Directed by Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez
Found footage horror movie of 3 film students who get lost in the woods while making a documentary. The film slowly ratchets up the tension as the crew can't figure out how to use the map, start walking in circles and then start finding weird things out in the woods: piles of stones suspended in the trees, piles of stones placed in the middle of the night around their tent, and sticks tied together to look like a human figure and suspended in the trees. The tension becomes too much and they begin to fight with each other. When I first saw this movie, I couldn't buy it; how could you get lost in Maryland? It's one of the smallest states in the most heavily populated regions in the US. Follow the stream to civilisation, you babies. It wasn't until the end when they started to frantically run through the house full of children's handprints on the walls and Heather found Mike in the basement standing with his face pressed into the corner like the stories said the serial killer made the children he killed stand that I was scared. THAT image stuck with me for a while. I don't watch horror films so it doesn't take much to bother me. I would recommend it to filmmakers who want to see how ratcheting up the tension, scene by scene, in tiny increments and never letting up can make a simple premise pay off. The squabbling, the helplessness of being lost, even the questions I ask myself while watching - "why do this and not that" add to the growing sense of frustration and unease. Horror fans aren't going to be impressed because they want to see guts and bloody comeuppance for all.
The movie was revolutionary at the time for it's guerilla marketing campaign which began with a website http://www.blairwitch.com/ that told the story of the "legend" of the Blair Witch.
It slowly got around and people started to talk about it and then told their friends who told their friends.
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