The Blair Witch Project: The Witch and the Camera
It’s easy to get lost in the horror that manifests on the very outer layer of The Blair Witch Project (1999)—as the story unfolds, the audience indirectly experiences harrowing moments of horror via the three main characters’ gruesome and violent reaction to the unknown laughs and hooting in the nights at the wood. The film comes to a terrible end when all three characters meet their inevitable demise, drowning in shrieks and wails of terror, supposedly by the supernatural presence of the witch in the woods. Thus, the antagonistic horror in The Blair Witch Project is defined by the unknown supernatural force lurking in the woods—the horror in the movie is the piles of stone, the blue slime over Josh’s pack, and the woods that feels more like a labyrinth the longer the trio meanders. However, when understanding that the fundamental theme of The Blair Witch Project is the process of making a film, specifically a documentary, it’s possible to understand that the cause of the horror is not the witch, but rather a specific impulse that manifests in a documentarian that had inevitably led to the three student filmmakers’ unfortunate tragedies in the world of The Blair Witch Project.
In contrast to a fictional film, where the story is based on a script that was created prior to the filming, the main objective of a documentary is often to capture reality, and provide proof that something indeed happened, that something indeed is real. It, therefore, consequently becomes possible to sense that an incident never truly occurred without manifest proof of a moment in the form of film or video. Due to said characteristics of a documentary, it is possible for what is defined as a documentary impulse, to manifest in a filmmaker’s process of filming a nonfiction film, where a documentarian senses a need to film everything, and further develops almost an attachment or even an obsession with the act of documenting. If a purpose of a documentary is to present truth to its audience by utilizing footage as its proof, it is only understandable for a documentarian to feel a sense of anxiety or loss when one fails to document a specific moment in time.
The idea of said impulse can be utilized to understand Heather’s reasons for attempting to film everything as possible during her crew’s process of discovering the realities of the Blair Witch. When Mike and Heather break into an argument regarding their whereabouts and the map, Mike shows his discomfort as to why Heather must film everything on camera: “I don’t know why you have to have every conversation on video, man. Tape some ambiance,” to which Heather replies, “’cause we’re making a documentary… I have a camera. Doesn’t hurt ‘cause we’ll all look back on this and laugh heartily, believe me.” Thus, for Heather, her definition of filming a documentary about the Blair Witch is not restricted to the scripted shoots the crew filmed at the cemetery, nor at Coffin Rock, or the ambiance, but rather expands to the raw incidents that unexpectedly occur behind the scenes, and the crews’ unfiltered reaction to the woods they hike through. Heather’s reasoning thus emerges from her want to document raw and authentic truths, rather than scripted truths: “I want to present this in a straightforward way as possible, and I think the legend is unsettling enough.” If documentaries can be scripted, of subjective truths, it’s reasonable to see how Heather might be more focused on filming what naturally happens at the instance—she craves for an authentic, raw, unscripted reality.
It is in said phenomenon that conflicts ensue. When Heather is holding her camera, documenting the realities she sees, she is not only embalming them into film, but she is also given the chance to create her own realities. Unfortunately, the manifestation of this impulse becomes problematic to Heather as a director, as it ultimately led to Heather’s unwillingness to be understanding toward her crewmates. Despite her role as a director, who should be overlooking the conditions of her crewmates, Heather exploits them. When the crew encounters a part of the woods with unsettling trinkets hanging from the tree branches, Heather films the trinkets, despite the wails of Josh and Mike from afar. “That’s enough! Stop taping! Please stop taping!” It’s only after more wails that Heather yells a few okays and starts to walk away from the area, but never quite stop filming the trinkets. In another instance, where after yet another harrowing night of a seemingly supernatural presence harassing the crew, Heather films the messed-up state of their camp, including the blue goo that was smeared on Josh’s belongings. While the other crew members hastily say that they should leave right this instance, Heather meanders around with her camera, asking questions to Josh, almost as if to explain the situation to a non-existent audience. Despite the crew’s statement of, “Heather, let’s move it. I’m not interested in anything anymore,” Heather blankly understands their sentiments, as her camera continues to roll—she defends herself by saying: “I want to go home but it’s important—I just want to get what we can.”
In said situations, Heather’s obsession with capturing realities she deems important heightens the distress and discomfort of the whole crew. The need to return to the car is secondary in comparison to the inexplicable activities occurring; in other words, the need to understand and accommodate her crewmates by sympathizing with their fears and paranoia is secondary to documenting piles of rocks and trinkets despite the crewmates’ wails of horror. By consistently having a camera, Heather is ultimately able to distance herself from actual reality. She is able to reduce her crewmates’ emotional breakdowns and paranoia into a spectacle and provocative entertainment, for with a camera between her and what is actually happening in front of her, Heather is able to equip a voyeuristic lens of observance, rather than a raw experience that affects not only her crewmates but also her. This is exemplified by Mike’s statement toward Heather, when she hastily tells Josh that the crew has to move on, after a traumatic incident of an unexplainable night: “There’s no way we’re taking care of him if we’re going to throw the camera in his face if he’s crying.” Thus, Heather’s attachment to her camera equates to her lack of caring for her crewmates—as a director, she fails to facilitate the filmmaking experience and instead turns it into a traumatizing one, where her crewmates unwillingly become the subject of her documentary.
Ultimately, the reason for Heather’s almost completely dehumanized constitution is her camera. By seeing through a camera, rather than her naked eyes, unexplained events are not horrifying, but more so inviting to Heather, explained by her mumbling of: “I can’t believe we have to leave just when shit’s happening.” Said sentiment is, indeed, reverberated by Josh, when he analyzes Heather’s camera: “I see why you like this video camera so much… it’s not quite reality… it’s totally like a filtered reality, man. It’s like you can pretend everything’s not quite the way it is.” In other words, while Heather longs to document authenticity on camera, it is at the expense of crossing an unethical boundary of pretending what is happening in front of her simply transforming into footage that is revolutionary.
Thus, when everyone meets their inevitable demise at the end of the movie, we can make a conclusion that the responsibility is on Heather, as a director who fails to see her crewmates as real human beings who are on the brink of falling into paranoia, but simply as subjects of appeal that enhance the authenticity of her documentary. If Heather as the director understood the severity of the problem of being stranded nowhere in the woods, as horror consumes the crewmates whole, rather than blinding herself by attempting to embalm realities that she deems as a peculiar and horrendous spectacle, they might have survived. If a filmmaking process is a cooperative work among the crews, which is not only limited to the literal act of filming a documentary but also the well-being of the crew, The Blair Witch Project proves that a certain stubbornness of the director, and their unwillingness to understand the crewmates’ conditions nor their distress, lead to literal demise. It hence makes us wonder: is the horror of the movie the witch, or the camera that distances Heather from her crewmates?