Lost in Burkittsville: The Blair Witch Project 1999

At a glance

Directors	Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
Release year	1999
Runtime	81 minutes
Genre	Found-footage horror
Starring	Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard

Plot

In 1994, three film students hike into the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland, to shoot a documentary about a local legend, the Blair Witch. Heather Donahue directs. Michael Williams does sound. Joshua Leonard shoots. They interview townspeople, then walk into the woods. The map fails. Stick figures appear. Something moves the camp at night. The film is the footage that was supposedly found later.

The witch is not shown. The fear is the walk, the argument, and the last house. The students use their own names. The film presents itself as evidence. That presentation was the marketing as much as the plot.

Production

Myrick and Sánchez shot it in Maryland in 1997 for a reported budget in the tens of thousands. The actors were given notes and a GPS-less hike. Much of the dialogue is improvised. The directors left clues at camp and rattled the tents. Heather, Mike, and Josh were not told every scare in advance. The footage was cut down from many hours. It premiered at Sundance in 1999. Artisan Entertainment bought it and built a website that treated the disappearances as real.

The film opened in July 1999 and grossed about $248 million worldwide. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 followed in 2000 and was a conventional sequel the original’s directors did not make. A 2016 film, Blair Witch, is a later sequel. The 1999 film is the one that made found footage a commercial form. Cannibal Holocaust had used the device earlier. This is the one that sold it on the internet.

Cast

Heather Donahue as Heather
Michael C. Williams as Mike
Joshua Leonard as Josh

Trivia

The actors used their real first names. The missing-person posters used their faces.
Donahue later worked under the name Rei Hance.
The directors were not in the woods with a full script. They fed the cast instructions.
Burkittsville is a real town. The Blair Witch is not a local legend from before the film.
The website and the “missing” campaign did as much as the trailer.
The last shot is a man facing a corner. The film never shows the witch.