Cutting Deep into Horror | The Blair Witch Project (1999) — Folklore & Fear for the Spooky Season - Weekly Spooky: Scary Halloween Stories | Terrifying Tales to Creep Your Night

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Excuse me, miss? What seems to bring you to the
forest tonight?

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh? Just looking around? You know, it's beautiful night. I fine,
look at the stars.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Why Okay, you're not You're not trying to creep yourself
out because it's nearly Halloween or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
No, just looking for a nice peaceful time, you know.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Oh I'm sorry, where are my manners? I'm the Blair Witch.
It's nice to meet you.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Oh that's a very interesting name. Is that Polish?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
It is? Yes, my father was Polish and my mother wasn't.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
That's an interesting way of putting it.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Okay, you clearly have opinions about me.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
It's just weird. You came up like right on me.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Well, I'm not trying to be aggressive, but I live
in the woods, obviously.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I think I'm gonna go oh okay.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
I mean what what about me was rude? I don't
understand it.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Just like if if you live out here, I feel
bad intruding on your Well.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
The entire woods is my domain and dominion, just as
it is the birds and the bees and the hummingbirds
as well, which is another kind of bird.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, that's why I you know, I I think that
I should Wow, what's that on the ground? How'd that
get there?

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Well? I put it there because this is my dominion
it but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
But it wasn't here when I was like, how'd you
get that there?

Speaker 1 (01:27):
No? I mean, a witch never reveals his secrets, but
I have my ways. You saw that movie, didn't you?
Everyone saw the movie which which, yes, the Witch movie.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
There's several though, which one though.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
If you're going to be obtuse like this, I'll just
have to make you get lost out here until you
go mad and die in some strange way.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
That's why I'm leaving now.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Right, that's why you're leaving. I'm winking at you a big,
big wink. Uh. I'm so lowly.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
This podcast is about why horror scares us, what deep,
dark secret scary cinema shines a light on. The discussions
are frank and involve conversations about abuse, trauma, and mental health.
There are also spoilers, so keep that in mind too. Now,

(02:36):
sharpen your machetes and straight raisers, because this is cutting
deep into horror.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Hello, my spookies, and welcome back to cutting deep into horror.
I am, of course, what's that? What's that?

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Scared? Was really goofy to me?

Speaker 1 (03:01):
What was a goofy about it? I was trying to
get across that the Blair Witch is unfairly maligned in
today's society.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
I get that. No, thank you, do you? Thank you
for standing up for the rights of which Americans everywhere?

Speaker 1 (03:18):
I try, I try my best. But anyway, I'm your host,
Enrique Kuto of course, here with my co host on
cutting deep into horror, Rachel Ridolfi. Rachel, how are you?

Speaker 2 (03:30):
I'm doing pretty all right?

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Good, good, good October. We're nearly through it. It's hard
to believe it not for me. It's been like a
time war. Things are moving so fast, so often it
feels like but this is airing on the twenty fourth
of October, so we're nearly to the big day. We're

(03:52):
a week away from the big day. And tonight we're
talking about one of the first horror movies I remember
seeing in the theater that scared me very very much,
A movie that was very polarizing in the back in
the day. But I don't know that it's so polarizing now.
I think most people, most people just like nineteen ninety

(04:16):
nine's The blair Witch Project. I think they just dig
it now, but there was a long period of time
where they did not. I remember as far back as
maybe twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, there was a lot of
malignment towards found footage movies in general, and that really
died out. Yeah. I remember in twenty fourteen when I

(04:36):
wanted to make my first found footage movie, which ended
up being Alone in the Ghost House. I actually like
put it to Facebook it said, like, would you guys
be like down if I made a found footage because
people there were a lot of people were like I
hate them, I never watch them. That mentality is like
gone now, yeah, it really is completely gone. So and

(04:57):
I'm glad because found footage is not only a very
valid storytelling technique for filmmaking, but it's also one that's
very cost effective, which is important if you're going to
democratize the art form. And then on top of that,
it's really nothing that different. Like Dracula, the book by

(05:20):
Brown Stoker is a found footage book. It's a diary.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
There are tons of famous books, especially in the horror genre,
that are reading diary entries. And the entire point of
reading a air quote diary is that it really happened
and you're reading the record of it. It has dates
and times on it. It is a found footage movie.
It's just a found footage book. Yeah. Absolutely, So with

(05:50):
that all being said, the Blair Witch Project was not,
by any means the first found footage movie, not at all.
There were many precursors to it, some of them more
famous than others. One of the absolute most famous films
of all time that was technically a found footage movie.

(06:13):
And I guess we should explain what a found footage.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Movie is for those who don't know well, and.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
More so for the sake of the discussion. But found
footage and this is something I'm very passionate about because
I love what you can do with the found footage subgenre.
I think that it's a very exciting way to tell
a story and it's very accessible. And as time has
gone on, people have only gotten more used to literally
watching raw footage on their own phones, so it's even

(06:43):
more comfortable to watch raw footage of a movie of
a story being told exactly. But so for the for
this case, it's basically having a film presented to you
as actual footage discovered and shown to you of something
that happened. That's probably pretty terrible. And although I will

(07:04):
say it's thinly a found footage movie, it is a
found footage movie would be nineteen eighties Cannibal Holocaust.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
I'm glad you brought that up because I was gonna
talk about that.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
It's one of my favorite horror films. I know it
sounds like and it is. I mean, it's a disgusting, nasty,
Italian cannibal horror movie. But it has a lot to
say about the media. It has a lot to say
about the involvement of well to do first world people
who go into the third world and just start messing

(07:35):
things up. It has a lot to say about presenting
yourself as virtuous when you're not. Cannibal Holocaust has so
much going on for it. Directed by Rigio Dia Dado
Italian film and I've always loved the movie, even though
it can be hard to stomach at times, and it's
literally about a documentary crew going into the Amazon and

(07:56):
never getting out and then their footage being found. The
difference between this and kind of the more modern era
of found footage movies is that is that in the
film there is a like narrative movie where they are
viewing the found footage, the footage that is discovered, right,

(08:18):
and that is a major delineation. And there are a
few others like that, because then the found footage movie
has a cousin, which is the mockumentary. Yes, the mockumentary
or fake documentary is a whole other ballgame, but very similar.
Blair Witch Project starts as kind of a mockumentary of sorts,

(08:39):
but it devolves into raw footage of scary shit, right,
and honestly, found footage movies I find much scarier than
a mockumentary in general. Well, it's more intimate, well true, no, absolutely,
And on top of that, Blair Witch Project had one
of the best mockumentaries of all time as it's marketing,
which was the Curse of the Blair Witch The Sci

(09:00):
Fi Channel special TV specials like forty four Minutes that
they ran add nauseum on the Sci Fi Channel leading
up to the release of The Blair Witch Project. And
I watched that must have been five or six times
on TV before I went to see the movie, and
it got me scared.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
It's scary, it's spooky.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
It's a really spooky and fascinating dive into the mythos
that the filmmaking team went really hard into creating. And
we'll talk a little bit more about found footage films
and then get into the Blair Witch project right after this.

(09:44):
So after Cannibal Holocaust and I'm sure I'm missing something,
I'm going relatively off the top of my head. I
don't have like a Google list in front of me
or a chatch ept research thing in front of me.
One of the next contenders for early version of a
found footage movie to go at least moderately mainstream is

(10:07):
nineteen ninety two's Man Bites Dog. Have you ever seen
Man Bytes Dog?

Speaker 2 (10:11):
No, but I feel like I've heard of it.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
It's a very interesting movie. It followed. The film follows
a crew of filmmakers who are following a serial killer,
recording his horrific crimes for a documentary they're producing. At
first dispassionate observers, they find themselves increasingly caught up in
the chaotic and nihilistic violence, eventually becoming accomplices who It's

(10:35):
really good. It's a Belgium movie, of course it is,
and very similar to Man BYTE's Dog. There was a
much smaller budget American movie around the same time called
America's Deadliest home Video, which doesn't even have a Wikipedia page,
so I'm trying to figure out what year that came out.
I think it was ninety three or ninety four, obviously

(10:57):
playing on America's most are not funniest home videos. Yeah,
but it stars Danny Bonaducci, of all people, from from
Gosh It Okay nineteen ninety three, so it's very similar
to Man Bites Dog. I don't think it's ripping it off,
but it could be. But yeah, Danny Bonaducci from Oh
what's that show with the kids in the school bus?

(11:18):
The Partridge Family. Oh, and it's actually very good. It's
a man videotaping a road trip, although that's not really
perfectly described, is taken hostage by three criminals and forced
to tape their crime spree, including robberies and murder. Ooh yeah,
and it's actually like really fun, it's really sleazy. Well yeah,

(11:41):
and it works very very well. So that's another one
that's that's really really fun. I was actually involved in
the remastering of that movie to come out on home video,
and now it's out through our buddies at Terror Vision,
which you can find at terror dot Vision dot com.
They put out the Blu ray. But so you had
ban BYTE's Dog, you had America's Deadliest Home Video, and

(12:04):
there were a few other ones I'm sure that I'm
not remembering. And then you come up to the blair
Witch Project in nineteen ninety nine. But what's really interesting
is in nineteen ninety eight there was an independent film
released called The Last Broadcast, And when blair Witch was

(12:27):
coming out, everyone was talking about how The Last Broadcast
was very similar to the blair Witch Project. They were
both made in the same part of the country around
the same time. But and it's a big butt. The
Last Broadcast is a mock youmentary.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Right, there's a difference.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
It's not really a found footage movie. It's like it's
put together. It's clearly edited all the way through. But
I do like it, and it works really well, and
it's this is so stupid. It says the film is
credited as the first feature on length film shot on
and edited entirely on consumer level digital equipment. That's not true,

(13:08):
not in nineteen ninety eight. I knew people doing it
in ninety seven. But uh yeah, let's see, uh told
in a pseudo documentary format and employing found footage technique.
The fictional film appears to tell the story of a
man convicted of in nineteen ninety five of murdering the
members of his team during an expedition to find the
mythic Jersey Devil in the New Jersey Pine barrens. Ooh,

(13:28):
it's a really fun one. It really is. It's not
the Blair Witch Project though it's it's honestly, it's it's
more glossy, and in that way it makes it less interesting.
I get that, but I do love it. I do
think that the Last Broadcast is a worthwhile movie. But
people were just all over saying this knocked off the
blair Witch Project, this did this, this did that, which

(13:50):
caused me to go to my local Hollywood Video and
rent it because they didn't have it at Blockbuster, but
they had at Hollywood Video. So I rented and watched it.
I liked it, but it was not the Blair Project.
It was much more like Curse of the blair Witch. Okay,
I will say I hated the very ending though, but
that's I don't want to spoil it, even though the
movie's very old at this point. But it's a pretty

(14:12):
good one. So, and then The Blair Witch Project comes
out in nineteen ninety nine, and basically it basically gives
us the concept of found footage, almost a blueprint in
many ways up until Paranormal Activity then takes it one
step further. And there are a lot of great I'll
never be able to name them all. There are a
lot of great found footage movies out there that are
really interesting. Paranormal Activity obviously, that's a pretty pretty solid one. Wreck. Yeah,

(14:38):
have they showed you Wreck?

Speaker 2 (14:39):
No, But you've talked about it, so we need to
watch it since.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
I have the box set. Oh, it's a Spanish found
footage movie about a news reporter who gets caught in
the middle of the zombie virus beginning the world ended.
It's super good. The second one is also pretty damn good.
I don't know if i've I don't think I've seen
the third and fourth ones though, but I have the
box set. But Reck is a really good one. It

(15:02):
was remade into the film Quarantine in America. Okay, and
Quarantine's all right, but rec was way better. It's rec
r e C like record rec. Yeah. I was always
confused with people to say, oh, have you seen rec
and it'd be like, what like WRC cam, Yeah, that's
what I thought they were talking about. So but yeah,
So that's my little, like early diatribe about found footage.

