"I don't care what you've read about THE BLAIR WITCH, or who has spoken to you about the hype surrounding it... this is the movie to see this Summer." (29th June 1999)

      ...and so began, yet another, delirious review from Harry Knowles' movie news and gossip Internet site Aint-It-Cool-News- (the same site which famously turned the tide of negative opinion in the months running up to the release of James Cameron's TITANIC). It was just one many of glowing soundbytes which peppered the net, paving the way for the unprecedented success of the micro-budgeted horror film, which became this year's most unlikely success story.

      THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT's chilling opening epitaph, one, that by November, every genre fan in the UK will know like a mantra, neatly illustrates the bare bones of the film: "In October of 1994, three student film makers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary.... A year later their footage was found." The film, which opens in the UK on October 29th- just in time for Halloween, was made for a paltry sum (anywhere between $15,000 and $350,000- depending on who you believe); and was the brainchild of writer-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez. They dreamed up the original idea whilst they were studying at Florida University to make a 'mockumentary' based around a purely fictional urban (or to be more exact 'rural') legend; and undeterred by their film-school professor's reputed comment that she thought it was "...the lamest thing I ever heard", they set about five years worth of preparation. Creating a Blair Witch mythology- which some have compared to the methodical intricacy of Tolkien, it begins in 1785, when an old woman, accused of witchcraft, is left to die in the freezing woods on the outskirts of the small town of Blair (later to become Burkittsville); and continued with a series of macabre murders and disappearances which plague the local area over the following two centuries. The film which, at this point, was still conceived as a more conventional mixture of 'found' footage and typical TV documentary filler, began to take shape when, after a year long audition process, three young actors (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams) were hired to play the film's protagonists- the film students who go missing; and whose 'found footage' is the entirety of the movie. Filming commenced in October 1997, and the trio, equipped with a 16mm-film camera and a Hi-8 camcorder; dressed in 'Grunge' gear (for that authentic '94 look) and using their real names for the characters (instead of adopting nom-de-plumes), they began the project. Myrick warned them upfront that they would be "...subject to intense psychological treatment". Filming each other and filming what they found, the bogus film crew at first interviewed the locals of Burkittsville (convincing actor stooges placed there by Myrick and Sanchez, who perpetuated and expanded upon the mythology of the Blair Witch for the cameras), before heading out into the woods to begin the hike to key landmarks associated with the legend. What happened next is itself becoming the stuff of legend. The three young actors undertook what is perhaps the most gruelling exercise ever undertaken in the name of method acting. For six days and six nights they traipsed through the mud and the rain of the woods outside Burkittsville; enduring the biting cold and generally miserable conditions. Although they didn't have visual contact with Myrick, Sanchez and the rest of the crew, they were guided to precise locations (although in the film it appears that they were irretrievably lost), and were tracked, using a Global Positioning System unit; and also, although they weren't directed in the conventional sense, the trio would find notes, left in crates marked by fluorescent flags, that would detail what they should do next; how they should react to events- and how they should react to each other. The notes, which they were told to keep hidden from each other, would give them instructions, such as "You don't trust Heather, take control."- instructions that formed the basis for role-play; designed to engender both fear and paranoia. Fear was also generated when, at night, the three actors were regularly awoken in the early hours of the morning by the sounds of children cackling or screaming, played on tape from deep in the woods by the hidden crew - which to all intents and purposes, became the Blair Witch. This unique approach pays off in the final film as a near unbearable sense of foreboding overwhelms, and eventual stark terror takes hold. The illusion of reality is all too convincing for the film's audience, and I suspect the three actors were really terrified at times; and although they knew ultimately it was all make believe, it must have come as a blessed relief, and reassurance that their nightmare was only temporary, every time they bumped into a jogger out on his early morning run through the woods.

      The film makers set about editing down the 20 hours of raw footage, and it was at this time they ditched the idea of inter-cutting the 'found' footage with other bits of mockumentary filler (much of this excised material, which included faked archive interviews with friends of the missing students; police interviews; and Blair Witch mythology ended up on the separate psuedodocumentary 'The Curse of the Blair Witch', which aired in July on the Sci-Fi Channel in the States and will be included on the US region 1 DVD released on 22nd October). Myrick and Sanchez opened a website (www.haxan.com) in June 1998, as a promotional tool for their production company; and it soon became the epicentre for the buzz for the film. The tantalising Blair Witch mythology was documented on the site; and even more tantalising was the fact that nowhere was it even hinted that this found footage was in anyway not 100% genuine. In-fact the myth was fuelled by the bogus assertion that the Mother of the, fictional, Heather Donahue had asked Haxan Films to make a documentary, using her missing daughter's footage as a way of publicising the disappearances; after the police had reputedly shut the case. This was enough to ensure that the site's mailing list quickly expanded from a couple of dozen friends to nearly 2,000; and generated enough of a buzz to get the film shown at the prestigious Sundance film festival in February, where, amid much excitement, Artisan ( US distributors of last year's sleeper Sci-Fi hit PI) picked up the world-wide distribution rights for $1 million. It was about now that the buzz around the film started to take on epic proportions. The film had been mentioned on the Internet, in newsgroups such as alt.witchcraft, as far back as April 1998- after clips from the film aired on a Manhattan cable channel; but now alt.folklore.ghost.stories and the 'King of the newsgroups' alt.horror, were awash with heated debate to whether the film was the real thing or not. For a while even the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), had the films three stars listed as 'deceased'. Blair Witch fever continued unabated and in April Artisan added fuel to the fire by setting up a website exclusively dedicated to the movie (www.blairwitch.com), which received 110,000 hits in the first weekend alone ( rising to 75 million hits by August 16th); and continued by making the first of three fantastically creepy theatrical trailers (all of which can be downloaded from the site). Part of the film's phenomenal success has been attributed to this type of net marketing. It certainly isn't the first time that a film has been promoted on the Internet- all the major studios set up sites for their current rash of movies, and have done so for a number of years; but this was the first time that a site actually acted as not just an extension to the film, but as a separate entity in its self.