Whenever I travel, my father undoubtedly (and mostly as a joke) states “stay out of the woods”, a warning to steer clear of those untrodden parts of any country in which evil normally tends to lurk, whether it is of our world or supernatural. Art has always been fascinated with the unknown, and I’ve often spoken about how the key to good horror is to build on the inherent fear that something is lurking in the shadows, but yet we don’t know what it is precisely  – its not what stands in the dark that terrifies us, but rather the feeling that there might be something there, observing and waiting to pounce. Several horror films have been built on the idea of precocious people believing that they are invincible and choosing to risk their sanity, and often their lives, by venturing off into places that they know are not meant for us, but yet still believe that they are able to overcome the sinister forces that lurk within. The Blair Witch Project became perhaps the most vital horror sensation of the 1990s purely as a result of its focus on this particular concept, down to the smallest detail. Conceived and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, the film follows a trio of film students who venture into the forests of Maryland, intent on finding the roots of the mythical Blair Witch, a sinister figure that has been the supposed cause of many deaths in the area. Naturally, our protagonists are overly confident to the point of being arrogant, which soon retreats the moment they realize that they have inadvertently put themselves in the path of total danger, and that whatever it is haunting them is a very real threat, and that they are its prey. A film that has aged remarkably well in the quarter-century since its release, and which remains the gold-standard for independent horror, The Blair Witch Project is every bit as terrifying and brilliant today as it was when it was first released, a remarkable achievement for a film that exists in a genre that doesn’t always maintain the reputation of even the most daring of works.

The primary reason The Blair Witch Project has remained so omnipresent in the culture, casting an endlessly long shadow on every horror film released in the years that followed, comes down to its status as pure innovation, condensed into 78 minutes of unhinged terror. There is a lot of distance between this film and contemporary audiences, so we are all very much aware of its existence and the production process, but even with the knowledge that it is not real, we find ourselves incredibly engaged, particularly since it was pioneering a genre that has now been taken for granted, but was akin to an explosion of pure ambition over two decades ago when it was first encountered by unsuspecting audiences who did not know what to expect from this material. Myrick and Sánchez work laboriously to create something wholly original – there had been flirtations with horror films made using a mockumentary style before, but with the exception of Ghostwatch a few years prior (and a few other scattered examples, and perhaps we can even trace it back to Orson Welles The War of the Worlds broadcast), we had never seen something quite like this, a film designed to fool the audience into thinking what they were seeing was not only genuine, but posed a very real danger to us, almost as if we have encountered something that we should not have seen, and the very act of watching it means that we are somehow complicit in its underlying malice. The formal aspects of the film are absolutely remarkable, and we find that the bare-boned structure of the film, coupled with a nearly non-existent resource that forced everything to be produced on a shoestring budget, was an exceptional tool to explore these themes. Necessity breeds innovation, and the lack of glossy filmmaking has a much more positive effect, since it immediately offers us something entirely engaging while still retaining certain qualities that keep it quite aloof where it matters.

While the form itself may be incredibly ingenious and the likely reason the film has maintained its reputation over the years, The Blair Witch Project is as narratively and thematically rich as it is formally experimental and innovative. Like the aforementioned works that were designed to be viewed as genuine, this film realizes that the audience is the single most underused tool in cinema – we tend to sit passively, just watching events evolve on screen, and very rarely do we find ourselves becoming active participants, which is something that changes with this film. Suddenly, we are not just viewers, but instead witnesses to something much darker and more sinister than we could ever fathom, viewing the world through a horrifying lens in which we become complicit in the gradual erosion of humanity, facilitators of its inherent cruelty. This is a slightly over-dramatic assessment, but it’s something that Myrick and Sánchez explore in extensive detail, taking the time to develop a narrative that feels rich and evocative, having a sense of chaos and despair that is very difficult to incite in viewers. A large part of the film is built around the intentional lack of answers – we seek solutions to these enigmatic mysteries, but are left entirely at a loss for clarity, and instead forced into a position of deep despair and outright horror, helplessly witnessing something truly terrifying on screen. A bold atmospheric horror that has many layers – several fantastic theorists have offered insightful deconstructions on all the artistic, historical and philosophical influences behind this film, but the quality that keeps The Blair Witch Project afloat is its willingness to not bend its knee to the audience, but rather forces us to meet it at its level, a horrifying but ultimately very rewarding experience that offers us much more than we would expect.

I tend to be quite hesitant to use the word “written” to refer to what Myrick and Sánchez did when constructing this film, solely because their work (as exceptional as it was) managed to be successful solely through the three actors that they cast to play the central roles. They had quite a challenge ahead of them during the casting process, as they needed to find non-professional or lesser-known actors that were as obscure as possible to convince viewers that this footage was real, but also skillful enough to improvise the majority of the dialogue, and portray the range of emotions and scope of their fear entirely convincingly. Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard never quite achieved much success in the years that have followed, primarily because their entire personas were inextricably tied to this film (and it didn’t help that they used their real names, creating a sense that they were these characters, made especially more difficult since they were unknown actors), but any actor who can confidently say that they were not only participants in The Blair Witch Project, but the main artistic propellants, deserve an abundance of acclaim. These are well-crafted, complex performances that are stunningly authentic, and while anyone with such a film on their résumé deserves a place in the canon of great horror films, it’s sadly understandable how this was the peak of their careers as far as screen performances. Nevertheless, they bring such extraordinary skill to the proceedings, and lead us down this sinister path, becoming our inadvertent guides into some terrifying realm, and anchoring this already unsettling, unnerving narrative that is made only richer through their spirited performances.

Generally, 1999 is viewed as one of those folkloric years in which several of the most iconic and important works of cinema were released – and even if you don’t subscribe to the belief that some years are far superior to others, its impossible to not at least be moderately interested in the idea that this was some watershed moment for the industry, not necessarily because of the quality of the work being produced, but rather the ambition and scope with which many young filmmakers were crafting their works. The Blair Witch Project somehow stands as one of the defining works of this era, not solely because of its ideas, but also how it was made, earning its place amongst the culture and within the horror genre, which it helped define in a way that we have not often seen captured this brilliantly on screen. It’s a daring, provocative work that is as compelling as it is outrageously unsettling – and the lack of jumpscares (except the very final moments, which could be a contender for the most horrifying conclusion to any film in this genre) and the focus instead on dense, atmospheric horror makes for a more engaging, disconcerting experience. There have been countless attempts to recreate the success of this film (including two ill-fated sequels), but nothing has ever – or perhaps will ever – come close to the brilliance of this film, one of the rare instances of an absolute masterpiece that no one should have to endure more than once.