Because they're so manipulative, and conducive to "showing off," first-time directors like to make them. Also, for a subject that is "unreal" it's a challenge for first-time directors to create the realness, the verisimilitude. It's a good "first lesson" when starting out. Can you make the audience suspend belief that it's a movie, and then can you make them suspend belief to be "into" it.
Plus, horror films are good "concept" films. Because people have "fight or flight" reflexes that are basic equipment in our alligator brains, there's a lot of material that can freak us out, and a good director will find a way to do that. It's just that we're hip to their tricks. We've seen it all before. There's nothing new under the projector light.
Until somebody comes along and does something different...like the makers of The Blair Witch Project.
It was just the sketch of an idea, really. Hire three actors. Say that they're playing "themselves" as amateur filmmakers making a documentary about a scary urban legend. Give 'em cameras. And leave 'em in the woods. Then, surprise them every day with some new plot-point they didn't know about.
Then, in your viral marketing campaign for the film, say that the film is "found footage" from the three...who have, themselves, never been found.
It worked like gang-busters, earning what is the largest recorded profit from expenditure for a movie to date.
"Blair Witch" has the best thing going for it: the camera work sucks. And, as has been well-demonstrated before, the stuff you don't see is far scarier than the stuff you do see. And "Blair Witch" suggests the hell out of everything without being tangible about anything. All we know is that the filmmakers are scared and don't know what's going on, as we cut from different cameras' points of view, while scrambling in the dark.
It's amazing that it works so well. And it's amazing that no one had done it before.
It's been done since to lesser effect. We live. We learn.
Oh, and it shouldn't surprise you that some people believe it's real.
Now, that's really scary!
The Set-Up: "In October of 1994, three student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael C. Williams) disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary.
A year later their footage was found."
It was supposed to be a 3-day shoot. This is the night of Day 8.
Action.
Words by Heather Donahue, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez
Pictures by Neal Fredericks and Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
The Blair Witch Project is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Artisan Home Entertainment.
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