5/5/2023 0 Comments Blair witch project witch face"I have seen the new face of movie horror," gushed Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. Shot over just eight days with a 68-page script that called for chunks to be improvised, Blair Witch wowed critics with its grainy footage, realistic kids and unsettling finale (spoiler alert!) - a fallen camera capturing Joshua as he stares silently into the corner of an abandoned shack. "We thought, 'Why not do that with a horror story?'" "When we were in college, we both thought the scariest movies out there were the documentaries on UFOs and Bigfoot," Sanchez says. Williams and Joshua Leonard, using their real names) who disappeared in the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Md., while investigating the legend known as the Blair Witch. "Simply put," says Mark Evan Schwartz, associate professor of screenwriting at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, "it worked because it was scary as hell."Ĭertainly, critics were sold from the start on the tale by first-time directors Daniel Myrick and Sanchez, who conceived a loose story about three student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Michael C. "Kids want to feel that could be them or their friends shooting the movie."īut for all the marketing and Internet hype surrounding the movie, Blair Witch's impact lasts for a more basic reason. "It's the one genre that does well without big stars," says Jeff Bock, an analyst for Exhibitor Relations. Blair Witch's no-name cast remains the template for teen horror.It took more than eight years for another studio film to even attempt the cheap shooting style of Blair Witch: J.J.The original Paranormal Activity is a distant second with $108 million in 2009. The film remains the highest-grossing found-footage movie ever at $141 million domestically.It's a lot bigger than Hollywood's first found-footage movie." "But I'm not sure people realize just how important it was. "Over the years, I think people have come to see what a landmark film The Blair Witch Project was," says Paul Dergarabedian of box office firm Rentrak. 8, followed by the sci-fi tale Project Almanac on Jan. The found-footage thriller Into the Storm arrives Aug. Three more are due in the next six months, including the sixth installment of the Paranormal Activity franchise. The movie website Box Office Mojo lists nearly two dozen found-footage movies since the film opened, including the alien-on-video kids flick, Earth to Echo, in theaters now. Since its release on 27 screens July 16, 1999, Blair Witch has launched myriad imitators.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |