If you have not yet seen the film, please read no further. This document is designed to discuss the many permutations of the film, and is intended to be read by an audience of individuals who are familiar with the film and know how it ends. As a point of fact, the directors themselves have revealed the truth about this film. They do not seem to believe there is a problem in doing so. However, though it didn't affect my appreciation of the movie, others seem to react adversely to the film, if they question its authenticity ahead of time. If you want to know if it is real, yes it is very real. Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Now go watch the movie and then come back here and I'll tell you precisely how and why it is real.

Josh: "So what do you think so far of the Blair Witch? Do you think she's real?"

Heather: "I don't know.. I don't know."

This movie is hauntingly mesmerizing. It is not scary. Those who go to see the film expecting to be scared are sometimes disappointed. However, if you go into the film expecting to be creeped out, you might find yourself scared a few times, and in hindsight you'll be pleasantly surprised. In today's film industry, when slasher flicks are a dime a dozen, we as the modern audience have become jaded. If there's no blood and gore, and if we don't actually see the
evil that stalks the victums, we feel ripped off. However, this film does exactly the opposite. We never see what stalks Heather, Joshua and Michael. Or do we? In a film industry where monsters can be computer generated, it's a let down to some that Blair Witch Project doesn't visually please our conscience by letting us see the witch herself. Many critics and sceptics have denounced the film precisely for that reason. There was no payoff. We don't even see how these three die. It's left very much in the open, and we sarcastically reply by saying they're only setting us up for a sequel. And they might. However, I hope they do not, because it is the enigmatic aspects of this film which are it's most charming, and the weaknesses of independent film that become this film's strengths.

The use of the cameras for example. Other independent films must suffer through the use of equiptment that is not top quality, like what the audiences are used to witnessing from Hollywood. Cheaper equiptment is perhaps bulkier and unable to be in just the right place to capture the perfect scene. For Blair Witch, the cameras are held by the actors, because of reasons explained expertly in the film. We are not eyewitnesses from some disembodied points in space,
watching the events from perspectives where no one is at. We are quite literally looking through the eyes of the actors themselves. When seeing Heather, you're looking through the eyes of Josh or Michael. When the image is color, we are usually seeing from Heather's perspective. When we are looking at black and white images, it's usually Josh holding the camera, at least until the end when they approach the old building. We become Mike and Heather at the
end of the film. We see what they see, but we do not experience exactly what we do. We are simultaneously outsiders. We do not feel welcome throughout the film, in much the same way they do not feel welcome in the forest. And these perspectives are constantly being moved about. At some points, Heather is in color, so someone else is holding the camera, or she has set the camera down while she does something. The film is constantly changing our focus and perspective, but not in an unexplained fashion as is the case in most other films.

In the move The Truman Show, the placement of the cameras is explained in a different way. We are usually looking through cameras that have been allegedly preset throughout the invented city, so we may witness the life of Truman Burbank. However, when the story of the film moves away from Truman and goes outside to show us the people who are watching him, from what cameras are we witnessing these people? Who's watching them? Who's got a camera aimed at Christof, the mastermind behind Truman Burbank's life? Who's watching him? We are. However, that's never explained. This is Hollywood we're talking about here. They don't have to explain themselves. You're just there for the purposes of telling the story. In The Blair Witch Project, every camera angle is there because the cameras were there. They are written into the story, as are we by proxy. Is there a Blair Witch? That is left for you to decide, and that is only one of countless questions we are left to entertain.

The film does the same thing to its audience that it does to the three principal roles. It leaves you out in the middle of nowhere, and asks you to fend for yourself. One would think such evidence of actual film depicting the last days of three lost people's lives would answer the questions of their disappearance. However, it only gives more questions. So the film haunts you after you leave the theater, and even for days afterward. Some will find that frustrating, and because of this I never expect this film to become more than a cult favorite. A precious few will find the splendor in this: the film is only half completed. It leaves the rest to you, to view in your own mind's eye. This is a risk that Hollywood dares rarely to take. Hollywood does not like to leave anything to our imagination, and it has to wrap everything up in a bow at the end. The audience must have a happy ending, or so Hollywood believes. If not happy, it must at least offer some kind of closure, and Blair Witch does not do that for us. Yes. Of course we know it's a well planned hoax. The directors themselves have admitted it. In fact they have likened their setup of the film, which you see in the first moment of the film itself, to the famous "a long time ago in a galaxy far far away."

In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared

in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting

a documentary. A year later their footage was found.

