The Blair Witch Project, 1999, is an American mystery, horror film set in 1994. Targeted towards both males and females at the age of 17-30, The Blair Witch Project went viral with their “trans media project”, organising websites, video games and comic books to sell their “true story” to the internet users of the day.
Set in a deserted, as usual, claustrophobic woods, “Maryland back woods”, a group of college students undergo filming a documentary on the Blair Witch incidents, using a Hi-8 video recorder and a black and white film camera. The footage is said to have been rediscovered after the college students go missing and have never been seen again. Watching the footage, we as spectators get an insight into the adventures, traumas and unforgettable sightings the teenagers witness during the couple of nights in the woods.
The first narrative structure, discovered by Tzvetan Todorov is one that illustrates the stages of a film and narrows the plot down to one simple structure. Beginning with a state of equilibrium, the structure then turns to a disruption of the equilibrium, to recognising the disruption for then an attempt to repair the disruption to happen so that a reinstatement of the equilibrium is where the film ends. In t
he film “The Blair Witch Project”, this structure is used throughout the whole documentary. The film begins with a state of equilibrium, shown through the college students first arriving at the woods and going about the usual routines such as finding a place to set up camp and investigating different parts of the woods. As their film goes on and they have shown enough footage, different mysterious and unnatural events begin to happen including people going missing and their clothing being found scattered in different, peculiar places. This shows the disruption to the equilibrium and introduces the fear factor into the film. As different characters find different mysteries, the recognition of the equilibrium is shown. Coming to grips with what is happening to them, the team decide to investigate further when some of the students go missing. By this, I feel as if the stage of attempting to repair the disruption is shown. The last plot structure of finding the equilibrium once again is one that I believe isn’t shown in this particular film. Ending with one of the students standing in a corner, having been taken over by the Blair witch, who was known for making the victims stand in a corner before cutting out their eyes. The camera is then dropped and the film ends, as a hint towards that was where the camera was found. Despite the recognition that the students are being killed, the equilibrium is never shown in the film and the film is still focusing on the evil and how the evil has won.
The second narrative structure, binary opposition, was one discovered by Claude Levi Strauss. Strauss came up with a theory that all films follow a specific structure that relates to two opposites, for instance, good vs. evil. In The Blair Witch Project, good vs. evil is a structure that is strongly followed due to the college students influencing the audience to believe that they are normal, everyday students who are interested in a particular project, making them good people. The “blair witch” on the other hand, is the evil, shown by the incidents created, although never seen. This is a typical convention for horror films as the evil is often killing/ tormenting the innocent. .jpg)
The third and last narrative structure that I will be focusing on is one discovered by Vladimir Propp. Propp’s theory was that all films include characters that can all be categorised under any of the following; a villain, the dispatcher, the helper, the princess, the donor, the hero and the false hero. These character types also had stereotypical images and predictions alongside them and Propp came up with 31 functions that were likely to happen to the particular people. As found within my table, Propp’s theory is one that is not followed, but challenged. The Blair witch, themselves is the villain, shown by the evil, murderous, overpowering incidents that occur. Although we never get to see the witch, we acknowledge that they are the villain. The only other character type used within this film are the fishermen who help towards the documentary by stating what they have previously seen and giving important information towards their documentary. Having seen the film, I wouldn’t class the students as any of the above as they do not succeed in their plans and cannot be classed as heroes.
As a conclusion to this analysis, I have found that Tzvetan Todorov and Claude Levi Strauss’ theories are followed and Vladimir Propp’s theory is challenged. If I were to give my own opinion, I would state that a genre theory would match this film as there are typical conventions of a horror film shown through the deserted, woodland setting, the young, innocent students being the victims and the villain never been seen, to add suspense and to allow the audience to involve their imaginations.
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