8 Days in the Woods: The Making of The Blair Witch Project by Matt Blazi
Independently Published (October 2019)
336 pages; $25 paperback
Reviewed by Kevin Lucia
I vividly remember seeing The Blair Witch Project in the theater. At the time, I hadn’t yet completely defected from science fiction to horror, so I didn’t really go see horror movies much. However, the marketing for this movie was just too unique to ignore. A story of vanished students making a documentary, and the discovery of their footage a year later — was this real? Was it just a movie?
I remember being very unclear on this point, and that intrigue drove me to the theaters, despite not being a horror fan at the time. What I experienced was a hallucinatory, unique vision of creeping dread, and the thing I remember most was being freaking terrified, despite not seeing a darn thing throughout the whole movie. No monster. No witch. No gory deaths. Just tension that kept ramping up and up. I walked out of that theater knowing I’d seen something very, very different.
Of course, over the years, I sorta forgot about The Blair Witch Project. My sister and I saw Blair Witch: Book of Shadows, and came away unimpressed. Whatever had been captured in the first movie was completely lacking there, and I moved on to other movies. Last year, however, I stumbled upon the third Blair Witch movie and, out of curiosity, watched it. Finding it to be (at least in my opinion) a fairly solid movie, I decided to re-watch the original, and was struck again by its unique and daring simplicity. Also, it hit me what an original movie-making approach this must’ve been, so I started hunting up old articles about the movie’s production.
It was right about that time that Matt Blazi (horror fan extraordinaire) announced that he’d spent the last several years seeing a project to fruition — an unauthorized account of the genesis and filming of The Blair Witch Project. I knew right then and there I had to have that book, and I finally got a chance to dive into it recently.
It was everything I’d expected and more. Matt Blazi has done an amazing job pulling together accounts from the writers/directors/producers and the cast. Boasting hundreds of photos, script excerpts, and photocopied letters, this hefty-tome is, in my opinion, the definitive word on the making of The Blair Witch Project. It was amazing to see how these young filmmakers came together, astounding to see what the cast and crew went through in planning and filming this movie, and Matt Blazi’s behind-the-scenes look has only hammered home a truth I’ve long since believed: every single “found footage” horror movie existing today owes its existence to The Blair Witch project.
The detail Blazi shows is impressive. This isn’t just a cursory back-story to how the movie got off the ground. This is an in-depth examination of the process, and Blazi’s pulling back of the curtain reveals several surprises, chief of which was the revelation that what made it into the theaters wasn’t even the filmmakers’ original intention. Revelations glaore await in this heartfelt and detailed chronicling of The Blair Witch Project, and every fan should have this in their life.
Highly recommended.
