Monday, 21 October 2024

The Blair Witch Project

October 21st marks the thirtieth anniversary of the last day anyone saw film students Heather Donahue, Mike Williams or Joshua Leonard alive.

Okay, not really but you know that, right?


The Blair Witch Project (1999) became a huge hit thanks to a fantastic early internet marketing campaign and the (not really convincing) question of whether it could be real, but it was the trope codifier for found footage horror because it works. It wastes no time in setting expectations with that declaration after the title card, establishes that these kids are going to the woods to look into a legendary monster and that Heather and Mike don’t actually know each other in the first three minutes, spends ten minutes setting up the legend through variably-helpful vox pops, and then off we go to see very little rather than have the shaky handheld cameras conveniently catch things and watch the cast melt down over the remaining hour. Having seen plenty of “get on with it!” setups and format-breaking shots and twists since, it’s a classic of the subgenre.

Gameability: Making it was essentially a LARP. There have been official computer games, mystery envelope games and an escape experience, though they all tend to go too much into the lore side and/or show monsters, as well as various media influenced by it. You could certainly do an un-LARP tabletop version, perhaps with unreliable maps...

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