Institute History
Description
When Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick ventured out into the desolate Maryland woods with a skeleton crew and only three cast members in tow, they had no idea what a phenomenon they were about to create. Heading into the 1999 Sundance Film Festival not knowing what to expect they left audiences buzzing and landed a major distribution deal. The Blair Witch Project went on to become one of the first viral sensations of the internet era, spawning an entirely new horror subgenre that thousands of aspiring filmmakers have since attempted to emulate.
Using a mixture of video and 16 mm film, Sanchez and Myrick leane heavily on the film's cast of unknowns to flesh out their bare-bones screenplay with improvised dialogue. The result catapults us into the seat of pure, unadulterated, primordial horror, made all the scarier by its exacting authenticity. While this is a fictional account of three student filmmakers traversing Maryland's Black Hills to discover the truth about the mythical Blair Witch, the film's cinematic ingenuity and heartstopping urgency made believers out of us all.
DCP courtesy of Lionsgate.