As the sense of dread increases, there are many scenes where she is being yelled at, and Josh and Mike are taking out all their fear and anger on her. Mike and Josh are ready to blame Heather the moment things go wrong. But when Heather invites them to check the map and study the trail, they back right off and tell her she is in charge. Mike and Josh consistently grill her about their location and progress, and they might as well be whining “are we there yet?” from the back of a station wagon. She has a map and a compass, and has scouted a hiking path. Heather is not only in charge of the film, but the whole trip. Heather has to push her personal boundaries to be accepted by her colleagues Josh and Mike almost totally ignore Heather, until she asks for a shot of scotch, which finally gets their attention. After their first day of filming, they are in a hotel room, and Heather wants to recap their progress and prepare for the next day. Near the beginning, they all seem to be getting along, but Heather is trying hard to joke around, and it's not always well-received by Mike and Josh. Yes, this is Heather's project, and she is in charge, but Mike and Josh agreed to work with her. If the town had one witch causing problems, wouldn’t the stories be more similar, the experiences more consistent? Was this town truly targeted by a witch, or did the townsfolk all conveniently agree on a female scapegoat so they could move on with their days?Īnd while we are on the topic, we can’t ignore the fact that Josh and Mike completely blame Heather for the outcome of their trip. Everything from harmless apparitions floating above the ground, to disappearing children, and even a child murderer claiming he was controlled by a witch. In the town of Burkittsville, strange occurrences have been blamed on this “witch” for a long time. There is not necessarily any evidence that a witch exists, or that anything supernatural is happening. It’s notable for a movie called The Blair Witch Project that we never actually see a witch. Abruptly, their camera drops to the floor, and the movie ends.
The last thing we see is Mike standing in the corner, facing the wall, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it call back to an earlier story heard in town. The pair find an abandoned house, and think they can hear Josh in the basement. Mike and Heather frantically look for their friend and begin to accept the reality of being truly lost in the woods. They fear they are being stalked by someone (or something), are running drastically low on supplies, and wake one morning to find that Josh is simply missing. They soon become lost, and while trying to escape the woods, only march deeper and deeper into the trees. Heather, Josh and Mike venture into the woods to capture footage of locations related to Blair Witch activity. Several residents have stories to share, each one a little different from the last. These three students visit the small town of Burkittsville (formerly Blair), Maryland and begin their documentary by interviewing townsfolk about the legend of the Blair Witch. The Blair Witch Project (1999) opens with those words silently displayed on the screen, and that’s all the context we have before we meet our three main characters: Heather, Mike, and Josh. In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary.