BLAIR WITCH CAST SERIES
It’s Jeffrey Donovan again (he would later star in the FX spy series Burn Notice). From this genuinely entertaining and amusing opening, we’re treated to a bizarre series of flashbacks. One local woman even shows off her business on the side, selling Burkittsville rocks to tourists. Elsewhere, real-life locals tell of how their lives have turned upside down with unwanted visitors descending upon the site of the film en masse. We’re introduced to some new characters, including the lead, Jeffrey Donovan, talking to the camera about his love for the legend. In a bold move, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 opens with real news clips from across the globe covering the hysteria around the original film, acknowledging that it was indeed just a film before turning its attention to Burkittsville, where the supposed Witch resides. Another option was just to shoot it as a straight horror film.
BLAIR WITCH CAST HOW TO
Still, the question loomed: how to go about a follow-up? What do the fans want? The obvious choice would be to shoot a straight sequel, use the same format and hope for the best (the route taken later by less era-defining found footage franchise Paranormal Activity). It was a hard task, but Berlinger seemed like a reliable choice and a good indication that things were at least heading in the right direction. The story concerns the horrific murder of three young boys in West Memphis, and the three teenagers accused of the crime, seemingly because they listened to heavy metal music and wore black t-shirts.
BLAIR WITCH CAST MOVIE
Neither horror nor movie director, Berlinger made a name for himself with his 1996 documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills, still one of the best documentaries ever made. Nonetheless, they would hang around as producers.Įnter Joe Berlinger, who was an inspired choice. But what the hell do you do? Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez had already gone on record to say they would not direct a sequel themselves purely because if it was a disaster, they didn’t want to be held responsible.
Did they genuinely believe that, or did they just enjoy playing along?Ī sequel was inevitable. Okay, some would admit that, yes, it was after all a movie with actors, but the legend was real, right? Some people went even further, still believing the film to be real. People were still debating the reality of it all. Fan-created message boards replaced the fake news stories on various websites created to promote The Blair Witch Project. Phew! Enter Joe BerlingerĪnd that’s where it gets interesting. A masterpiece in indie filmmaking and scary as hell, but it wasn’t real.
But it didn’t take much digging, even then, to discover it was all a work of fiction. Even the mixtape Joshua Leonard had made for the trio’s car-ride into the woods was marketed and sold as the official movie soundtrack. The merchandise embellished the legend. Heather Donahue’s diary that was supposedly found with the film cans was available to purchase. The story was kept alive for as long as possible the three lead actors went into hiding and did zero publicity to convince the public they were still missing.
BLAIR WITCH CAST TV
Then the masterstroke an hour-long documentary, Curse Of The Blair Witch, appeared on TV featuring interviews with locals from the area, the family of the missing filmmakers and local authorities, as well as a few clips from the supposed ‘found footage.’ It may seem naïve now with found footage films such a horror genre staple and the rise of social media and photoshop leaving us to question everything, but people were genuinely curious, was this for real?įast forward a few months, the film became a huge smash and was a phenomenon, the likes of which no horror film has come close to since. A crude website popped up that seemed to be related to the film and had what looked like real news articles giving snippets of the legend and three filmmakers who had gone missing while making a documentary. In the months that followed, although we weren’t aware of it at the time, one of the most ingenious marketing campaigns (that has still not been beaten) was launched. But what was this Blair Witch Project? A genuine phenomenon I’d read an article that summer, it was a tiny paragraph story thrown to the side of the page about a horror film that had supposedly sent audiences fleeing in terror during screenings at the Cannes Film Festival. Maybe an article here or there in the reader’s film magazine of choice. The internet, then still in its infancy, didn’t feed us every tidbit of movie gossip, buzz, scandal or spoilers months in advance. I t’s hard to imagine now, back in the far-off realms of 1999, that a film could arrive, seemingly out of nowhere, to steal the hearts of horror fans and take the entire world by storm.
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