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Blair Witch in Retrospect. Clip of the Day

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 9 months ago
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Celebrating the films of 1999, Rotten Tomatoes kicks off a 12-month, retrospective series of features with an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Blair Witch Project. The groundbreaking, record-smashing indie horror flick made its debut at Sundance ten years ago this month, and RT writer Joe Utichi does a great job of reminding us of both the film’s legendary story and its lasting influence.

While I left The Blair Witch Project out of SpoutBlog’s five-day series of “Sundance Stories of Yore,” I wouldn’t have paid as great a tribute as Utichi has. Personally, I never appreciated the film in any way, but thanks to this video I’m now thinking differently about the merits of the production. I may never need to watch the actual film again, but I have to give the filmmakers credit for how they went about getting their 20 hours of footage.

That’s why it’s even more unfortunate that directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick haven’t done anything noteworthy since. At least Blair Witch actor Joshua Leonard has just made his “comeback” with a starring role in the 2009 Sundance hit Humpday. In the past ten years, he’s had small parts in films like Men of Honor, The Shaggy Dog and Prom Night, and interestingly enough he provided the voice of “Tyler Durden” in a video game version of Fight Club (another landmark film from 1999). But with Humpday, which like Blair Witch utilizes his talent for improvisation, he’s in the foreground once again. Now someone needs to give Heather Donahue and Michael C. Williams their due spotlights so we may continue to celebrate a Blair Witch renaissance.

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  • Justin (scswngr) said

    Thank God someone else abhored this movie as much as I did. I have a personal vendetta against it. We drove for 35 minutes the Block at Orange in Anaheim, CA to catch this thing amiss all the hype back in summer of 1999. We waited 4 extra hours to get into the movie. Now, maybe its because I already knew it was fake, or maybe its because all I can remember about this movie to this day is the characters annoying me to death with their incessant arguing over losing the map, but I absolutely cannot stand this movie. After suffering for an hour and a half, the filmmakers have the audacity to have a very suspensful 2 minutes that just end the movie abruptly. Most people I saw the movie with concurred, the ending hit the proverbial nail on the head, and cemented its suckage in history. This film needs to get lost, hopefully the same place they lost that damn map at.