(15:25):
I think there's a lot to love about found footage
as a filmmaking style, at whether you're making the movies
or you're viewing them. I think there's a lot to
enjoy about it. I think just the fact that as
you're watching, as you're watching the camera pan around, you're
constantly thinking about what you're not able to see or
what you're about to see. Yes, because it feels more random,

(15:50):
even though you know it's not. Then if it was
a scene being cut together bouncing between cameras, where you're like, oh, yeah,
of course here comes the scare. In this way, you're
like every time the cameras pan around, you're like, what
am I gonna see? What am I going to see? Oh?
Did I see something? Was that something great?

Speaker 2 (16:02):
There?

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah? Yeah, it's a really interesting it's a really interesting
way to watch a movie.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
I agree.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
And we'll talk a little bit more about that and
then we'll really dive into the boer Wish project. Right. Oh,
they're used to it by now, if they listen to
Cutting Deep right after this. So, with all that being said,

(16:34):
do you remember the first time that you became aware
of the concept of found footage?

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Well, that's a I've got a two part answer, because
you were talking about found footage books.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yes, well yeah, like fake diaries, fake journals, fake but
fake diaries, fake journals, fake ship logs, yes, all kinds
of stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah. So, being being someone who plays video games, uh
in a lot, uh in a lot of games, you know,
like BioShock is a good one, you uncover a lot
of It's a horror game. It would terrify you. I've
heard of you, you'd love it. But you uncover a
lot of the backstory and a lot of the plot

(17:22):
is revealed through logs and through recordings. So I think
that's a you know, to gamers, that's a very common
uh storytelling tactic. But for me, the first time I
was made aware of presenting something as real and that
being part of the story was War.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
Of the World's m m okay, that's a really good idea.
That's a really good thought.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Rather, because you know, my family, we did not celebrate
Halloween because we were you know, we're a good Christian home.
So what we would do on Halloween night, on like
Beggar's Night, is we would turn off all the lights
and we would like go down in the basement and
just watch wholesome movies downstairs. That's kind I mean, it

(18:11):
is like it's it's some good memories looking back. Like,
but when I was like twelve thirteen, one year, my
dad wanted to change it up and he had an
old vinyl recording of the broadcast of the War of
the Worlds and he was like, well, this is something fun.
Let's all listen to it as a family. And I

(18:34):
was like entranced with it, and that very interesting it is,
and it's especially interesting looking at the history of it,
and you know, there's there's a lot of contention over
how much panic did actually spread, and there's also like
it seems like Orson Wells in interviews with him, he

(18:56):
wanted it both ways that.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, totally, there's nothing better for you than the legend
of a thing you did. Right, Yeah, no, because if
you listen to it, which the first time I ever
heard the War of the World's broadcast was when I
first got my driver's license. So the week this is
so me the week I got my driver's license two days.
Three days later, I drove to Rochester, New York, which

(19:22):
is about eleven hours ten hours from US. I got
in the car and did that with like zero driving experience.
And I needed stuff to listen to, and this was
before iPods were affordable for me, So I went to
a used CD store and just bought a bunch of stuff.
And one of the things I found in the little
discount bin was a CD of War of the World's

(19:45):
the broadcast. So that's the first time I listened to it,
and I really enjoyed it, although I have to say
they do constantly say that it's not real.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
They do, like.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
They're constantly reminding you that you're listening to a theatrical
perf for months.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, So how anyone could get that mixed up? I'm
not entirely certain, but I do. I do also understand,
like you know, you've back back then, like radio was
still relatively a new entertainment form.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Definitely, so.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Hearing something like that, if you were caught off guard,
I could imagine until you got to the next commercial
break that you would be a little bit freaked out.
So it was that was like my first introduction of
like you suspend your disbelief to get into the world
of the entertainment, but then you suspend your disbelief even
further and accept it as that is the world that

(20:44):
you're in. You're not just observing the story, you're actually
a part of it. And so when Cloverfield came out,
I was so into it, like I was. I was
like visiting the website every single day to see if
I could find clues lose like I was ate up.
So that was the first found footage movie that I saw,

(21:06):
and I did go to see it in the theater
and I was absolutely hooked because again, you you feel
so much more intimately about what you're viewing because it is,
you know, treated as you are the character, right, you know,
whoever's holding the camera, you're that person. So yeah, and

(21:29):
ever since then, I've kind of had a soft spot
for found footage.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
I completely didn't think about Cloverfield, but Cloverfield's a really
good example. And Blair Witch Project, I mean, they had
a website, they had all kinds of crazy stuff. The
marketing was intense and it worked because I had to
see it. I would I begged to see it when

(21:57):
it came out, So for those who don't know the
blair Witch Project from nineteen ninety nine, it's a found
footage movie about a group of filmmakers who head into
the Burkettsville Woods in Maryland to shoot a documentary about
a local myth known as the Blair Witch. And while
attempting to film this documentary, they get lost in the

(22:18):
woods and start being stalked and terrorized by unseen forces.
And that's really I mean, that's the bulk of what
blair Witch Project is. But they had went to such
lengths to make it seem legitimate in every way, including

(22:38):
at like Sundance Film Festival when they premiered it there,
putting up missing posters for the three actors and doing
the opposite of what basically every Sundance premiere does, which
is not having the actors there. Yeah, it was. It
was crazy. So in fact, this little it was a

(22:59):
little heiny, low budget movie that initially cost around thirty
five thousand dollars to make, but then ballooned up to
anywhere from estimates of two hundred thousand to seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars after post production costs and things
from artisan Films who bought it. They bought the film
from at Sun Dance for one point one million dollars,

(23:22):
and then it had a limited release in July of
ninety nine, and by the end of July it was
everywhere in America. I don't know why this listing says
it was a sleeper hit that grows nearly two hundred
and fifty million dollars, because sleeper hit means that it
starts unsuccessful. Everybody wanted to go see the blurb project.
We were all primed. That is not the right word.

(23:45):
So it made about two hundred and fifty million dollars
at the box office on at worst about a million
dollars all in on the movie, and most of that
was spent by the production company.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
I'd call that a good ROI it's a.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Huge success, although the filmmakers will tell you that they
did not get a share, a very big share of it.
The actors in particular have filed lawsuits about their compensation,
and I'd have to look into it to really have
an opinion there. To me, it's like, whatever you signed,
whatever you were paid, whatever you agreed to, is what
you're supposed to get. But it is trickier though, with

(24:20):
the blair Witch Project, because those actors were in many
ways authors of the film as well. Although they did
not finance it, they did not launch it. They were
participants later. But there's a good debate either direction on that.
So that's yeah, that's the blair Witch Project. And I'll
tell you all about my first viewing of it, and

(24:43):
then we'll learn about yours, Rachel, right after this. So,
as I had alluded to earlier, my first viewing of
the blair Witch Project was in its initial theatrical run.

(25:07):
I saw that Curse of the blair Witch mockumentary on
sci fi channels so many times, and I at first
thought it was real. I was gosh, in ninety nine,
I would have been twelve or thirteen. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
so yeah, at first I thought maybe it was real,
and then, you know, as time went on, it was like, no,

(25:28):
it's it's clearly not real, but like it's really fun
and creepy and spoopy, which are all things I still
enjoy to this very day. And I got my mother
to take me. My mom thought it was fine, she
was like, ah's interesting, But I was engrossed the whole

(25:52):
time I saw in the theater. I was just like wow,
and I lucked out and didn't get motion sick that.
I don't know if you remember people talking people crazy
saying they got motion sick, because it is a lot
of the camera shaking around and stuff like that. The
film was was partially shot on sixteen millimeter black and
white film using a CP sixteen camera, which nobody cares,

(26:15):
but I do kind of you do care a little bit,
and then the other portion, the majority of the movie
is shot on a high eight cam quarter, which was
at the time this was supposed to take place. I
don't know exactly when they filmed, but it was supposed
to take place in nineteen ninety four. Okay, so the

(26:39):
idea being that it was. The footage was found a
couple years later, and then a few years after that
the Blair Witch Project movie comes together and I, yeah,
I really enjoyed it. Oh and it was so shot
a heyt video, which at the time in nineteen ninety
four was the new hotness of home video cameras because
it had a lot of visual clarity on a little

(27:02):
eight millimeter tape. So this is the kind of boring
tech stuff I live off of. So and then I
remember when the movie came out on home video, I
begged and pleaded to get the double VHS release that
had the Blair Witch Project, and then it had Curse

(27:22):
of the Blair Witch and it had all these other
like deleted scenes and little bits and bobs on the
other tape. Ooh, and I ate it up. I watched
it over and over again, and since then, I think
I've owned Blair Witch Project on every format that has
been available. I'm pretty sure I had a DVD of it.
I know I had the original Blu ray, and now

(27:42):
I have this brand new British import second Sight Blu ray,
which is fully remastered from the ground up and looks great.
And we actually watched for the first time ever for
either of us, the festival cut. Yeah, the version that
was shown at Sundance, which is a bit longer and
has a little bit more to it. I will say
that in many ways, the theatrical is the better movie,

(28:04):
but it was cool to get more of the movie
having been such a big fan. So what about you,
what was your first Blair Witch Project viewing.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
With you? Once again, once again, I don't think it
was on one of our camping trips, but I think
it was maybe after we got back from whatever our
camping trips. I can't remember. Yeah, I can't exactly remember

(28:35):
the exact timeframe, but you know it was, you know,
late summer, early fall, in the sort of we want
to get in the spooky season spirit, but not actually
watch a Halloween movie because it's not Halloween yet. And
I had mentioned how much I enjoy found footage, and
so you were like, well, have you have you seen this?
And I was like, well, no, but I'm curious. So

(28:57):
we watched it, and I was engrossed the entire higher time,
because it really does a great job, especially with the
theatrical version, of finding its pace very quickly and keeping
the pace going without feeling like it's going to run

(29:20):
off the rails at any moment. Like the tension builds perfectly,
and on the second watch through, especially with the festival cut,
I realize how much of the tension is just everything
that's going on between the characters. Sure, that's obviously more
drawn out in the longer version, but even in you know,

(29:42):
the theatrical version, when I watch it with you, that's
really where a lot of the conflict and a lot
of the scary elements comes down to what's going on
between the characters during the day and all the scary
stuff at night is just like there to remind you,
like what the stakes? What know what stakes there are?

