An absolutely brilliant horror film

Rating: Null/10 (14 March 2015)

Although this can safely be called one of the films that defined the 1990s, I had never seen it before. The film was not the first of the found footage genre but it is nevertheless an incredibly innovative film. The information about the Blair Witch and Rustin Parr is related to the audience early in the film through interviews with the people of Burkittsville, most of whom dismiss the stories about the Witch as nothing more than a local legend. This is a very clever idea as most towns have stories about ghosts which few take seriously. For instance, there is a castle not two miles from where I live which is supposedly haunted! The stories are regarded by Heather, Josh and Mike as cool material for their documentary but nothing more than that, certainly not as a warning for things to come. It foreshadows their later trouble for the audience but not the characters.
The writers and directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez were able to give a new spin to a very old idea: that what you don't see is more frightening than what you do. This technique is used repeatedly and very effectively in the film with the noises that the characters hear at night. Several of these scenes take place in almost complete darkness, adding to the effect. The film was made on the cheap over a mere eight days and features no real special effects, instead relying on humanity's ancient and instinctual fear of the unknown to provide its scares rather than digitally rendered gods and monsters. Things like the weird, life size stick figures are enough to creep us out!
The three lead actors Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams - who all use their real names - shot almost all of the film personally. They were given an outline of the plot but improvised the dialogue themselves. They interrupt each other and occasionally stumble over their words, giving the film a wonderfully authentic quality. This is helped by the fact that Heather, Josh and Mike all have flaws and seem like real people.
None of them are especially pleasant people to begin with. As their situations worsens, we see them all go through waves of anger, upset and hysteria to the point that they're borderline unstable. Many of us would try to deny it but I think that 99% of people would react the same way. The fact that Heather keeps recording when logic would dictate that they drop the camera is explained by the fact that it helps her to cope. I would ditch it the first chance that I got but I can well imagine other people holding on to it for the same reason as Heather. There isn't a single part of their behaviour that doesn't ring true. Roger Ebert compared her wonderfully acted (and later much parodied!) apology to the camera to Robert Scott's final diary entries before he froze to death in the Antarctic and I think that that says it best.
I don't usually comment on the promotional side of films but I think that it is worth mentioning in this case. It was one of the first films to be very heavily marketed on the Internet, something which we take for granted today but was groundbreaking in its day. A mockumentary - which, oddly enough, I had seen - was made to promote the film as were several tie-in websites concerning Burkittsville and the police investigation into the disappearances. It was essentially an attempt to do deliberately online what Orson Welles had done accidentally on the radio in 1938. It led to numerous debates as to whether the film was fiction or an actual documentary. We were all far too young to (officially!) see the film but I remember talking about with my friends in school at the time. This kind of campaign would probably not work in 2015 but it was a fantastic idea in 1999.