The Big Picture

• The success of The Blair Witch Project lies in its ability to tap into the viewer's imagination and create fear through suggestion rather than explicit gore or visuals.
• The film's ending, which leaves the fate of the characters and the existence of the Blair Witch open to interpretation, divided audiences but ultimately added to the film's lasting impact.
• The unknown and unanswered questions in the film, such as the identity of the witch and the influence over the characters, create a sense of fear and uncertainty that resonates with audiences.

These days, the idea of a low-budget found footage horror film doesn’t turn heads. It’s been done to death after all. From the successful Paranormal Activity movies to other franchises like V/H/S and Hell House, as well as countless other films, audiences have seen it all. Before any of these scared viewers, however, there was The Blair Witch Project in 1999, a movie that frightened people by not showing it all. It wasn’t the first found footage film. Most notably, there was the very controversial Cannibal Holocaust in 1980. It couldn’t match what The Blair Witch Project did, though. Cannibal Holocaust relied on shock value (along with some very real animal killings) and a multitude of gory scenes. It showed you what they wanted you to be afraid of. The horror in The Blair Witch Project worked by whispering a suggestion into your ear and then letting the dark depths of your imagination do the rest of the work.

The Blair Witch Project, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, had a marketing campaign that worked by tapping into the newer world of the internet, and along with a well-made mockumentary, built a universe so realistic that so many of us wondered, is this real? Are they promoting a snuff film? It became a pop culture phenomenon that dared to be watched. We just had to know its secrets. It was a huge success commercially and critically. Still, the reception among theatergoers was mixed. Some praised it as one of the scariest movies ever made, while others dismissed it as boring, disappointed that, in their opinion, nothing much had happened.

‘The Blair Witch Project’ Doesn’t Rely on Blood and Gore To Be Scary

What makes some dismiss The Blair Witch Project is also the trick that makes it work. If you want blood and guts and gory kill scenes, along with sights of a scary witch tromping through the woods after her victims, you’re not going to get that. Instead, you’re going to get what’s mostly a chaotic character study that follows three college students (Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Donahue all going by their real first names) going into the woods to explore the legend of a witch in the Black Hills of Burkitsville, Maryland. It’s there that they get lost and begin to panic and break down when they can’t find their way back out.

To fear and understand the ending of The Blair Witch Project, you first have to pay attention to the exposition. The film found a clever way to explain its villain without an info dump. The young documentary film crew spends much of the first act interviewing residents of Burkitsville, where they learn more about the legend of the Blair witch, along with the story of a serial killer named Rustin Parr, a man who, over half a century earlier in 1940, was convicted of murdering seven children in the area before he was given the death penalty.

Parr had a house in the woods that he would take the children to. We learn that he led his victims down to the basement in pairs, where he would make them stand in the corner because he didn’t want them looking at him. It was then that he would attack, killing the children one by one. If that wasn’t horrendous enough, Parr claimed that he committed these ghastly crimes at the behest of an old woman dressed all in black who he met in the woods. She would speak to him inside his head and convince him to kill. Parr listened, but his eighth victim survived, so Parr walked into town and confessed his crimes, and his story was retold over generations.

‘The Blair Witch Project’ Ends Abruptly

It’s with this knowledge that our protagonists take off into the woods. Along with getting lost, creepy things begin happening. They find strange stick figure dolls hanging from the trees. Someone messes with their stuff at night. And in one particularly spine-chilling scene, we can hear children in the darkness giggling outside their tent, causing the trio to run out screaming at what they see, but which we can only imagine. One day, Josh goes missing. Come nightfall, Heather and Mike can hear him calling out, screaming for help. This comes after they find what looks to be his tongue and teeth wrapped up in a strip of his shirt and left like a present outside their tent flap. As the two remaining friends run to save Josh, they find a dilapidated house in the middle of the woods. We shout out for them not to, but still, they go inside.

They frantically go upstairs and downstairs through the uninhabitable home, and we see several haunting images of children’s hand prints along the crumbling walls. Mike gets to the basement, but shortly after, something off-camera attacks and knocks him down. The film then switches to Heather’s own camera, as she screams in pure terror, trying to find everyone. She then enters the basement and finds Mike standing in the corner, facing the wall, completely motionless. Heather screams, “Mike!” but as she gets closer, she too is knocked down by an unseen force. Her camera hits the floor. Movie over.

2016’s ‘Blair Witch’ Took a Different Approach to the Villain

For some, this was a massive disappointment. That’s it? Nothing else happens? You don’t even see the witch? For fans of the film, this ending is brilliant for multiple reasons. One is that you don’t see what attacks and probably kills the three friends. If you saw it, you would be disappointed, because what we can see in our minds is always scarier than what someone else could create. A later sequel, 2016’s Blair Witch, tried to do the opposite by showing us the monster. While it did indeed look creepy, it wasn’t needed. The unknown worked way better.

Still, whether you loved the ending or hated it, it’s one that did not betray the plot, but instead brought it full circle. We are told, without having it beat over our head (pun intended), that Rustin Parr would make his victims stand in the corner of his basement. Now that’s how Mike and Heather have ended up. The how of that is left unknown and up to interpretation. The most common theory is that they have just discovered the Blair Witch. The same force that once commanded Parr now commands them, telling them to do what Parr would tell the children to do.

Is there more to it though than just a supernatural force? Another popular theory that builds on the first is that Josh is now under the witch’s spell, just as Parr was, and it’s he who kills his friends. There are countless other theories too, a few somewhat logical and some over-the-top. It’s fun to wonder about, but here’s the real answer to what happened to Heather, Mike, and Josh: we don’t know — and that is scary as hell. That is what keeps you awake at night, afraid that the unknown is coming for you next.

The Blair Witch Project is available for streaming on Prime Video in the U.S.

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