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, no, I would have to agree, So I take
it you you did enjoy it quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Oh yeah, yeah, because after we watched it, you and
I were at second time around and I saw it
for real cheap on DVD and I was like, well,
I've got it. I've got to just own it now,
like there's no and I still have it in my collection. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, No, it's it's a it's a solid movie and
there's there's a lot to love about it. So we'll
we'll dive into it, dig a little deeper into it.
So gosh, where to start because there is a lot
of Blair Witch stuff. So first of all, we have
our three characters, which are Heather, Michael, and josh Yeah,

(30:46):
Heather is the director of the project and Michael is
the sound guy who is new to Heather and Joshua,
and Joshua is the camera operator and cinematographer. So of
the two, Heather and josh have quite a camaraderie that
makes it clear that they've probably known each other for

(31:08):
quite a while, and they constantly reference that Michael is
younger than them. He's probably like a sophomore in college,
I think, is what they they suggest, And I think
they're both juniors or seniors. Actually know they're seniors because
they're making a senior thesis. Yeah, so at least Heather
is a senior. I did not go to film school,
so I have to guess. But so they head out

(31:29):
to Burkettsville, Maryland. It's never I don't remember if it's
fully stated what college they were coming from.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
I think it was supposed to be the University of Maryland.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
I think you're right. So they drive out to this
place called Burkettsville, Maryland, a real place and the fictitional
Blair was the town there before Burkettsville, which when you
look at especially American history, there's a lot of that. Yeah,
there's a lot of towns that get dissolved, but maybe

(32:00):
the name just never quite goes away. One of my
favorite examples in my own life is the Mahoning Drive In,
which is not in Mahoning, Pennsylvania because there is no Mahoning,
Pennsylvania anymore, but it's le Heighten, Pennsylvania. But yeah, there
was a Mahoning Pennsylvania. So there's a Mahoning drive in
right there, not really in Mahoning Pennsylvania. Now, if you

(32:23):
say Mahoning Pennsylvania in that part of PA, most people
will know where you're talking about, because they at least
somewhat remember it. But yeah, it's no longer a town.
And much like that, Blair was a town founded a
very long time ago that has since been dissolved and
turned into Burkettsville. And we'll find out more about what

(32:44):
the townsfolk think of their little documentary right after this.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
So the three young filmmakers get to Burkettsville and they
start interviewing all of the locals. And this is, to
me such a great introduction to the film, because not
only do you start learning about the lore of the
Blair Witch and Burkettsville and Blair itself, you also start

(33:23):
to learn a bit about our three main characters because
in between the interviews they kind of talk back and
forth about the project. They talk back and forth about
who they just interviewed or what they just heard, so
we kind of get a little bit of Josh's easygoing

(33:43):
nature and Mike being a little more uptight and a
little more sarcastic. Yeah, and how they're like really being
all in on this.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Oh yeah, she's very like natural leader mentality. One thing
I always enjoyed about the movie was they have that
adorable glow of like where like we're making our first movie.
Yeah when even when the movie is this little kind
of pretentious college thesis film, and it is kind of pretentious.

(34:13):
There are a few a few times in the film
where Sarah or a Heather sorry Heather does stand ups,
which are where you're standing in front of a camera
with a background that's prudent, and she gives like a
little speech about the area, about formerly Blair and you
know what coffin rock is and all this stuff. And

(34:35):
it's very film school. It's very low fig you know,
wanna be national geographic. But that's what you would that's
what you would make, especially if you're a film student.
Nineteen ninety four, nineteen ninety five. I mean it was
literally made by these two filmmakers named Eduardo Sanchez and
Daniel Myrick, and they were film students at one time,

(35:00):
and they put this, they pulled this together. They were
the writers and directors of the film, and yeah, they
they you know, I think they were pulling from experience
a bit. Oh, absolutely that way. They also, I think
it's worth mentioning too, that when they were hiring actors,
So the legend is that they saw two thousand actors.

(35:22):
That's the legend, is that they interviewed two thousand actors
and they settled on these three. And one of the
big requirements was you had to have massive improv experience,
and you had to have experience shooting film and video.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Right because you're gonna be the one holding the camera.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah, almost everything in the film is shot by the actors,
with almost no I don't think they're I think other
than the little brief little shots at the beginning, it's
all shot by the actors. So yeah, that was a
big A big element was being able to come up
with actors who could film the whole thing and acted

(36:05):
out so well, which they really did. They really lucked
out with these actors. Yeah. So now they're talking about
the area of Burkettsville, the strange occurrences in the woods
related to a certain witch that is of legend, and
as they're asking people around town, one thing I found

(36:28):
really interesting is most people don't really have anything to
say about the Blair Witch. Only a few people do.
Mostly what they have to talk about is a guy
by the name of Rustin Parr who lived in the
forest and abducted seven children in nineteen forty one and
murdered them all in his basement. So this town already

(36:52):
has like a you know, in this century, horrific thing
that happened that people are still reeling from. To some extent,
most of the people they are interviewing were likely children
when that happened may or maybe even not even born,

(37:12):
So that gives it a whole other element because there's
a lot of lore building, and that's the one thing
I love. But also, you know what, no I love
about the blur which right I'm gonna say I also
hate about it. You can go in blind and have
a pretty good time, or you can watch Curse of
the Blair Witch and read all the stuff from the
old website and really be pulled in. Oh yeah, because

(37:35):
there is so much lore that they go over again
and again, deeper and deeper. And it also should be
mentioned the backstory of how the footage was found. I mean,
these kids go into the woods they never come back.
They they search and search and search for them, they
never find them ever. And this is the thing I
mentioned the other night to you that I had to

(37:56):
double check, Like where they claimed the footage was found
through through sheer luck. They found the film cans and
audio and video cassette tapes underneath a stone foundation of
a house that burned down. And according to the archaeology
expert at the local at the local school, there's no

(38:21):
real way he could think of that you could put
that stuff underneath the foundation of a house. Yeah, without
doing it before the house was put there. But the
house has been was there for a very long time
and had burned down a very long time ago. So
that's that's another added suit. I mean though, Like so
knowing that lore which is not in the movie, Yeah,

(38:43):
you only know that if you watched Curse of the
blair Witch or went to the old blair Witch website.
That brings so much more creepy spooky fun to the film.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah. Well that's that's the movies. Like, uh, it's like
an onion. It has so many layers and it's enjoyable
at every single layer because you've got the initial layer
of just like Oh, this is a spooky found footage
movie that's got scary stuff that happens in it, so

(39:15):
you should be scared. And then this is also a
movie about how being in the wilderness and trying to survive,
praise on your emotions and praise on your psyche. There's,
you know, the layers of story behind it about the
Blair Witch and then about Rust and Parr, and you

(39:36):
know it just it keeps going and going. It's a
rabbit hole that you can go down. And that's why
I like this movie so much. So as they're interviewing
the townsfolk, the big, the big thing that we realize
is people really aren't all that scared with the Blair

(39:59):
Witch anymore. It really is the trauma of Rust and Parr.
And I loved the interview with the two guys like
fishing in the river.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Oh, that's one of my favorite scenes in the first
act because they're like annoying each other and stuff, because
one guy's probably thirty five and the other guy is
probably about twenty five years or twenty years older than him. Yeah,
and the older guy is a lot more like kind
of playful and annoying him.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
So they're they're constantly like teasing each other and talking
over each other, and the younger guy will like be
all serious talking about Rust and Parr and how horrible
it was what he did to those kids, And you know,
the older guy will just be like, Rust and par
you don't even remember Rust and Parr. You weren't even
born yet.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
Well, and he and we forgot to mention some of
the more grisly details of rustin Parr's crime, and we'll
get to those right after this. So Rust and Parr

(41:09):
had murdered those seven children I mentioned in nineteen forty one,
killing them in pairs while having one stand in the
corner facing the wall. Horrific. Absolutely, So when they talk
to those two fishermen, it's important to mention they don't
talk about Rust and Parr that much because Rust and
Parr to some of the people who are more invested

(41:32):
in myths, you know, local legends, whatever. Whether it's out
of sheer, morbid curiosity or something more grandiose, who knows.
They're talking about how the woods are cursed because Rust
and Parr lived deep in the woods, and those woods
are known to be where a lot of weird things

(41:52):
have happened over the course of Blair and later Burkettsville.
So one thing they mention is that a young boy
named Robin Weaver went missing in eighteen eighty eight, but
he was returned three days later, and or she was returned. Uh,
and she talked about how there was an old woman

(42:15):
whose feet never touched the ground and that's who who
saved her. Yeah, so that's pretty freaky. And they go
into some other crazy things. They go to a place
called Coffin Rock where supposedly five men were found ritualistically
slaughtered in the nineteenth century, tied hands to feet at

(42:36):
Coffin Rock. But one thing I really love about that
is when they're showing like the build up to going
to Coffin Rock and how they're having to hike into
the woods to find these locations that are a bit
you know, they're a bit less you know, commonplace, like yeah,
you don't just know where Coffin Rock is or whatever,
you know, Like yeah, So they mentioned that there's only

(42:59):
like one book book that Heather could find in any
library that says anything about Coffin Rock, which I love
that too because that makes me wonder like did it
even happen? I mean, like it's in one book, but
with after they talk about coffin Rock. Oh, the big
one is that then somebody discovered it, ran away, came

(43:19):
back and the bodies were gone.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
Yeah, all matter if no hours?

Speaker 1 (43:23):
Maybe no, it was two days. Yeah, because we're talking
deep in the woods in the eighteen hundreds. But as
we dig a little bit deeper, we find out they
find out a little bit about the Blair Witch and
a lot more about the Blair Witch. As I said,
is in Curse of the Blair Witch. But the Blair
Witch was named Ellie Keedward, and she was said to
have practiced witchcraft, and she was banished from the town

(43:48):
in seventeen eighty five after several local children accused her
of performing magic. So she was presumed dead from exposure,
so she was sent off to freeze to death. Oh
she was hung. Sorry, she was hung on a tree
with stones tied to each of her limbs, stretching her
body down with gravity. I forgot that part. Oh, But

(44:10):
then the next year, all of her accusers and half
of the town's children vanished without a trace. Fearing a curse,
the townspeople immediately fled Blair, vowing never to utter the
name Ellie Edward again. So yeah, that's the that's the

(44:31):
big you know, blair Witch concept. But then if you
want to get even deeper and I can into these concepts.
In eighteen twenty five, a year after the town was
rediscovered and founded as Burkettsville, the villagers held the first
annual wheat harvest picnic. During the event, ten year old

(44:53):
alien Treacle wandered off towards Tappy East Creek and drowned
in the shallow water. Witnesses claim to have seen a
ghostly white hand reach out from the water and pull
her in. The creek was searched, but Aileen's body was
never recovered. Afterwards, the creek mysteriously became clogged with oily

(45:13):
bundles of sticks, rendering the water useless for thirteen days.
A man drank the water within that time, resulting in
his death, while several animals also got sick and died.
The incident was the first of several to be blamed
on the blair Witch, and then, of course eighteen eighty
six Robin Weaver, which was blamed on the blair Witch.

(45:37):
See oh and then oh yeah, and then there was
the massacre of the Birkins Hill seven rust In par So,
those are the echoes of the Blair Witch. You have
this one thing happening in eighteen seventy or eighteen or
seventeen eighty five, and then eighteen twenty five something awful happens,
and then eighteen eighty six Robin Weaver leads directly into
finding the dead men at Coffin Rock. They were I apologize,

(46:00):
I got mixed up. They were the they were like
a search party for looking for Robin Weaver. Okay, they
were the ones who were slaughtered. So it says they
were slaughtered by Ellie Keedward, who disemboweled them and left
their corpses on Coffin Rock, then returned to the house
supposedly to kill Robin. However, she discovered the house empty

(46:21):
and realized that Robin had fled. That's like the deeper version,
see what I mean. They're so much waw and I
love it. It's so thick.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
So to get back to the movie. But like, if
you didn't know this lore, it really does make the
movie way more fun. But the film is mostly the
first twenty minutes are ghost stories of this little town
in Maryland, and then it's them in the woods. And
this is something that always got to me pretty intensely.

(46:56):
Because i've I'm better about it now obviously, But when
I was young, I had a very strong fear of
getting lost in the woods.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Oh really, mm hmm, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Yeah. Well, I mean it's the woods, you know, Like,
you don't want to get lost in It's bad and
there's no there's no map, there's no you know, roads.
How do you not get lost in the woods?

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Oh, I see, I'm a farm kid, so I'm just
like going to see. Yeah, but those woods weren't thick, no,
I mean there is a difference.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
Yes, yeah, yeah, I'm talking about woods that I thought
were really big when I'm sure they weren't actually because
the river. I'm a child when I'm saying this, but
it made me think a lot because there were a
lot of things that would help make you afraid of
getting lost in the woods. Like have I ever shown
you the Haunted Cab episode of Are You Afraid of
the Dark?

