Lost and Hunted in Bad Woods

Abstract

Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s The Blair Witch Project (1999) launched the horror subgenre of “found footage”—pseudodocumentary horror—into the mainstream. The film was marketed as a true story and features the footage of three student filmmakers who got lost on a trip to document the Blair Witch phenomenon. The film was remarkably effective in using simple cinematic techniques to generate an authenticity aesthetic, and in using a suggestive multiplatform advertising campaign, thus capturing audience interest and generating strong emotional responses. The film tapped into evolved defense mechanisms through its depiction of vulnerable youths getting lost in an unknown, hostile natural environment and being hunted by some malignant, apparently supernatural agent. The film’s promise of authenticity, of real horror, made the narrative premise even more salient to audiences.