The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project is an American horror film released in 1999. The narrative is presented as a documentary pieced together from amateur footage. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company.

The film relates the story of three young student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams) who hike into the Black Hills of Burkittsville, Maryland to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch, and subsequently go missing. The viewer is told that the three were never found, although their video and sound equipment (along with most of the footage they shot) was discovered a year later. This "recovered footage" is presented as the film the viewer is watching.

A sequel to The Blair Witch Project was released on October 27, 2000 entitled Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. A second sequel was planned for the following year, but did not materialize.

Film students Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard go missing in October 1994 while making a documentary about the Blair Witch, a legendary creature believed to haunt the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. They disappear soon after, and their bodies are never found. A year later, the footage the students shot has been recovered, and the film in its entirety is composed of fragments of that footage.

Shot in a mixture of color and black and white, with shaky handheld camera movements and only natural lighting, the footage includes material that was intended to be used in the documentary, but the bulk of the film shows the experience of the three students as they wander through the woods. Occasionally, the view switches out to a kind of "mood footage" (footage of no characters, just video of the environment) while the audio track continues.

Soon after setting out, they become hopelessly lost; their situation worsens when Michael, in frustration, kicks their only map of the area into the river without telling the others. Over a period of several days, a number of terrifying, mysterious, and possibly supernatural events occur. In one scene, the crew hikes for more than half of the day only to end up in the same spot where they had started.

Much of the plot is open to the viewer's interpretation, including the finale; few concrete indications are given as to the eventual fate of the three filmmakers.