Speaker 2 (47:42):
I think so, Yeah, the.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
One with the Haunted Cabby driving through the woods. Yeah,
that one. I thought about it all the time when
I was a kid. How these two brothers get lost
in the woods. It was very scary to me, the
idea of getting lost in the woods and nightfall and
it gets really cold, and you don't have any food
on any water, you don't know how to get out.
Of course, then there's the old say, you know, how
far do you walk? How far can you walk through
the woods? Halfway? Because if you walk any further than that,

(48:04):
you're walking out. You know, you could just keep going
straight and you'll leave the woods eventually. Of course that
doesn't quite ring so true for our intrepid filmmakers. But
the good news, I guess is they don't even really
know that they're lost yet because they camp for the

(48:26):
night uneventful. Yeah, and the next day we find out
that they're going so far into the woods because she
read in one of these books that there's an old
graveyard deep in the woods, away from everything. And when
you go out, if you spend enough time in New England,
like I did, or enough time in some of the

(48:48):
really old sections of the East Coast, which I did
a little bit of, that there's stuff just in the
middle of the woods that makes no sense. There'll be
churches where it's like, how did anybody come here to worship?
It's in the middle. It's in the middle of the woods.
I guess you just hiked to it. Weird people used
to live places, but I mean you'd think there'd be

(49:11):
trails or a road, like a very rough road or something. No,
just in the woods. That's where it is. Feels weird.
But they do find the old graveyard, but they might
find more than just funeral grave markers. Funeral markers. It's
been a long week, but we'll explain more after this.

(49:45):
So they find this graveyard deep in the woods, but
it's not a traditional graveyard. It has these little rock
piles or cairns, the term cairns, and there are seven
of them, which is an interesting thing considering that's how
many kids that rust and Parr killed. Yeah, and one

(50:10):
of the things excuse me. One of the things that
they mention is that the way Rustin Parr was caught.
I can't believe I left this part out was that
he walked down into town and let me find it.
I want to find the exact term. I'm looking at
the Blair Witch Project fandom wiki, which has all of

(50:31):
this info. So Rustin, after he killed the seven kids,
Rustin hid the secret for two days and then uh.
And then Kelly Ellie Keedwards supposedly said reappeared to him
after telling him to kill those children and said peace

(50:51):
shall come to the if the revealed by actions. So
and that's you. It's hard to find like this is
in all of the lore bundled up. But the way
that I originally heard it was just that he walked
into town, sat down at a diner and said I'm
finally finished, and nobody knew what he was talking about.

(51:13):
And eventually people went to his house and they found
the seven kids, and it shocked the community. He was
proclaimed guilty and he was executed. He never denied any
of it, of the killings, and confessed in forming authorities
of Birkertsville that he was merely doing what an old
woman dressed in black had told him to do. Parr

(51:36):
was convicted and authorities executed him by hanging in nineteen
forty one. And yes, there were still hangings in nineteen
forty one. Yeah. Yeah, some people get surprised by that
that firing squad and hangings are not very old or
not very or not.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
They're not far removed than history.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
That's work. That's a good way to put it. So anyway,
But I just want to mention, for got to mention
the part about how he comes into town and says,
I'm finally finished.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
So it's creepy. Yeah, that's super creepy.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
And remember he lived deep in the woods of former Blair,
which is supposedly where Ellie Edward lives and rains Supreme
and wreaks havoc and all this stuff. So at one
point while they're going through trying to look at these
and it's the middle of the day and they're filming
all these little cairns and Josh while operating camera, and

(52:30):
it's important to keep in mind that, especially in nineteen
eighty four, when you're making a student thesis film, it
has to be on film. So the video camera that
Heather is running around with all the time that was supplemental.
The thought thinking being I guess that if she got
something really good on it that she couldn't get on film,
she might be able to use it because documentaries are

(52:53):
more forgiving of format changing, yeah, and of lower quality format.
Because before video, making a documentary was very, very hard
and very challenging because you had to have all of
these roles of film and you didn't always know what
circumstance you were going to be in because your film,
you don't have your ISO and gain is set on

(53:16):
the film stock.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Oh just like just like photography film.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Yeah, yeah, it's exactly the same. So and the film
is color balance too, so you have tungsten balanced film
and daylight balance film, so you can't just run and gun.
But also on sixteen millimeter you might get seven minutes
maybe nine minutes of film rolling and it's expensive, which
is one of my favorite things. When he tests the

(53:41):
camera's like that's enough, that's enough. Yeah, And now as
I'm older, I'm like that that's because that's one hundred
and twenty dollars worth of film rolling through the camera
in nineteen ninety four. That's why she's getting upset.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
So yeah, you're burning money, man, I.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
Mean literally, that's the saying that a lot of the
old timers in my business, they say a lot is
they say that like in the olden days, one of
the nice things about shooting on film was that everybody
knew when they heard the drum buzzing of the film
camera that it was money running through the machine. So
they took it very seriously. They would shut the hell
up they would stop what they were doing and they

(54:14):
would do their job. So but with documentaries, I mean
that's yeah, the interviewing part would be would not be
that hard, although you would have those moments where you'd
be like, I'm sorry, you were in the middle of
a thought, but we ran out of film. Yeah, can
you let us take fifteen minutes to reload it and
then do it again. That's it's a really I don't
know how they did it, to be honest, because documentary

(54:37):
making now is get a bunch of video cameras, you know,
try to have some that are high quality. But whatever works.
You know, whatever you have works as long as the
sounds decent, and just film and film and film and
film and film and then cut it all together. Yeah,
but when it was shot on film, it was a
lot harder. So that being said, I think that's one
of the reasons she brought the extra camera. That and
just being a film student means that she obviously loves cameras.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
And filming anyway.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
Yeah, So but that being said, whenever they find anything
of note, she's going to want to take a second
and get it on sixteen millimeters black and white, which,
by the way, it's in black and white because that's cheaper,
like three times cheaper than color film. So that's that's
why film student films are almost always in black and white.
It's not an artistic choice. It's it's a money choice,

(55:20):
much cheaper, okay, And that's good to know. And a
lot of times film schools, well this is back then.
See when I was when I was supposed to go
to film school, and it would have been my time
to go to film school, there was no video program
at all. That was broadcasting. You could go into broadcasting,
but you couldn't go into film. You couldn't be making
movies on videotape. So that's one of the things that

(55:42):
kept me out. Because my mother was really like all
about me going to film school, and she was willing
to send me to any film school I wanted to
go to. She was going to mortgage our house to
send me to college because I didn't have well, I mean, well,
this conversation was before I could have turned my grades
around to get into a better college. These conversations were early.

(56:04):
But she wanted me to go to film school and
she was willing to send me. She wanted to send
me to this new England Film School. I can't remember
the name of it now. She was like, I'd be
good for you. You know, you'd be you know, somewhat near
your dad, and you know you already know New England
pretty well. And it's a really good film school without
being like UCLA or USC or NYU, which would be
I mean we yeah, even mortgaging the house would be

(56:26):
a bit of a stretch to go to those places
for me. But you know, but I looked into it
and it was like crazy because yeah, it's like ten
thousand dollars a semester or eight thousand dollars a semester,
but then your film costs are like another ten grand
a year. Whoof yeah it could be more sometimes. So
film's expensive is the long and the short of all

(56:47):
of that.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
But my only experience with film was I had to
take one film photography class at Sinclair and I paid
a lot of attention to the price of silver for
that what four month five month period because I had
to buy all the film and it was silver based photography.
So as the price of silver went up and down,

(57:10):
I was like, well, this is when I'm not buying
film or oh, if the price has gone down this week.
I'm gonna buy it.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
They still use silver nitrate in photography film because they
don't in motion picture film because it's two damn flamble.
Oh yeah, well, we gotta remember they're piling giant stacks
of film for movies. But that was a very long
digression to say that. As Josh is trying to get
a good sixteen millimeters shot of this pile of stones,

(57:37):
something that may have triggered all of the horrors we're
about to talk about happens. We'll talk about that right
after this. Okay, So Josh over one of the piles

(58:00):
of rocks. I'm so sorry that I made it take
so long for us to get there. I feel like,
if you're just tuning into cutting deep into horror, I
hope you really like movie talk and film talk because
I can't help myself. I have been in the film
business actively since I was fifteen years old, you know

(58:25):
or two, well more, so I can't help but know
a thing or two, and it's obviously what I'm interested
in because it ain't a way to make lots of
money fast, I'll tell you that much. So I remember
I gave a talk at Film Dayton I've given two.
I give one about distribution. Oh no, they were both
about distribution, but they were like three or four years apart.

(58:46):
And when I gave the first talk about it, I
had just had like three massive wins in film distribution
because I made money. Not a lot of money, but
I made money and I kept getting movies released, which
people were just like, how do you do it? How
do you get your movies released? And I was like,
I don't know. You make them and then you ask
people to release them. What if they say no, then

(59:09):
you ask more people. That was like the Q and
A basically, but but it was funny because I was
very aggressive about like do your research, you know, make
the right movie for the right price. You know, that's
that kind of thing. And toward the end of it,
somebody had said like it said, like this should be
like a seminar, like I made movies and I made

(59:29):
money in movies and you can too. And I was like, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir,
go into real estate for the love of God that
if you want to make money, like go into something else. Yeah,
this is in my blood. I can't help it. Like
I just happened to be the functional drunk, you know,
of this whole thing, like I'm the functional speedball user

(59:50):
of the of the filmatics. You know, I'm the one
who still shows up to work on time every day.
So anyway, he knocks over the pile of of stones,
and now the tone does shift. And I have to
admit that, in all the years of watching Blair Witch Project,
I there's something about watching movies you've seen dozens and

(01:00:13):
dozens of times, how you'll just miss little things. And
I remember him knocking over the stones, but I also
remember kind of going like, peh, whatever, and it I
think it's a massive element.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
I do believe. So, yeah, do you remember when.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
She puts the stone back on there, she kisses, she
kisses her hand and ketches it and then looks it
just can't be too careful. It's a really awesome moment. So,
and it should be mentioned that the way the movie
was made. Have you ever looked into the way the
movie was actually made? No, it's weirder than you think.

(01:00:49):
So the actors were given let's see, uh, let's see okay,
So the actors were given clues as to their next
location through messages hidden Inde thirty five millimeter film cans
left in milk crates they found using satellite and navigation units.
They did not directly speak to the directors very often

(01:01:13):
at all. That is insane, and they get this though.
This is part I love. They were given individual instructions
to use to use in order to help improvise the
action of the day, So each of them got their
own script so that the others didn't know things that
they knew. I love that, and that's something that I

(01:01:35):
found really fascinating because like when I've made found footage
movies in the past, and I've never made me of
to the caliber of Blair Witch or whatever, but I've
made ones that I thought were pretty fun. I'm pretty scary.
The biggest tool I always had was was misleading and
confusing the actors. That was like the best way to
get great stuff, Like having them break character and not

(01:01:58):
realize I'm using the footage. Yeah, that was one of
my favorites. Or misleading them or saying things that they
didn't know I was going to say if I was
a character in the scene, sneaking up on them when
they weren't expecting. It's it's really good fun. So they
were given instructions and also from what I understand, also
like food and water in these little drops.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Yeah, and you mentioned that they were given less and
less food as the shooting.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Yeah, they could. They from what I understand, they consented
to that. They consented to having their food get rationed
less and less to help them build up the reality
of being lost in the woods and having no food
at all. So, yeah, it's it's really really wild. And

(01:02:46):
according to the commentary, the filmmakers did the figure that
donnae Whu was shouting about when she's running away from
the tent later on, which we'll get to that in
a minute, was the art director Ricardo Moreno, who was
wearing white long John's, white stockings and white pantyhose pulled
over his head, and which is extra funny because you
never even get a peek. You never even get a

(01:03:07):
peek at him. So so and obviously I would have
to guarantee that, you know, without digging super deep, that
that there was a little more direction given here and
there for more poignant and pivotal moments, but overall the
actors were really just kind of running and gunning, you know,
just kind of going for it. So they've knocked over

