‘It makes me happy’: why The Blair Witch Project is my favorite movie | The Blair Witch Project

Me‘I’m not sure I can blame anyone for choosing, like, a film that they feel good about, a film that the characters feel good about. Cinema is supposed to confuse us – that’s the whole point. Nemo feels good when he’s found, and we feel good about him. In this sense, horror films should make us feel disgusted. So, when it was released in 1999, why The Blair Witch Project – a film in which three film students are hunted, threatened and killed by an unseen entity – making around $250m at the box office? It’s like Love Actually. Of the millions of people who paid to sit and watch the struggles of Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, I’m sure not a single one went into this movie expecting their day to be ruined.

I was too young to see The Blair Witch Project when it came out, but like many other children of laissez-faire 90s parents, I found a way. And that way was sleeping with a friend. Fingers with Pizza Hut grease, we put the 15th VHS cassette in the player and happily waited for the evil to scare us. And it did. But not the way we are used to. So far, I’ve seen the likes of Hellraiser, Candyman and Nightmare on Elm Street – horror meant guts spilled across the screen like partygoers. But what Blair Witch lacked in viscera is made up for in horror, not cut. The fact that you didn’t even see a familiar witch made it even more terrifying. Believe me, in the mind of a kid who was fed horror movies like a lot of breakfast cereal, the witch was scarier than the bastard son of Pinhead and Freddy Krueger. And I…loved him?

The Blair Witch scene that was discovered was so clever at the time that, combined with clever marketing, many people thought it was real. Although I don’t remember being caught up in the frenzy of this film, it reminded me of something my older brother would shoot on his handheld camcorder. One such film involved our father running through a graveyard wearing a werewolf mask. And while I’m not sure Werewolf of the City could be mistaken for proof of the existence of werewolves, it’s probably a piece of graphic art you’ve never heard of. But aside from that it reminded me of my brother’s early work, I was tired of Blair Witch.

The horror whips you through your bones. We watch three video students – Heather, an annoying type-A shooter, followed by two sarcastic X-boys – descend on the Maryland desert to document a murderous witch who is said to roam the area. Chasing the dangers of youthful hubris, the students find themselves mentally tortured by twine handicrafts, lost and finally lured to their deaths in an empty house. Real facts. Sure, not in the old sense. More so in the sense that every shaky, hand-held frame depicting their fall is so realistic that it erases every moment from the mind of you, the viewer. At the climax of the film; What Heather said was annoying and tearful to her and the parents of her fellow students, she said: “I’m afraid to close my eyes, and I’m afraid to open them. This is a paradox at the heart of the worst; you don’t want to look, and yet you can’t look away.”

When you’re torn between looking and not looking, all that matters in the world is what’s on the screen. This is probably why I, a very anxious person, have been watching Blair Witch so many times. It comforts me. If I’m on the edge of horror, why on earth would I want to watch a movie about people who aren’t? Good for them? No. There is nothing that comforts me more than seeing others descend (hypothetically) into hell. I think it’s the same feeling as being at home, curled up on the couch during a rainstorm. I’m not being chased out into the desert by a madman, a singer, but watching this happen to actors, just a little bit of their fear that I have as a vaccine for fear itself. Think of it as a drug scare. I don’t think I’ll live to see doctors prescribe Blair Witch or any other horror movie as a treatment for anxiety. But it sure as hell beats big coloring books and breathing.