The setup of the film is a prologue. If you accept this fact for the duration of the film, you will enjoy it. If you do not suspend your disbelief, you will see the flaws as failures, just as George Lucas felt a need to return to his own film twenty years later, as if Star Wars was not a masterpiece when he first completed it. Is there a Blair Witch? There is one in the minds of the three characters. They invent her as they go along. Something is out there, leaving evidence of its presence in the form of rudimentary objects made with sticks and stones, or in the form of sounds the three hear at night. However, this may not be the work of the Blair Witch. This could just as easily be the work of unknown individuals who seek to do harm or mischief to our three filmmakers. This could be done by the hand of Josh, perhaps with the assistance of his girlfriend (who we see in the scifi channel special "Curse of the Blair Witch") or it could be the work of another crazed hermit, carrying on the work of Russ Parr. Perhaps it's that old lady they talked to at the mobile home park, or someone else to whom they admitted their intentions of going out into the woods. And of course, perhaps it's the directors of the film, who are directing the filmmakers (smirk).

To the three players of this disturbing tragedy however, it's happening by something or someone they can't see. Someone or something they had come to the woods to hunt with their cameras. Someone or something which in turn is hunting them. So based on the evidence brought before them, these three young people are inventing a Blair Witch in their minds eye, filling in the gaps where the evidence leads them, just as the movie itself is giving us only part of the Blair Witch, asking us to fill in the rest. Someone or something is undoubtedly stalking them. Someone is decorating the woods with stick figures. Something left a 'gift' for Heather that we are led to assume comes from the body of Josh. It is wrapped in a scrap of his shirt, and then covered with twigs. It looks perhaps like a tooth or a piece of flesh, but it's hard to make out. It doesn't appear to be human, but we can't exactly tell. They also come across marked graves or curious piles of stones. Three of them are left in front of their tent one morning. Are these warnings? Are these part of a ritual? Were they left there at night by one of the boys, in order to frighten the others as a prank? Is Josh perhaps the one who orchestrated it all? We can never be certain. These are all things that play in our minds after the show is over. What's possible, based on what we have seen? What's not
possible?

And I find the use of sticks and stones very peculiar. One of many symbolic ironies in the film. I do not know if this was done purposefully by the writer/directors, but the old adage, "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me" comes to mind. These sticks and stones do harm the minds of these three, but in actuality, these three allow their fears of what they think the sticks and stones represent to harm them. When Heather looks into the dark and says, "it's all around us.." to what is she referring to? Is the true horror not really inside her mind and soul? Perhaps she
thinks 'it' is all around her, because what she is really sensing lies inside her own self. These nights of horror led to days of frustration did not have to go as long as they did. The very first night, whatever it is that is making those noises, if this someone or something meant to cause them harm, could have taken them out the first night. However, the experience itself lasts eight days, and it is only when the two remaining characters converge on the old house itself that they are in fact attacked. They are not harmed while in the safety of their temporary home; their tent. They are not harmed until they enter the dilapidated house uninvited. It can be said then that they were attacked in self defense by whoever or whatever lived there, defending its home.

Something that gets close enough to their tent to make piles of rocks surely could have opted to attack them with those rocks instead, or use sharpened sticks. Instead of being murdered, they are frightened. Instead of facing the filmmakers, whatever is out there choses not to be seen. Stalking when attacking could have been so much easier. Does this unknown quantity mean to do them harm, or was it only defending what it surmised to be its territory? These three may not have even been physically attacked. They were in effect, frightened to death. However, we cannot even say that. In the last scene of the film, Mike runs down to the basement first, and his camera is allegedly knocked out of his hands. However, as Heather rushes down to the basement with her own camera, just before her camera is knocked to the ground, we see Mike apparently safe and sound, standing in a corner without any assistance. And we never see what knocks the cameras out of their hands. Was it Josh? Was it something else? What was on the right hand side of the room?

Was it the Blair Witch?

We never see. We may never know. What we do know is this: The Blair Witch resides inside every one of us. Not in the deep dark recesses of our mind where few wish to dwell. Nor is it a demon from the pits of hell. The Blair Witch exists in the same place that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny exist. She exists as certaintly as love and hate, generosity and greed, selfishness and devotion exist. Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Yes Heather, there is a Blair Witch. The principle is the same. Suspend your disbelief and balance your hope with your uncertainty. There, somewhere between cold hard fact and the complete fear of the unknown you will catch a glimpse of her. She is here among us, and it depends on where your heart and your mind and your soul are at as to whether or not she means to do you harm. Because the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and this movie proves that fear can be a pretty frightening thing.