(01:03:29):
the Karens and now night is falling, and as they're
trying to go to sleep, they're turning on the cameras
because they're talking to each other about hearing sticks snapping
and things like that. And I think that's the one
where in the morning they're talking to Josh and he's like,
I heard sounds over here and over here. You know,

(01:03:52):
there were this and there was a two layers of
sound over here, one layer of sound over here. And
I love it because Mike and Heather are just like,
I didn't hear anything like sleep really heavy, and Mike's like,
or Josh is like, I don't sleep heavy. Yeah, so
I heard all this stuff. But they're kind of like, well,
it could be a raccoon. But then he says something
that really creeps me out every time, which he says,

(01:04:12):
I swear it kind of sounded like a cackling, And
that's when you start to realize that you are indeed
watching the Blair Witch Project and a yea. The following day, though,
they decide, welp, we've got our footage. It's time to
head back to the car and skid out or is

(01:04:34):
it We'll find out after that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
So they wake up that next morning after a after
talking about what all Josh had heard through the night,
and they realized that there are three cairns around their tent.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
So, and this is after they tried to find the
car and failed.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
They absolutely could not find and they were hiking like
most of the day. So Heather's explanation, it's just like
they had heart hiked farther than they thought, so they
can't make it to the car before nightfall. They've got
a camp. So when they wake up that next morning,
there's three cairns around their tent, and the two guys

(01:05:36):
don't think much of it, but Heather insists that those
cairns were not there when they made camp last night,
and so she's kind of on edge. But what the
guys are more worried about is getting back to the
car because they've rented all their equipment. They've got to
get it back in time.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Back then, this stuff was very very It still is somewhat,
but it's very expensive to rent. You couldn't just own
a digital tape recorder. You couldn't just own a sixteen
millimeter camera. Yeah, you were renting it and you get
a deal on the weekend because they're not open on Sunday,
so you get Sunday for free if you return it
first thing Monday morning.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
And you got to give back there on Monday, Yes
you do. And not to mention, they've got deadlines looming
with apparently like finals coming up. So the guys really
want to get back to the car, and Heather starts,
you know, after kind of being freaked out about the Cairns,
Heather starts leading them, and this is where the tension,

(01:06:38):
Like I was talking about, the tension isn't just rust
and Parr. It's not just the Woods, it's not just
the Witch. It's also what's going on with them because
they've been out there, you know, all all yesterday. It's
getting later and later in the day, and they're all
snapping at each other. Josh is trying to be like

(01:06:59):
the media between Mike and Heather, and we really see that,
like he doesn't want to take Heather's side necessarily because
he's also annoyed that they've been out there so long.

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
But Heather is the one who has the map, has
the compass and says she knows and she knows where
everything is. She knew where Coffin Rock was, she knew
where the cemetery was, so she knows where the car is,
and of course Mike is gonna get upset because Mike
knows her the least. Yeah, So from his perspective, he's like,
it's starting to look like you just don't know what
you're talking about. There are a few parts where there's

(01:07:33):
one part where he like tells her straight up like, Okay,
but I'm gonna tell you right now, I don't know
if I trust you right now because you're not you know,
you're telling me stuff. And then it's not really happened
in that way, mm hmm, which I love those little
exchanges where he just looks at her very matter of fact.
He says like, I don't know if I trust you. Yeah,
because she keeps saying the cars were almost there, the
car's almost there. The night that they camp, she just

(01:07:54):
says like, we must have been deeper in the ones,
and I thought, we're probably less than an hour's hike
from the car, but we can't make it at night.
There's no chance, too dark, so we'll do it in
the morning.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Yeah, And so they're hiking for an hour and he's like, well,
where's the car, and she keeps insisting like she knows
where it is, she knows where they are. And as
things get more and more tense, like Mike is really
the one who's like lashing out, yes, And as it
gets later in the day, she starts talking about like, well,

(01:08:26):
we're gonna have to make camp again because it's gonna
get dark very quickly in these woods and we cannot
make it back to the car. And he gets really
upset because they were supposed to be back at the
car like first thing this morning. Yeah, And now Josh
is really getting upset too, and he's asking, Josh is asking,
I want to see the map, like at least let

(01:08:48):
me look at it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Josh is extra mad because he's supposed to be at
work on Monday morning. They're supposed to be home Sunday night, yeah,
returning the gear and going back to their lives Monday morning. Yeah.
So he demands the map because he's like, I'm tired
of you doing this. I want to see the map.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
And that's when Heather reveals she can't find the map,
and that's she starts accusing Josh, like why why were
you asking for the map? Did you take the map
from me?

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
And then well, she suggests that maybe off camera he
had asked to look at it before and that he
and she's like, I don't think you gave it back
to me because I don't have it. And I love
Josh's response because he's like, it's not you're fucking with
me right like that is not cool. Do not act
like you don't have it, Like, if you're messing with me,

(01:09:43):
stop right now, because I'm pretty pissed off. And your
point about him being kind of the mediator really is fair,
because this is where he finally starts to go like,
fuck you and fuck your movie. I want to go home.
I'm tired this shit. So if you didn't lose the

(01:10:03):
map and you're saying it because you're an asshole, I
hate you. And if you lost the map, I hate you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
I hate you for all of this. And who hasn't
been there on a film set most people? Fair?

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
Fair, I'm just being straight up with you. But no,
I mean I would be livid. I mean as a filmmaker,
as a film worker, which is not something I don't
usually film work very much. I filmmake, and there's the
delineation as film workers are hired on movies. Filmmakers are
like are are generating the movies. Yeah, And it's really

(01:10:44):
just a semantic way to understand a specific point. I've
been hired on movies where I've become positive the leadership
does not know what they're doing and it is very frustrating.
But it was never once. It was always like, great,
so I'm not gonna have fucking dinner. I'm gonna be
really grouchy. It was never like, great, so we're lost
in the woods for days. Slight difference, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Yeah, so yeah, not a great position to be in
for anyone, especially like Heather's trying. But it's also very
clear that she's While she is a natural born leader,
she's never been a position where she has to like

(01:11:28):
rally the troops.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Yeah, or where she's just been wrong and can't byes
her way out of being wrong. Because before the map
even disappears, she's constantly being told by Mike and eventually
by Josh as well, like just if we're lost, just
say we're lost. Yeah, like almost like that would make

(01:11:51):
them feel better.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Yeah, the admission would be like, Okay, now we are
working with all the information.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
Yeah, we're working together, instead of just like and I
get that too, because if you put your trust into
somebody to get you out of a situation, and they're
feeding you the wrong information, or they're misleading you or whatever.
It's like you're not using your own problem solving skills
to help or to try and get yourself out of
the situation. If she just said we're lost, they could

(01:12:19):
all start concentrating on figuring out how the hell to
get out. But instead they're being told no, I know
exactly whe're going. So they're like, okay, so just going
along with it and getting more lost. So I get
why the frustration is building so intensely. And Heather is
she's very bullheaded, she's very intense. And as you said,

(01:12:43):
Mikey Is he's a bit more serious. But again I
think that really comes down to the fact that he's
younger and he doesn't know these guys. Yeah, so he's trying.
Because that's another thing I should mention. In film school,
usually you crewe your films from the class, right, So
Mikey is running DAT, which is digital tape. It's he's

(01:13:07):
a sound person. That's where you would get you. You
try to find somebody who's studying sound or at least
knows enough about it, and they would do it, and
they usually get like credit hours or some kind of
bonus for it. Same thing with dps. You'd find somebody
who is studying to be a DP and you'd get
them to come on your project. So it's so that's
why he's doing this and for him, you know, he
keeps early on, he keeps saying and thank you for

(01:13:28):
the opportunity, thank you for the opportunity. He's being very
like exactly the way you should be when you're young
and you're just getting your first opportunity to do something.
You're just gracious and friendly. Yes, sir, No, sir, sounds good.
It takes him two days, like two days of hanging
out with them to even kind of let loose a
little bit and laugh about the fact that they are
drinking beer and Scotch and stuff in between you know, working,

(01:13:51):
because they got to unwind a little bit. But Mike
is about to reveal something that is not easy going
or lighthearted, and we'll talk about that right after this.

(01:14:16):
As Josh and Heather are arguing about crossing the water,
I think this is around the time that she gets
soaked crossing this creek, which by the way, is one
of the moments that really pushes the movie's authenticity because
the camera comes on like moments after it's happened. You

(01:14:37):
don't actually get to see all of it, which is reality.
That's the way it actually goes. And she soaked her
stuff and Josh is laughing at her, Mike is laughing
at her. It's kind of a little cathartic for them
because they feel like, well, they know that she's gotten
them into all this trouble, so they're enjoying herself.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
Well, you've got your comeuppance.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
But she's not. She's like, do you really think it's
funny that my shit has to be wet all day?
And literally, as she says that, Josh goes back to
laughing because she says that, Like, he goes back to
being seriously like, but you're okay, and she's like, yeah,
but I don't think it's funny that my shit is
going to be wet all toda, and he starts laughing.
I love that that that her saying how awful it
is brings the humor path like, because you know, the

(01:15:23):
only thing worse than a the only thing harder to
hold back than a laugh, is a forbidden laugh. Oh yeah, yeah,
that's how many times in church where you just try
and not to laugh.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
Oh do you think I saw it on the back?

Speaker 1 (01:15:37):
No, yeah, it wasn't so you could see because you're short.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
Well that too.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
But but so as they're kind of fighting again, her
and Josh about you know, the map and being lost
and her not admitting it and him and also we
forgot the elephant in the in the forest, which is
they're tired of her filming them. Yeah, they're like, it's
not your fucking documentary anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
Yeah, we got we you literally said we got everything.

Speaker 1 (01:16:06):
Where are you stuffin the woods? And at first her
excuse is like, because we're gonna look back at this
and it's gonna be really funny, you know how mad
we were, how stressed we were, when in reality, like
we were just about out. Yeah, that's the initial you know,
argument for it, and I could see that a little bit.
But then you want to take you want to do
the honors of Mike's big reveal.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
Mike's listening to them argue and he's kind of like
stewing by himself, and then he finally just explodes and
he says he starts laughing, Yeah, just laughing, and he says,
of course you can't find the map. I kicked the map.

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
I kicked that ship in the river. It was useless,
it wasn't doing it any good. Yeah, so I kicked
that ship in the river and the creek.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
And she asks, like, when did you do this? He's like,
earl today, when we.

Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
Were yesterday something.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
Yeah, like it was doing us no good. And obviously
now both she and to an extent Josh is upset,
but she's way more upset at Mike because that is
not only in subordination, but a complete betrayal of her trust,
because she is convinced that she could have gotten them

(01:17:23):
out of well the forest.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
This is a big moment because as Josh is trying
to simultaneously keep them from physically fighting, but also he
wants to throttle Mike too. After he pulls Heather away
and kind of gets them to have their space. This
is the first time she says if we if we

(01:17:46):
get hurt or we die out here, it'll be your
fucking fault. She's like screaming at him, and I mean,
that's but that's like kind of the moment when you
hear her confidence falter, because she really does hold that
second where she said we get hurt or if we

(01:18:07):
die out here, because you're stuck in the woods.

Speaker 2 (01:18:11):
Man, and people die in the woods. I know it happens.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
I don't want to be one of them. So but
what what I thought was really interesting is a lot
of the times when they fight, they do they do
make up, you know, like I think very like a
humans do, where like, you know, we don't know how
much time passes when the camera cuts, so then you
know they're all yelling at each other, all in each
other's faces. And at one point, I don't know if

(01:18:34):
it was right after this fighter, later on, there's a
part where like they're kind of breathing and Mike like
literally just looks at her very sincerely and just says,
are you okay? Like I didn't hurt you or anything.
And I felt that in my soul that that moment
when you're like, I don't know who that was, I'm sorry,
Like are you okay? Because that's what matters now. It's

(01:18:56):
very like, it's very heart wrenching.

