I know some of you are going to laugh at me, but The Blair Witch Project scared the shit out of me when I first saw it on screen. Sure, I was only eleven years old when the film hit theaters, but the film was – and still is – particularly frightening when examined from the standpoint of: what if this was real? What if this was happening to me, or you? The second film in the series, Book of Shadows, was a train wreck on all accounts and it put a big wrench into the plans to milk the concept for all of its worth. Plans for a third film started back in 2009, but nothing ever materialized until horror fans were shocked by a surprise trailer in July, revealing “The Woods” to be Blair Witch – the long awaited third flick in what has now become a trilogy. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t extremely excited for Blair Witch to hit theaters tomorrow.
The Blair With Project‘s star, Heather Donahue, has been almost as elusive as the new movie. She found minor success following the groundbreaking found footage feature with roles in Manticore, The Morgue and a recurring role on “Taken.” However, in a turn of events – most of which were personal and spiritual – Heather left Hollywood behind to become a marijuana farmer near Sierra Nevada and wasn’t very forthcoming when asked about the film that made her famous, at least that was the case when I contacted her in 2011. Still, putting her new knowledge and new career to good use, Donahue published a novel in 2012, Growgirl: The Blossoming of an Unlikely Outlaw, and it became an instant best seller.
With the release of Blair Witch digging up old memories, Heather Donahue has been speaking out a lot recently in regards to her experience with the first film, her life since the first film and what she hopes for the new movie. I found the article she penned for The Guardian to be especially telling. I’ve provided snippets for you below, but you should really read the whole thing for yourself: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/15/first-blair-witch-project-film-killed-me.
“My obituary was published when I was 24. It’s a complicated thing to be dead when you’re still very much alive and eager to make a name for yourself. It said I was dead on IMDB, a site that was new when I first died in 1999 – a time when people still believed everything on the internet was true. It was the marketing department that killed me. The folks at the now-defunct Artisan Pictures bought an odd little midnight offering at Sundance that year called The Blair Witch Project, about three film students who go into the woods to make a documentary about said witch and are never heard from again. I was the girl. The girl from The Blair Witch Project. The first line of my obituary.”
“Making the movie was (except for the wet days) a joy. It was as scrappy and punk rock an affair as movie-making could be. The producers skulked about in camouflage with boom boxes blasting children’s voices, they bound blood and teeth in twigs, hung stickmen, dropped notes with the next essential conflict they wanted from us in a milk crate marked with a bicycle flag so we could find it.”
“On learning of the sequel, I did what any sensible woman would do and drank very nice bourbon in a very nice bathtub while bawling my eyes out. Nothing I do will ever surpass what I did at 24. My name and face are for ever going to be someone else’s intellectual property. My snot-flooded portrait was back. It’s all anyone wanted to talk to me about. I bawled more. Refilled the bath. Stared at the wall.”
