ben Rock was brought in to produce a pair of promotional mockumentaries expanding the lore behind Blair Witch 2. Once again airing on the Sci-Fi channel, these specials would actually borrow from Berlinger’s work in True Crime, treating the film’s story like a down-to-earth murder mystery and courtroom drama rather than a paranormal investigation.
Eerily believable.
The first of these specials, Shadow of the Blair Witch follows the prosecution of the “real” Jeff Patterson once he’s accused of the murders which supposedly inspired Berlinger’s Hollywood sequel. By revealing extra details about this troubled young man and the mysterious deaths which led to his imprisonment, the special recontextualizes Book of Shadows as a sensationalist re-enactment cashing in on a real crime, which I think makes the sequel much more interesting as the successor to a Found Footage classic.
In contrast, The Burkittsville 7 returns to the lore of the original film and chronicles the aftermath of the Rustin Parr murders through a more grounded lens, mostly ignoring the supernatural elements. With more than a little inspiration from the real world horrors of Frederick Wiseman’s Titticut Follies and classic True Crime tropes, this is one of the creepiest entries in the Blair Witch franchise as well as one of the most believable. The archival footage and interviews are eerily convincing, and the focus on mental health issues makes it a great prelude to Berlinger’s film.
This commitment to authenticity may be part of what makes these specials so effective in the first place, but it also became a source of controversy. Some viewers apparently objected to Sci-Fi presenting these fictional narratives as real events, which resulted in a minor backlash. The criticism isn’t entirely unwarranted, as misleading media has only become a bigger problem in the digital age, but I don’t think the filmmakers intentionally set out to profit off of naïve viewers.
To me, this kind of promotional material feels a lot more like the cinematic equivalent of prefacing an urban legend with “it happened to a friend of a friend of mine” rather than a legitimate case of false advertising. In all honesty, I actually wish that the 2016 Blair Witch had chosen a similar route during marketing, as it would have helped to contextualize that film’s scares.
Like the aforementioned Kayfabe, which allows wrestling fans to accept undead fighters and dramatic feuds within the ring, a little suspension of disbelief can go a long way when it comes to horror. These TV specials might not be required viewing when revisiting the Blair Witch movies, but I think they perfectly capture the innovative spirit of Myrick and Sanchez’s original film by focusing on subtle and realistic scares. The way I see it, the added context makes these movies even more enjoyable, so I’d recommend these spooky appendices to any fan of the Blair Witch mythos.
After all, wanting to believe makes these stories that much more fun.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on November 1, 2021.
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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