The Blair Witch Project isn’t really about a witch, it’s about madness and murder
There’s a new Blair Witch film coming out so I just re-watched the original Blair Witch Project and its underrated sequel, Book of Shadows. You should probably watch Book of Shadows if you haven’t because it introduces an idea that might make you re-interpret the first film. That idea is collective hysteria.
Because the characters in the Blair Witch films become frightened and desperate and because they all to some extent come to believe that the legend of the Blair Witch is true, they go mad and commit acts of murder. What makes the Blair Witch legend so frightening is not that there’s a decrepit old lady out in the woods. What makes it so frightening is that believing the legend causes people to become delusional and homicidal.
In The Blair Witch Project, Heather, Josh, and Mike venture into the woods to make a documentary about the Blair Witch who, legend has it, once possessed a man named Rustin Parr and compelled him to murder children. While exploring the woods where the witch is believed to dwell, the intrepid filmmakers get lost and find strange wooden sculptures, rock piles, and slime surrounding their campground. They also hear creepy noises and voices coming from the woods late at night. Josh then goes missing and when Heather and Mike search for him, they end up in an abandoned house where they are presumably both killed.
What’s striking about The Blair Witch Project is that there’s really not much evidence that anything supernatural is occurring. There are rock piles, wooden sculptures, and slime. Since all of these items are usually discovered outside the group’s tent when they wake up in the morning, it’s obvious that someone is messing around with their campsite during the night. Who could be doing this? Um, Josh…duh!
We know that Josh can quietly slip out of the tent without being detected because he disappears toward the end of the film. They go to bed, they wake up, and Josh is gone. So if he can sneak out without Heather and Mike knowing, then why couldn’t he have gone out at night and made the wooden sculptures, piled the rocks, and used…I don’t know, toothpaste or shampoo or something to cover his belongings with “slime”?
There’s a scene after Josh goes missing where Heather discovers a bundle of sticks containing teeth, blood, and hair. This could be another product of Josh’s insanity. He believes perhaps that he’s being controlled by the Blair Witch, just like the child murderer Rustin Parr claimed he was under the witch’s influence. So Josh hurts himself and leaves pieces of himself outside the tent to make Heather and Mike think he’s being tortured. Their concern for his safety is their motivation for running out to the abandoned house to find him. We can hear Josh’s screams coming from the house but we never actually see Josh. That’s because Josh is lurking in the shadows, waiting for his friends to enter his trap. It’s Josh who kills Heather and Mike, not some invisible ghoul.
But Josh isn’t the only character who goes insane. Heather and Mike also see and hear things that may not be real. At one point, they walk south all day but end up in the same place they started. Is this a supernatural event or are they just lost and roaming around in circles? None of the characters ever seem to know where they’re going and they’ve lost their map. They’re just really lost…and really going nuts. Their confusion and isolation push them to a breaking point. In one scene, we see Josh crying by himself. We see Mike flip out and admit to kicking the map into the creek on purpose. We see Heather sobbing, admitting on camera that she’s probably going to die.
At night, they all hear voices coming from the woods. The audience can hear the voices too which might poke a hole in my theory. Except we’re not really watching undoctored footage, are we? It’s been edited by someone. And in Book of Shadows, we learn that “objective” camera footage may not necessarily tell the truth.
Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows tells the story of a group of Blair Witch Project movie fans who sign up for a tour that takes them into the same woods where Heather, Josh, and Mike were last seen. The group of fans reach the site of Rustin Parr’s house and then throw a raucous little party by the campfire. When they wake up the next morning, they have no memory of what happened the previous night. They attempt to piece together the events using partially-destroyed camera footage. The footage is missing hours of material and needs to be played backwards, for some reason. [warning: spoilers] To the group’s horror, they discover that they all went mad and murdered a group of tourists. As they’re discovering this, they’re still delusional and mis-remembering events. One member of the group believes his girlfriend is possessed by the Blair Witch so he hangs her. When he’s captured by the police, he’s shown security camera footage that shows his innocent girlfriend begging for her life. He screams at the police, “that’s not how it happened!” [spoilers over]
We learn from Book of Shadows that footage can be misleading and/or manipulated, especially when it’s being shot by people who are going mad. So it’s possible that the footage we’re watching in The Blair Witch Project doesn’t show us everything that actually happened. There are huge portions of Heather, Josh, and Mike’s stories that we’re not privy to.
One of the reasons why I think Book of Shadows is so underrated is that it expands our understanding of the first film. It messes with our heads and leaves us asking questions. The conclusion of Book Of Shadows suggests that collective hysteria is at least partly to blame for all these horrific deaths attributed to the Blair Witch. Maybe this hysteria is brought on by an actual witch…or maybe it isn’t. In either case, it’s interesting to re-watch The Blair Witch Project while considering the possibility that the characters are possessed by a malevolent force that’s more psychological than supernatural.
Back in 1999 when The Blair Witch Project was released, I recall many of my childhood friends insisting that it was real. Kids are dumb and gullible but then, so are adults. It’s not really that hard to believe that terrified, desperate, and isolated people who think they’re being hunted by a witch might go a little mad…