Speaker 2 (01:18:58):
It is.

Speaker 1 (01:18:58):
It is so now that they have no map, Heather's like, well,
will head south because she's got a compass? Yeah, because
eventually we'll hit something, and that's when they discover one
of the most if no the most iconic other than
the shot of her filming herself while she's crying in
the woods at night, Yeah, the most iconic thing in

(01:19:21):
the whole film, which is the stick figures hanging from
the trees. And this is one of my favorite moments.
I mean, they're just finding all these stick figures. And
it should be mentioned. I don't know if we mentioned it.
My brain's a little out of it, but when they
found the Karen's outside their campsite, there were three of them, right,

(01:19:41):
we mentioned I just want to mention that because they're
three of these guys, I'm pretty sure there were seven
stick figures. Yet again another seven reference. So yeah, it's
just they find the stick figures, and of course, because
they're so weird, and at this point, they're trying to
figure out like what is even happening, Like what is

(01:20:02):
even after us? What is even going on? I mean,
we're lost, but like somebody's what tracking us at night?
So they're saying stuff like we're not gonna have a
fire tonight, because like the first night we camped, we
didn't have a fire.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
There were no problems and then the next night we
had a fire and then we heard a whole bunch
of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:20:17):
Yeah, but they also pull out the sixteen millimeters camera
and film these stick figures because it is really strange.
And regardless of no fire, when they go to sleep
that night, things they don't calm down, not at all.

(01:20:37):
And we'll discuss it in detail right after this. I
don't know what's with me. I'm weird. So not only
the night they don't have a campfire, does weird stuff

(01:20:59):
still happen. But this is one of the biggest moments
of scare because as they're sitting in their tent and
they're talking, they hear sounds, weird sounds, and I think
the sounds are really up to interpretation. Some people have
said have told me they've heard like groans or screams.
I've heard people say they heard like children laughing. I

(01:21:22):
always just heard sounds. I could never really place them personally.

Speaker 2 (01:21:26):
They do sound like they're coming from like a person
or a creature, yes, But aside from that, yeah, the
sounds and with your sound system, it was kind of
cool hearing like, yeah, you can hear different sounds in
different parts of the forest, and some of them like
move around the screen, so like whatever's out there, there's

(01:21:49):
a lot of it, Yeah, and it's circling them to
some extent I would I would have to a thousand
percent degree.

Speaker 1 (01:21:57):
So they all the sudden, the tent starts getting like
shaken on every side.

Speaker 2 (01:22:03):
Yeah, like something's pressing in on it and shaking it,
and they all.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
Just run for it, screaming, camera shaking, and one element
of the camera is also there's a light on it,
so it encourages you to use it. And they end
up just running outside and just hiding in the forest
until the sun comes up. No tent, no sleep, no nothing.
And when they return to their tent, their stuff is

(01:22:30):
just strewn about everywhere, and in particular, Josh's stuff has
been dug through the most. Yeah, it's been tossed everywhere.
And one of my favorite moments is Heather looks at
some of the stuff and says, it looks like slime
some on your stuff, and he goes, no, it's just water,

(01:22:52):
and he touches it and goes, it is fucking slime.
What the fuck is that? And that moment is so
creepy and and makes me so uneasy because that's such
a like, I feel like that would happen to me
if I was in an unreasonable situation, Like, no, it's
just what the hell that is? What that is? What
is happening? I was going with the easy explanation, and

(01:23:16):
at this point Josh's extra Matt, He's like, why are
they fucking with my stuff? More than everybody else's why
why is this happening at all? So you know all
of this and early on ways back one of my
favorite exchanges, and there are a lot of really great moments,
and I think some of that comes down to the
actors being really good, but it also comes down to
the filmmakers taking twenty hours of footage and making eighty

(01:23:39):
one minutes of movie, being able to really pare down
the best of the best. When I made Alone in
the Ghost House, my first found footage movie, the first
cut was almost two hours, the first cut of just
everything that seemed poignant, and my editor Eric Whiting, when

(01:23:59):
we were talking about it, I told him like, all right,
we need this to be way shorter, no more than
eighty five minutes. And I told him flat out like
my character in it was always making jokes constantly because
I knew like try to keep the story going, try
to keep it moving. And I told him, I was like,
cut out any of my jokes. You don't think land like,

(01:24:21):
please just cut out any jokes because if he's constantly
doing jokes like this, he's gonna be so obnoxious. And
I want him to be funny, but not like Actually,
in wrestling, we have a thing called go home heat.
Heat is when the audience doesn't like you, but they're like,
they want to see you get your ass whooped. Go
home heat is when they just sincerely don't want you around,

(01:24:41):
like they don't even want to watch you wrestle. Yeah
and yeah. So I was like, I don't want go
home heat. I want I want people to be like
cringing because I'm always making jokes, but not like literally
going God, but this guy ever shut up, Like I
want to shut off the movie. I'm just gonna turn
it off. So and I think that helped the movie
a ton, because he had so much raw material to
work with, And I think that's why we have a
lot of these great moments. In the moment I'm referring

(01:25:02):
to is when Josh and Heather are first kind of
postulating what is going on here? Like, and she's he says, like,
if it's an animal, that's like whatever. You know, we're
in it their woods and we're bugging it and dah
dah dah da dah, and I don't want to mess
with that. And then she says, what if it's not
an animal? He goes, he looks right, ever, I don't
want to mess with that either, And it's so funny
the way he says it, because he means it, you know,

(01:25:24):
and I don't want to mess with that either, and
his eyes get just a little wider. It's this movie.
The characters really work. They do They really really work.
So now, uh, yeah, the slime has all happened. They
get back on their hiking. They're heading south. They cross

(01:25:45):
this very trepidacious fallen tree to get across the creek.
They hike all day and just as the sun is
starting to wane, they arrive at a really trepidacious fallen
tree on the creek and they realize they've been walking
in circles for like eleven hours. Yeah, and this breaks them.

(01:26:11):
And one of the moments, I don't know, did it
did it? How? What effects? Sorry? I just got excited?
What effect? Did it? Have on you that moment when
they're all saying She's like, no, it's not they just
look a lot alike. And then she goes up by
herself and she starts literally going like the same goddamn
tree and she starts like freaking out by herself.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
It gives me chills, it really does, because the uh,
the contrast between Mike's very very outward, external explosive freak out,
Josh is also freaking out, but he's having more of

(01:26:50):
like just a meltdown, and Heather almost holding it together,
and then slowly that slow burn of a meltdown is
just all of the all of the emotional range. It's
very great and very effective and makes you feel so
bad for these characters because even if there wasn't the

(01:27:13):
supernatural element of what's going on at night, there is
also this element of survival of them realizing like how
truly screwed they are because they are before they were lost,
now they're so lost that they are walking in circles,
which is in survival situations in the wild, the absolute.

Speaker 1 (01:27:34):
Worst, not good at hell.

Speaker 2 (01:27:37):
And one scene I wanted to talk about that's in
It's in the festival cut that we watched it's not
in the theatrical cut, but I really wanted to highlight it.
Is that brief exchange that night or that evening after
discovering that they've walked in circles. That brief exchange between

(01:27:58):
Josh and Heather where she's filming something and he's, you know,
kind of standing behind her, and he says, I think
I figured it out.

Speaker 1 (01:28:07):
Well, that's in the theatrical Li is that in the
theat That's one of my favorite scenes whole movie.

Speaker 2 (01:28:11):
Yeah, because he says I think I figured it out,
And at first she's just kind of confused, and then
he says, I figured out why you're always filming and everything.
It's because it gives you control. You can control that,
you can control what's on screen, and that's what you
truly want. And she's she doesn't outright reject it, but

(01:28:33):
I don't think that she understands, like, that's not it
wasn't a dig, it was a good lifelong friend of hers.
Like having a realization about her based on the experience
that they've gone through over the past like forty eight
to thirty six hours together, is that she wants to
remain in control at all costs.

Speaker 1 (01:28:53):
Well, and I think it's worth mentioning. And I apologize
for being this way, but I do have that bizarre
auditory recall. He more so says that it's the separation. Yes,
that's what he finds comforting, That it's like you're watching
it happen, it's not actually happening. And I think that
that is a major element that I've always said is

(01:29:15):
a key crucial component of a found footage movie. How
it ends, which tells you why the footage was found
super important, but why everything's being filmed and how to
justify it is extremely important. One of the best found
footage movies I've ever seen in my life is Look,
and I wish it was easier to tell people to
watch it, but you have to. You can't find a
movie named Look. I've shown you Look, right.

Speaker 2 (01:29:37):
Did we?

Speaker 1 (01:29:37):
And I don't know, oh, you'd remember it now that
I haven't. Look is one of the best found footage
movies ever. It's all stories told from security cameras and
cameras that are normally in a place like security cameras,
phone cameras, all this stuff. I'll show it to you sometimes,
but it's a really good movie.

Speaker 2 (01:29:52):
I know, I know That's one critique that detractors of
found footage have is like, why would you keep filming?
And it's like I think, but especially now that we
have smartphones, that's probably part of why audiences now are
more receptive to found footage is we are much more
acquainted with the idea of I want to be filming
or taking pictures twenty four to seven.

Speaker 1 (01:30:14):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
And whereas before it really was like why would you
carry around a handycam or a cam corder all the time,
And now it is we've literally got one in our pockets. Yeah,
but that is part of what makes a good found
footage film good is why are they filming?

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
Yes, And with all that being said, they're about to
go to sleep and have another interesting night. But things
get even more interesting in the morning when one of
them is missing. And we'll talk about that right after this.

(01:31:03):
So they wake up in the morning and Josh is gone,
and this is really where everything paces way up and
things start just happening, I mean really really happening. They
try to find him. Obviously, they can't find him anywhere.
They're they're literally walking away from camp yelling Josh, Josh,

(01:31:26):
hearing nothing back Mike is at first like Josh isn't gone,
He's probably just at the creek, and she's like, well,
why isn't he answering me? Then he should be able
to answer me. He'd be with an earshot. So they're
both really un I mean, like the fact that one
of them is gone suggests that you know, whatever is
going on is escalating, yes, and that it's dividing and

(01:31:47):
conquering or something along those lines. So then night falls again,
and I think I read it was eight it's eight
nights that they're in that the whole thing takes place.
Over they hear Josh's voice screaming and crying from very

(01:32:08):
far away, echoing through the woods, and it I don't know.
I mean, what did you think when you first saw
that scene or when you rewatched it the other night?
With me, it.

Speaker 2 (01:32:21):
Always scares me. It's like a primal fear because there's
two There's two options. One, Josh is out there somewhere
hurt and in danger, which is scary and perilous in
and of itself. The other option is that's not Josh.

(01:32:44):
It's something trying to sound like Josh and in like folklore,
like if you hear a voice calling to you in
the woods at night. You do not go investigate because
it's not gonna be good for you. Yeah, and they're
both very, very shaken, and they're like yelling out trying

(01:33:08):
to find him, and they can't find him anywhere despite
looking for him that night, so they kind of have
to just like wait it out.

Speaker 1 (01:33:18):
Yeah, and they even have a thought that maybe whatever's
out there is trying to draw them out by Josh's screaming.
So in the morning, another beautiful morning, Heather discovers a
bundle of twigs tied together with fabric from Josh's shirt.

(01:33:41):
And this is the part when I first saw it
as a kid in the theater that legitimately scared me.
And I love the way they play this because in
found footage, you know, anything really horrific, you probably aren't
going to look at head on, and you get a
peek at it, you get a little view of it,
but you don't get a ton of it. But as
she opens the bundle, she finds blood on it. And

(01:34:05):
it's up to debate what's in the bundle entirely, but
there's definitely teeth and hair.

