The Science of Monsters

At the end of the film, when Sue Snell (Amy Irving) visits Carrie’s grave in a hazy dream, we share her conflicted feelings. As the audience we feel pity for Carrie for the trials she endures and also fear her for the destruction she is capable of. It is this complicated duality that sets Carrie White in the horror pantheon with the likes of poor, vengeful souls like Frankenstein’s monster. Although Carrie’s powers are witch-like, it is her humanity that endures.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT

Year of Release: 1999

Directors: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez

Writers: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez

Starring: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard

Budget: $60,000

Box Office: $248.6 million

To fully understand the phenomenon surrounding The Blair Witch Project, one simply needs to glance at the film’s budget in comparison to the money it amassed. On the cusp of the twenty-first century, The Blair Witch Project exploded, sending droves of thrill-seekers to the theater. At the Internet’s infancy, the filmmakers capitalized on a unique strategy that paid off in millions. The marketing was done in such a way as to make people believe the footage, depicting three budding filmmakers in search of the Blair Witch in the remote Maryland woods, was real. “Found footage” movies hadn’t become popular yet and many people went into the theater expecting to watch the last harrowing days of three missing people. This was perhaps the first movie to use viral marketing through the Internet and other channels to reach a wide audience and get buzz going for a film. Missing persons posters were put on merchandise and even IMDB, the Internet movie database, listed the actors as “missing” and “presumed dead” for a time. A website for the film was created that looked to provide proof of the Blair Witch and the legends surrounding her. The unique (at that time) marketing and excellent word-of-mouth led The Blair Witch Project to become a tremendous box-office success.

We had the incredible opportunity to speak with Simon Barrett, the screenwriter of the 2016 movie Blair Witch, to find out more about his process of balancing creativity with science.

Kelly:“What is it about horror that gets your creativity flowing?”

Simon Barrett: “I tend to be attracted to specific stories and scenarios, a lot of which might fall into the horror genre. But the genre itself doesn’t necessarily appeal to me more than any other.”

Meg:“When you’re developing a supernatural story, how do you balance real world science and believability?”

Simon Barrett: “The advantage of telling a supernatural tale is that you’re already letting the viewer know that your story isn’t intended to be real, so you have a fair amount of license to get creative with the story’s relationship to actual reality. That said, I tend to be a fairly harsh or pedantic viewer, and if a film gets something obviously factually wrong, it does often take me out of the movie, and sometimes I find it really frustrating. I mean, if I’m watching a horror movie, and instead of being caught up in the suspense of the narrative I’m thinking something like, ‘Really, did no one on set know how a defibrillator works?’ then that film has failed, at least for me in that moment. Anything that we as viewers know to be wrong will remind us that the story we’re watching isn’t real. So, in terms of the science of a supernatural element itself, I think it just has to maintain some kind of internal logic, so that nothing takes the viewer out of the film or makes them doubt its feasibility. I don’t need to believe every detail of how kryptonite or a transporter beam works, but I do need for their effects to be consistent so I’m not distracted from the story, basically.”

Meg:“I agree!”

Simon Barrett: “If you’re writing supernatural horror that has any kind of technological element, I think you just need to make sure that your science isn’t distractingly impossible. I’m willing to entirely buy the science in many horror films as long as the story is good; I don’t watch supernatural horror films for an education, normally, so if the film is fun and scary, that’s most of what matters. So, my answer is, I try to avoid anything that would take any hypothetical viewer out of the movie, regardless of their expertise. Which sometimes means a fair amount of research to make sure I thoroughly understand any subject about which I’m writing, but often just means just trying to avoid doing anything obviously stupid.”