A new “Blair Witch Project” movie is out on Friday. Two months ago, we didn’t even know there was a new “Blair Witch Project” movie — instead, we thought that “You’re Next” and “The Guest” director Adam Wingard had made a found-footage horror film called “The Woods.” But it was this summer when Lionsgate actually revealed at Comic-Con the movie was “Blair Witch,” a sequel/reboot to the original 1999 pic, and one that reportedly does far more justice to it than 2000’s ‘Book Of Shadows‘ did (look for our review tomorrow).
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The bait-and-switch was a neat move, and one that does more than a little to evoke the sense of shock and surprise that accompanied Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s film in 1999. It was a movie that seemingly came out of nowhere, and though it wasn’t entirely original, did a huge amount to popularize what would become known as the found-footage horror film — movies that include the conceit that they were shot by characters within the film, bringing a documentary-style reality to the scary movie.
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With Wingard’s “Blair Witch” in theaters on Friday, we figured it was a good time to look back at the history of the found footage horror, a genre that’s often dismissed (and recently, has started to fall out of favor a little), but has more than a few gems to delve through. See our picks below, and let us know what you would have gone for.
“Cannibal Holocaust” (1980)
The grand-daddy of the genre, and still famous as a particularly gruesome, nasty video, this Italian exploitation picture was a direct inspiration for “The Blair Witch Project” and much of what came after. The earliest film of this sort, Ruggero Deodato’s “Cannibal Holocaust” tracks the efforts of an American anthropologist (Robert Kerman, best known for appearing in porn film “Debbie Does Dallas”) to recover the reels of film shot by an American documentary crew of cannibalistic American tribes before their brutal deaths. (Reels of film that we get to see in all the excruciating detail.) Extreme in its violence and cruelty even for now, but especially for its time, the film was banned in multiple countries, including Italy, and proved to be convincing enough that Deodato was briefly charged with murder, until he could prove that the actors were still alive. It’s a deeply unpleasant film, over-reliant on sexual violence, featuring the death of real animals, spectacularly racist, and the acting is pretty ropey throughout. But to dismiss it entirely would be a mistake: for all its flaws, it’s innovative, impressively made in many respects, and not without thought: its post-colonial points might be made with a sledgehammer (or more accurately, a sharp wooden pole), but they’re undeniable there.
“Man Bites Dog” (1992)
Not to be confused with Lasse Hallstrom’s “My Life As A Dog” (as this writer did, confusedly, for a long time), this jet-black horror comedy was a minor sensation on release, and has only become more and more prescient and relevant as time’s gone on. Directed by (and respectively, edited by, shot by and starring) Rémy Belvaux, (who sadly killed himself away in 2006) André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde, the film sees a film crew following the life of Ben (Poelvoorde), a charming, erudite, completely psychopathic serial killer, who candidly explains his methods and philosophies to the team as they become increasingly complicit in his murders. Slapped with an NC-17 at the time due to a particularly unpleasant sequence where Ben incites the crew to help him gang-rape a young woman (and later disembowel her), it’s infinitely smarter than its gory reputation, a fascinating treatise on documentarian detachment, and an audience’s involvement in screen violence that anticipated other movies that were to follow in the next few years like “Natural Born Killers” and “Funny Games,” not to mention the rise of reality TV. It’s a tough watch, but very deliberately so, and will reward you almost as much as it indicts you.
“The Blair Witch Project” (1999)
Though it took a surprising amount of time for other studios and filmmakers to work out how to replicate its formula (it was almost another full decade until there was another mainstream found-footage hit), “The Blair Witch Project” is undoubtedly the source of the form’s recent popularity. But 17 years on, and with the remake upon us, we shouldn’t blame it: for all those disappointed by the immense hype that accompanied the film’s release, and for its many poor imitators, “The Blair Witch Project” remains quite a special piece of work. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s film tracks three film students (Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams and Joshua Leonard, playing themselves) who headed into Maryland woods in the hope of tracking down a local legend of the Blair Witch, only to have vanished. To some, much of the film is dull, but we love the film’s slow burn, which doesn’t feel the need to manufacture a Hollywood structure or even make you particularly love the characters (there’s almost a pre-mumblecore thing going on), and eschewing the kind of traditional jump scares that many of these movies now rely on. Instead you get a slow, steady jangling of the nerve, culminating in an ending that still haunts you.
“The Curse” (2005)
It’s almost a wonder that “The Curse” isn’t better known among all but the most ardent of horror fans: it’s essentially a blend of ‘Blair Witch,’ J-Horror and more extreme Asian horror cinema, and you’d think it would have become a true cult item rather than an obscurity. Maybe the time for reappraisal is upon us, because it’s completely terrific, and completely terrifying. Directed by Kôji Shiraishi (who most recently made the “Grudge” vs. “Ring” team-up movie “Sadako Vs. Kayako”), it’s more ambitious in scope and form than most films of the genre, though has a similar set-up: it’s apparently the last work of paranormal expert and documentarian Masafumi Kobayashi (Jin Muraki), who has disappeared after his house burned down while he was investigating the death of a neighbor that may be linked to a demon called Kagutaba. It’s more rough around the edges than most of these, but Shiraishi makes a virtue of that, really making it feel like a documentary that could exist in the world, weaving various different threads that pull together expertly, before bringing in some horrifying, and quite extreme, images that sear into your brain. It’s an expertly made piece of work, and while Shiraishi has returned to the found-footage well effectively since (particularly with 2009’s enormously enjoyable Lovecraft homage “Occult”), this remains his masterpiece.
“Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon” (2006)
Fourteen years after “Man Bites Dog,” the serial killer mockumentary genre finally reached American theaters, and while “Behind The Mask” doesn’t have the same depth or insight as its Belgian predecessor, it does have a real, ingrained love of the genre and an occasional inventiveness that makes it worth the watch. Tapping into the same affection for, and desire to subvert, slasher movies that had driven “Scream,” and would soon drive “Cabin In The Woods” and “Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil,” it sees news reporter Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals) follow the titular Leslie (Nathan Baesel) a genial Maryland kid who is aiming to become a slasher villain like Jason or Michael Myers, as he preps an upcoming slaughter of a group of teenagers. Directed by Scott Glosserman, it’s tonally rather uneven — walking the parody/horror line less reliably than Wes Craven or Drew Goddard’s films did or would. And it essentially gives up on the found-footage conceit by the time the blood-letting starts. But there’s real affection and knowledge (a deep, almost theoretical knowledge) of the slasher at play, and as with “Man Bites Dog,” some smart commentary on the relationship between the audience and the genre.