Speaker 2 (01:34:11):
Definitely.

Speaker 1 (01:34:11):
When I looked at it again, preparing for the show.
I almost think I saw a finger, yeah, some some
part of his body. Well, and I swear there's a
piece of tongue in there.

Speaker 2 (01:34:22):
It looks like it it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:23):
Looks like teeth and maybe a finger. I really did see,
Like I thought it looked like a finger.

Speaker 2 (01:34:28):
Yeah, like the second joint or something.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
Yeah. And and she she freaks out, doesn't tell Mike
what it is inside of it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:37):
Yeah, she keeps it to herself. And it's a really
like heart breaking, like like it's it's a really like, uh,
fear rendering moment because she like goes over to the
creaky and says, I'm just gonna wash my hands, and
she's just like is washing her hands and trying to
like not think about the fact that their friend disappeared.
They heard him screaming last night and now she's found

(01:34:58):
parts of him left in front of them. And it's
a very not popular theory, but there are theories that
that was basically based on the idea of a mojo
bundle and that our mojo bag, and that stealing someone's
teeth and tongue is a way to steal their voice.

(01:35:19):
So some people have postulated that I never heard Josh
at all that was the Blair Witch mimicking him because
she took his teeth and tongue to do that. I
don't know. It just that's just some creepy cool stuff
to lean into making me want to watch the movie again.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
Actually, I know I want to catch more.

Speaker 1 (01:35:36):
Usually I don't really want to watch the movie again
after we've picked it apart for two hours, but I
actually kind of want to just put it back on
and promise me we will find time to watch Curse
of the Blair Witch and The Birketsville Seven. I've never
seen The Birketsville Seven, the Showtime documentary. I've never seen it,
and apparently a lot of people think there's another theory
as to what happened to them in The Birketsville Seven.

Speaker 2 (01:35:58):
Ooh, I'm down.

Speaker 1 (01:35:59):
So okay, So she doesn't tell Mike. That night is
when we get the big famous moment of the movie
where Heather's filming herself and she's crying, and some of
it is a very unfortunate angle up your nose. It
just is what it is. But I love it. That's
the rawness and the emotion Heather Donna hu Man.

Speaker 2 (01:36:22):
She just knocks it out of the part.

Speaker 1 (01:36:24):
Well and the amount of One of the reasons that
I think some people don't try to make legitimately scary
movies when they're indie is you have to let yourself
be vulnerable, you know, if you want to wink and
laugh and be like ha ha, look it's a horror movie.
Doo ba dooo la bla blah la lah, that's easy,

(01:36:45):
but like looking at it, going this is scary when
people go no, it's not. Oh, like that's hard, and
her just sobbing to the lens and admitting like, this
is my fault because it was my project. I'm sorry
to Mike's mom and Josh's mom and my mom. It's
like so heart, it's really rough, and her just completely

(01:37:08):
taking responsibility and saying that something evil is hunting them
and that they will not get out alive. She doesn't
see how they could get out alive.

Speaker 2 (01:37:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:37:20):
Then in that same night, they hear Josh calling out
to them again and they decide to just take each
each take a camera and follow him, which I guess
benefit of the doubt. This is the only part IVE
always found a little hinky, is like why would they
both just take a camera but you know, the cameras
have lights on him. Maybe they want to at this point,

(01:37:41):
maybe because they think they're dead meat. They just want
to capture what happened to them. Because that's another good
point is that I've seen in found footage and stuff,
is like, I'm just going to record everything because I
just want somebody to know what the hell even happened
to me, or what happened to us, or whatever might
be out there. So they start jogging through the woods,

(01:38:01):
heading towards Josh's screaming voice way off in the distance.
And as they are going deeper and deeper into these
just jet black woods, screaming Josh's name, they find something
at the end of this long march into the brush
that no one would have expected, least of all them.

(01:38:23):
We'll get to that right after this. They find a
house in the woods. It's a very decrepit house, but

(01:38:44):
it is a worn down, beat up house, and it
looks like it's Rustin Parr's house. But Rustin Parr's House
would have been in disrepair since nineteen so there's no
way there'd be anything standing, especially not a two story house.

(01:39:06):
It would be nearly all fallen over by then. With
nobody taking care of it at all.

Speaker 2 (01:39:10):
In the middle of the woods.

Speaker 1 (01:39:11):
Yeah, and I think anywhere it would be yea, especially
in the woods because the nature wants to reclaim everything, always,
including you and me. So they enter the house, and
the first thing I noticed, No, I want I want
to hear from you because I know that I'm the blabermouth.
That's why I have podcasts, you know, and I had
all this. So what were your first impressions when they

(01:39:33):
go into this house? Now we're cutting between the color
footage of Heather's high eight camera and the black and white,
grainy footage of the sixteen millimeter camera. As they're yelling.

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
For Josh, first feeling is always complete and utter dread.
And then what I notice is as they're panning the
camera around, there's handprints on one of the balls. But
they're real small and they're down low. Yes, and it

(01:40:05):
is very easy to tell that it is bloody children's
hand prints.

Speaker 1 (01:40:11):
I mean, they're probably bloody. It's in black and white.

Speaker 2 (01:40:13):
It's in black and white. It's hard to tell.

Speaker 1 (01:40:15):
It's hard to tell. I mean, even if it was
coal or like a charcoal dust or whatever, it doesn't
it's still.

Speaker 2 (01:40:20):
It's not very good. It's not a good thing.

Speaker 1 (01:40:22):
It's good, that's a great way to put it, though
it's not good.

Speaker 2 (01:40:27):
So you see the handprints, and at first Josh runs
up to the attic and like or Mike runs up
to the attic because he thinks he hears Josh up there,
and how there's almost kind of like pleading with him
because she can't quite hear it, and she wants them

(01:40:48):
to kind of like remain calm and try to find
him in a calm manner, collected with a plan maybe,
but that's not what Mike.

Speaker 1 (01:41:01):
Like.

Speaker 2 (01:41:01):
Mike is a broken man psychologically.

Speaker 1 (01:41:04):
Oh yeah, at this point, without a doubt. They both
are pretty much shattered at this point. And there are
a few like we obviously can't talk about every single
moment in the movie, but there's a really sweet moment
where they like where they hold each other after they
hated each other so much because they're all they have
in the world, And it's one of the only shots
in the whole movie that is not a literal point
of view of somebody. The cameras just sat down and

(01:41:24):
they're hugging each.

Speaker 2 (01:41:25):
Other anyway, So Heather like follows him up to the attic,
and attics are creepy. It's it's very unsettling there. But
it gets worse when Mike claims that he can hear
Josh in the basement now, and so he runs downstairs

(01:41:46):
and Heather's left up in the attic for a few moments.
It's not very long, but she's left up there alone,
and when she finally gets so much worse because Mike
runs down to the basement and he's almost instantly once
he gets down in the basement, you know, he's like
looking around and it's fairly unimpressive. It's like a cellar basement,

(01:42:12):
but he's almost instantly accosted and his camera just falls
to the ground.

Speaker 1 (01:42:17):
Yeah, and that's I believe the black and white No, no,
or was it the black and white? Yeah, yeah, I
think so. I think so it falls down and just
kind of shudders.

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):
Yeah, because that's the one that actually has the microphone
on it, right, because that's why heather sound sounds so weird.

Speaker 1 (01:42:34):
Yeah, yeah, so I'm sorry I have confused myself, but regardless, Yeah,
the reason that's the sound is very disembodied is that
the only the sound is coming from. Yeah, he's not
operating the film camera. You're right, he has the video camera. Yeah,
because we're hearing his perspective. So when we hear her
screaming Mike, Mike, she sounds really far away, even when
it's her own camera. Yeah, it's because film cameras don't

(01:42:56):
record sound, so the only sound being recorded was.

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):
The video keyes.

Speaker 1 (01:43:01):
Yes, correct, which I.

Speaker 2 (01:43:04):
Don't the creative choice. I don't know if it was
strictly creative or if that was just the way they
did it, because that's the way you do it. But
it makes an already creepy and blood curdling scene even
scarier to have that disembodied sound because up until that point,

(01:43:26):
we've basically, like Heather has been our point of view,
so to hear her voice so far removed from our
point of view makes it feel almost like a out
of body experience.

Speaker 1 (01:43:37):
Yeah, it's definitely confusing in an upsetting way.

Speaker 2 (01:43:41):
Yeah. So she finally gets up the courage to run
downstairs and chase after Mike into the basement, and when
she gets down there, he's standing in a corner, motionless,
and she calls to him and he doesn't do anything.
He doesn't anything, and then she gets assaulted and her camera.

(01:44:07):
She screams, and she drops her camera and it records
for a few more seconds. We don't really see anything.
It's on the floor. We can kind of hear, like
her muffled screaming and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:44:17):
And the gait of the camera has been damaged, so
the image is distorted.

Speaker 2 (01:44:23):
Yeah, and then the film just cuts to black and
that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:28):
And that's the way found footage movies are supposed to be.
I mean, the only other thing you can really do
that I think works in found footage. It would be
a slate saying like where it was found or you
know nothing, well else was recovered or something. You could
do that. But I remember people being like, that's it

(01:44:48):
and being very frustrated by that ending. I thought it
was scary, it's perfect. Then I remember people saying like,
you never even see the blair Witch and I'm like, well, yes,
you don't. You don't get a lot of things you
want in this world, young man. But there are an
immense amount of theories about what exactly was going on

(01:45:09):
in the blair Witch project. The big one is the
idea of possession. There's a lot of possession theories that
if you look at the actors they're starting to act
a little differently than they had been before. All of
a sudden, they're being a little bit more argumentative or friendly.

(01:45:29):
That's a very popular theory. So I wanted to dig
into some of the theories because, I mean, my theories
aren't I don't have a lot of like It's not
like Candy Man. I don't have a lot of wildly
fresh takes on blair Witch because blair Witch is a
movie that is meant to be theorized about because it
is so ambiguous purposely. I mean, the filmmakers have said

(01:45:49):
it's very purposely ambiguous. So for me, what's going on? Definitely,
as they're being terrorized by something, could one of them
be in on it? That's a question. Some people have
suggested that Heather is possessed and that that's why she's
kind of orchestrating everything. But after this break, I want

(01:46:15):
you to tell me a little bit about your theory,
and then I'll share some theories I've researched before we
get the heck out of here and have some delicious
beef vegetable soup not in the woods right after this.

(01:46:41):
So what's your theory, Rach, My theory you don't have
to have a perfectly planned out when I just need like,
what are your thoughts? What what like? What are your
instincts saying? Do you think it's what you see is
what you get? Or do you think there's something more
going on? What's what's a what's dragging you around?

Speaker 2 (01:46:57):
I the way that because I'm not taking any of
the blair Witch sequels into account, I'm only taking into
account this movie. Maybe a little bit of the Curse
of the blair Witch, but mostly I'm just going on
the movies what you get. And to me, what it
seems is that the ghost of Elliewards Hedwards. Yeah, the

(01:47:28):
ghost of Ellie Edwards, like after she had died, her
death was so horrific that she continued to haunt those woods.
And she's the one who her ghost like killed those
men in the search party. And as she gained power,
she was able to possess rust and Parr so that

(01:47:50):
he killed those kids. And after that all happened in
the forties, everyone pretty much just cleared out of the woods.
Like even the fisher guys they're like, yeah, we don't
even go hunting there.

Speaker 1 (01:48:03):
Well, when they say you never go there at night.

Speaker 2 (01:48:05):
You never go there at night. The one mom that
they asked, she's like, well, I know, we're going the woods.
And even the what was the crazy lady?

Speaker 1 (01:48:15):
Yeah, her name is escaping me, but yeah, there was
a lady who claimed she saw her when she was
a little girl.

