Woods that go on endlessly repeating themselves no matter which direction you travel in. Creepy little stick figure totems that mysteriously appear outside of your tent the morning after a sleepless night. Shaky handheld footage of a dilapidated house, the walls covered in the bloody handprints of children...
For my inaugural series, join me as we make our way through the Blair Witch franchise. Today we'll be starting with the first film in the series and the film that really popularised the found footage sub-genre: The Blair Witch Project.
The Blair Witch Project tells the story of three student filmmakers who hike into the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, to film a documentary on the local legend of the Blair Witch. They mysteriously disappear. A year later their equipment, and the footage they shot, is found.
This film is an absolute classic and its impact on the horror genre can still be felt. The filmmakers managed to achieve a lot with very little. By never showing us the source of the characters torment the movie forces us to imagine the horror that is stalking them. The final sequence (and the infamous final shot) has lost none of its power to terrify, becoming all the more haunting the longer we're left to sit with it. The movie offers us no easy answers. I remember the marketing surrounding this film upon its release and how groundbreaking it was in the way that it used the internet to engage with its audience. It managed to blur the edges between reality and fiction and had many people convinced that the footage was real. I was particularly fond of a tie-in mockumentary that aired on the SciFi Channel, 'Curse of the Blair Witch', which deepened and further expanded the lore of the film.
First Course
I really wanted to honour the theme of camping, and the outdoors, that runs through all entries in the franchise and is established firmly with this first film. The plate and mug are camping gear and I decorated a white paper tablecloth with murky handprints in imitation of the walls of Rustin Parr's house seen near the end of the film.
Oatmeal Raisin PowerBar
Early on in the film, during a shopping trip for supplies, Mike selects and mentions by name an Oatmeal Raisin flavoured PowerBar.
There is a surprising amount of food featured and mentioned in the movie (particularly during this scene), but none of it better represents this film to me than the camping/hiking staple of an energy bar.
PowerBar is an American brand that was established in 1986. It made products that targeted the 'active' lifestyle, such as; energy bars, sports drinks and carbohydrate gels. The brand fast became a leader in the sports nutrition market before being acquired by Nestlé in 2000.
Unfortunately PowerBar products are not readily available here in Australia, and of those that I could find, this flavour was not amongst them, so I opted to make my own.
Canteen of Water
Later on in the film, after Josh has gone missing, we see Mike taking a drink of water from his canteen.
How exciting, right? Well, like the PowerBar, to me it embodies the film and the theme of camping so well, while also adding a fun novelty of serving water from a canteen as opposed to a carafe, that I really wanted to include it.
What I am trying to conjure with this course is the feeling of being out in those woods with Heather, Josh and Mike. My intention here, and the goal for all of the meals that I plan on featuring here on my blog, is to try and immerse you in the story by serving food and drink that helps you to experience the film in a unique way.
BACKGROUND MUSIC: "Rigors (of Courting a Saviour)" by Digginlilies
WANT MORE BLAIR WITCH THEMED FUN? Shine a torch in your dinner guests face and ask them to record a tearful confession/farewell to their friends and family!
Enjoy
-CJ
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