Even Stephen King Was Too Scared to Watch This Classic Horror That Rewrote Genre Rules

How many horrifying things do you need to show viewers to really scare them? There is no clear answer to this question, and different directors solve this problem in different ways.

Some authors literally flood the screen with blood and gore, while others show only brief glimpses of monsters, hoping that the audience will be frightened by their own imagination.

But perhaps the most radical answer to this question was given by the creators of the low-budget movie that became a sudden hit in 1999. There is not a single shot of a monster or villain in the movie, and not a single scene of torture or murder. And yet, many critics consider The Blair Witch Project to be one of the scariest films in the history of cinema.

Stephen King Couldn’t Finish The Blair Witch Project On First Sitting

Among them is Stephen King himself, who, as we know, has seen almost all horror movies ever made, but even he could not watch The Blair Witch Project to the end the first time:

“I was in the hospital and I was doped up. My son brought a VHS tape of it and he said, ‘You gotta watch this.’ Halfway through it, I said, ‘Turn it off it’s too freaky.’”

A Truly Original Idea for a Horror Movie

When film school students Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez first thought about making their low-budget feature debut, they immediately decided to make a horror film.

Myrick and Sanchez came up with the idea for a mockumentary about paranormal investigators who went missing in the woods and whose cameras containing footage were discovered by police and local residents.

At the same time, the co-writers decided that their movie would frighten viewers with something vague and unseen that haunts the young researchers, makes strange noises, and shakes their tent, but only appears on screen in the very last frames of the movie.

Although the witch myth is completely fictional and none of the people mentioned in it ever existed, the co-writers built the legend around the real town of Burkittsville, Maryland, to make the myth more believable.

When writing the script, Myrick and Sanchez wrote in detail everything that would happen to the three main characters, but they did not come up with any dialogue. They felt that to be more convincing, the movie should be actors’ improvisation on the topics mentioned in the script.

The Three Lead Actors Were On Their Own In The Woods

When filming began, instead of having a full crew accompany the actors, Myrick and Sanchez trained the actors to use hand-held cameras and sent them into the woods to film each other.

For eight days, the actors lived in the woods, following the instructions of GPS navigators, which were programmed with the coordinates of pre-selected locations. And notes from containers were placed around the forest with the directors’ instructions, many of which pitted the characters against each other to create an atmosphere of suspicion and tension.

The actors saw the directors only a few times a day, when they came to pick up the material they had shot and to bring charged batteries for the cameras and food. The latter became less and less every day, so the actors became more and more irritated.

The Blair Witch Project Became a Horror Genre Phenomenon

By the time the film was released, the authors had already created its promotional website, assuring visitors of the authenticity of the movie, and this site, with "police reports" and "interviews with witnesses," became the center of promotion for the film.

Although the end credits of The Blair Witch Project clearly stated that everything shown in the movie was fictional, the movie was still promoted as a "true story."

Thanks to this, as well as rave reviews from critics eager to praise the unconventional horror, The Blair Witch Project, released in 1999, grossed $249 million worldwide. This was a groundbreaking result for an amateur, low-budget film shot by non-professionals in just eight days.

Source: History of Horror Series (via IndieWire)