Speaker 2 (01:48:21):
Yeah, and even she's like, very crazy, She's incredibly insane.
So to me, it feels like as long as you
stay out of the woods, you cannot come under the
power of the blair Witch. Once they get into the woods,
they could have possibly had some leniency if they would
have gotten right back out. But I think that Josh

(01:48:45):
disturbing the cairn is what made him the specific target,
and that's why the blair Witch eventually took him and
used him as bait to draw the other two into
their depths. Basically, pretty you're pretty standard fare when it

(01:49:05):
comes to Blair Witch theories.

Speaker 1 (01:49:07):
No, but I mean that makes sense. So one of
the most popular theories is that there never was a witch,
that it was Mike and Josh murdering Heather ooh. The
concept is the guys staged the noises, the stick figures,
and the loss of the map, lured Heather to the
house and killed her with one standing in the corner

(01:49:29):
to echo rustin Parr's legend. It explains the human sounding
calls the teeth Bundle, and why we never see anything supernatural.
It's a very popularly discussed piece on like YouTube explainers
and stuff like that, but there are some big problems
with that. I will count Curse of the blair Witch

(01:49:51):
as cannon because it was created by the creators of
the movie before the movie was even out. There's also
their video that have massive explanit, like early two thousands
video games that have massive expansions on the lore, but
I'm not counting those. There's also Heather's Diary which came
in the special edition Blu ray that is supposed to

(01:50:14):
be cannon, but I'm not going to count that. I'm
just going to count curs with the blair Witch and
the Blare which product, But that wouldn't explain where the
hell did that house come from? How the hell did
the tapes get underneath the foundation of a house. Yeah,
and that leads into the second very popular theory and
one that is expanded upon heavily in the twenty sixteen

(01:50:35):
sequel blair Witch, which I actually really liked, which is
the time loop time dilation in the Black Hills, which
suggests the woods warped time and space, which is why
the trio walks in circles, can't find their car, and
ends up at a house that shouldn't exist. As I mentioned,
it was heavily referenced in the twenty sixteen sequel, which

(01:50:57):
I loved that I remember element Viewers also point out
that in this Sci Fi Channel mockumentary Chrystal Bar, which
the par house burned down in the nineteen forties. Yet
they arrive at the house and it's and in the
documentary they never say that it's rust in Pars. How
did you say it's a house in the wood? I

(01:51:18):
mean that doesn't mean they know that it isn't. It
just means that they are not aware that it was formerly.
It's now just a foundation. Another popular theory is the
proxy killer or possession concept, and this one I find
a bit plausible if I'm honest. It says a force

(01:51:41):
doesn't attack directly, it compels someone, so one person faces
the wall while another is killed, mirroring Par's method. This
frames the final finale as ritual reenactment rather than a
creature attack. There are tons of articles suggesting that it's
this it's the same force that got par to kill

(01:52:03):
the kids, which some people tie that into the idea
that Heather or Josh were being guided by the same
witch spirit as rust in par to lead them there
to kill them just like the kids. Yeah, so they
feed into each other. A bitch a bitch, a bit witch,

(01:52:23):
bitch bitch bit. So this is an interesting one. I
hadn't heard much about no witch at all, mass hysteria
and human interference. Everything frightening is manufactured by people, locals
or one of the trio amplified by fear, sleep deprivation
in the films. It could be real presentation behind the
scenes reporting about the productions, verite methods fuels this grounded

(01:52:47):
reed because they were being terrorized by people in Realityah,
but they were making a movie. So that one's interesting.
The idea that the locals don't like it because they
did walk around town annoying people for like a whole
day about stuff they don't generally want to.

Speaker 2 (01:53:01):
Talk about, and they like they did kind of disclose
where they were going to be going and what all
they were going to be looking at, So true, the
locals would know how to track them and find them
very easily.

Speaker 1 (01:53:12):
So this one I didn't know anything about because I
haven't watched The Massacre of the Birkettsville seven, the documentary
that was made for Showtime about the Blair Witch. But
it says in the Birketsville Seven some suggest a lone
survivor named Kyle Brody may have been involved in the
child murders attributed to Parr, implying the mythology often pins
crimes on a supernatural scapegoat, so fans have suggested that

(01:53:35):
that could fold into being who attacked them in the woods.
Is this Kyle Brody character that may have been involved
in the par killings?

Speaker 2 (01:53:46):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:53:47):
So, and we're going to hit a few more of
these as we wrap up our show right after this. Okay,
so just a few more theories. This one is the

(01:54:10):
house paradox, which is equal to a proof of a
temporal trap. A popular sub theory zooms in on the
ending location. If the parhouse was destroyed long before nineteen
ninety four, the students reaching it and the tapes being
found there only make sense if the woods loop them
back in time.

Speaker 2 (01:54:29):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (01:54:30):
So very similar to the other concept, But this is
one I'd never heard before. Heather's tape is the Witch's pov.

Speaker 2 (01:54:39):
Ooh.

Speaker 1 (01:54:40):
A more out there take suggests the last shots are
not Heather's perspective at all right at the end, but
the entities, hence the abrupt camera shift and disorienting final moments.
It's less common, but is cited by some fans of
the film. Okay, so the idea being that he was
taken by the witch, or if you wanted to blend theories,

(01:55:03):
or that Heather became the witch entirely, it could be
an interesting theory, the idea that the Witch has taken
over Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:55:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:55:14):
And then, of course the final theory and the one
that people I think like to pontificate on the most,
which is the rational theory. A minority argue the trio
simply gets lost and dies off screen. The Witch is
a layering of local folklore, thus escalating fear. This overlaps

(01:55:34):
with what we talked about before, the no witch at all, massyesteria,
human interference, but it strips away the human malice entirely,
suggesting that hypothermia, panic and getting lost just kills these
kids because they just don't know what they're doing. Yeah,
and that's that's why they're dead. So they're all interesting theories,

(01:55:58):
and rightfully so. I mean, like I said, the movie is,
by the filmmaker's ad mission, extremely open to interpretation and
extremely what's the word ambiguous? Ambiguous? Thank you? I work
too much? Uh, it's extremely ambiguous. So yeah, this has

(01:56:18):
been a really fun, yeah thing to dive into. And
there are tons more theories, I'm sure if I dug
even deeper, but those seem to be the most common ones,
and I definitely think there's a little something to it.
I do think maybe there's some kind of a little
bit of a possession thing the him standing in the
corner like Rustin Parr's kids. That's not a coincidence, no,
not at all. So that definitely signifies something. At the

(01:56:42):
very least, it signifies that if Heather is operating the camera,
she's about to die, because when one child is facing
the wall, the other one his eyes and then the
other one gets killed too. So so could could it
be that Josh was became the puppet? Could he have
been come rust and Parr? I mean Rustin Parr was

(01:57:02):
turned crazier than a loon by by the by the witch.
So what if Josh, just what if the screams they
heard the night that they were trying to find him,
What if that was him pulling his own teeth out,
cutting off his finger, cutting out a piece of his
own tongue to make the screams realistic. And when that

(01:57:23):
didn't work to draw them in, he made the little
bundle in order to really make them unable to have
any sense of security or calm at all.

Speaker 2 (01:57:34):
Eh, that's spooky.

Speaker 1 (01:57:37):
Because after all, rust and Parr took the kids in
two at a time, and he took them into Rustin's
house two at a time. I don't know, I'm just I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:57:47):
Just you're's his way spookier than mine.

Speaker 1 (01:57:49):
Well, yeah, that's I mean, I have a little bit
of experience spinning a scary story, I guess. So that's
that's pretty much my whole my whole thought process on
blair Witch Project. I love Blair Witch Project. I enjoy
a book of Shadows. The sequel. I think it's pretty fun,
and I like the blair Witch sequel from twenty sixteen
quite a bit. I do like how they played with

(01:58:09):
the time warping element a bunch. I thought it made
it pretty fun. But obviously just nothing can really touch
this original because the original is allowed to be less
as more as fuck. Yeah, it's allowed to be so
little and so much as to where the sequels can
never be as sparse as the original, because everybody wants more,

(01:58:30):
You want more and more more, you know. Nightmare and
Elm Street one, Freddy kills like four people and it
was all a dream. Nightmann Elm Street two, he kills
like fifteen people and somehow it's not a dream anymore.
And then Nightmare three, it's like it's a whole dream world,
freaking mc escher paintings and stuff. They always do that. Yeah, yeah,
and I get it. I get it because you already

(01:58:51):
have the one movie. Why make an exact same movie
out of your sequel? So but yeah, I just think
the Blair Witch Project, I mean, talk about a perfect
addition your spooky season lineup. I know Halloween is coming
right up. If you haven't watched Blair Witch Project in
a while, you should check it out. I didn't look
up where we can see it. I was just gonna

(01:59:11):
mention that, well, it's nowhere. It's all you can rent
it on like Amazon Prime or Fandango at home. But
unfortunately the original movie is not the easiest to come
up with. It always tends to be that way. So,
but anything else you want to say at all about
Blair Witch before we wrap things.

Speaker 2 (01:59:29):
Up, I just think it's a beautiful archetype of the
found footage genre. That's that's my final thoughts on that.

Speaker 1 (01:59:39):
I mean, I think that's pretty fair. I think that's
probably probably an okay thought. I guess I'll allow it.
So with that all being said, I hope everybody is
having a wonderful spooky season. We got to go to
Land of Illusions and enjoy some really spooky fun time. Fine,
we had a blast. I was drunk on spooky by
the end of the night. Man. It was really fun.

(02:00:00):
And we're probably I think we're going to try and
see Brimstone on this weekend. Brimstone Haunt, which is a
three haunt and one. We did a six haunt in
one before, so now we're easing up with a three
haunt in one.

Speaker 2 (02:00:10):
Got to get the big one out.

Speaker 1 (02:00:11):
Of the one, and we might sneak over to the
other haunt as well if we have time. We'll see,
we'll see, we'll see. But yeah, so I hope everybody's
had a good spooky season. I hope if you're, you know,
an avid listener of Weekly Spooky, you've been enjoying all
the content we've been pumping out. Myself and all the
authors and all my co hosts have been working our
butts off to make sure you have the most fun, creepy,

(02:00:33):
spooky Halloween you possibly can. So very proud of all
the work we've done. And uh yeah, yeah, So now I'm.

Speaker 2 (02:00:43):
Tired, Let's go eat that soup.

Speaker 1 (02:00:46):
Yeah, And if you're still listening somehow, tomorrow there is
the Ultimate Edgar Allan Poe compilation on Saturday, seven hours
of Poe readings that I'm very proud of and I
think you'll you'll enjoy because I love me some Poe.
So thank you guys so much for tuning into cutting
deep into horror. Next month in November, we'll be covering

(02:01:06):
two films, maybe more if we luck out, but probably
just the two. And the first one is Bitter Feast,
which you've probably never seen, so look it up. It
is worth your time and it has Josh Leonard from
Blair Witch Project coming. So with that all being said,
if you love what we're doing here at Weekly Spooky
make sure you're subscribed on your favorite podcasting app. You

(02:01:26):
can send us an email at Weeklyspooky at gmail dot com.
We would love to hear from you. If you have
a thought opinion about the movie, or you have a
movie you want us to watch and talk about, we'd
love to hear about it. And if you want to
support us for as little a one dollar a month,
head to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join and the support
really means a lot. But now I'm going to rest
this poor voice of mine and until next time, go ahead,

(02:01:51):
go into the woods. You're an adult, do what you want.

Speaker 2 (02:01:53):
Treat yourself.

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Cutting Deep into Horror | The Blair Witch Project (1999) — Folklore & Fear for the Spooky Season

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Cutting Deep into Horror | The Blair Witch Project (1999) — Folklore & Fear for the Spooky Season