Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

“Because no one has more thirst for earth, for blood, and for ferocious sexuality than the creatures who inhabit cold mirrors.” (Alejandra Pizarnik)

The mirror has a long, complex relationship with our culture, and so it’s little wonder that such a host of superstitions, anxieties and beliefs should have found their way into that great distorting mirror – horror – over the years. In many ways, the mirror is a simple commodity, one which has been present to a greater or lesser extent down through the centuries. However, it has long served as more than that; its ability to balance showing us the truth whilst presenting us with a world we cannot touch has long fascinated and appalled people. It shows us ‘another world’, one which has the illusion of depth and distance, but is beyond our bounds. No wonder a richness of folklore has sought to govern this uneasy, same-different space, particularly as, down through the centuries, one’s reflection became intermingled with notions of vanity.

Vanity, a sin, has traditionally (and does still for some) endanger the idea of the soul by encouraging a preoccupation with the corporeal and worldly; this explains why so many superstitions regarding mirrors relate to souls being somehow ‘trapped’ in the glass. I can still remember my great-grandmother in Wales explaining that if you show a baby its own reflection before it’s a year old, the mirror will ‘take its soul away’. Mirrors are still covered after bereavements in many parts of the world, and perhaps the best-known superstitious belief regarding the looking-glass (and one of the best-known superstitious beliefs still recognised) relates to what happens if you break one – seven years’ bad luck.

If souls can be trapped in mirrors, then it’s not difficult to see how another layer of folklore and belief can build upon these foundations, extending this view to consider what else mirrors might show us, and what this might mean. This could relate to other old folk-stories, such as one about seeing your future husband reflected over your shoulder in your looking-glass, if you fulfil certain conditions on certain nights of the year (Halloween/Samhain in particular, though be warned – you may also see the figure of death!) In a more malevolent vein, and one which has been exploited time and time again by horror cinema (see below) we’ve probably all heard of urban legends – folk stories in all but name – which tell of figures like ‘Bloody Mary’: again, here you fulfil certain conditions whilst looking into a mirror, usually chanting the name a set number of times, but a successful outcome means the apparition of a bloodied female spectre. There are lots of little variations, but the general lore is the same across countries and decades. The mirror is the key, and the outcome here is a fearful brand of the supernatural.

Many eminent occultists – by definition seeking that which is ‘hidden’ – have made use of the mirror, also in the wider sense of any suitable reflective surfaces, to attempt to gain knowledge, to see into the future, or to otherwise garner an understanding of the world that would otherwise be impossible to them. This practice is widely known as ‘scrying’, or ‘seeing’. We mostly associate this practice now with the ubiquitous crystal ball, but there has long been greater variety. Famous good news guy Nostradamus famously used a scrying mirror (actually a shallow bowl of water) to form his prophecies; the Elizabethan magician and adviser to Queen Elizabeth, Welshman John Dee, used an obsidian scrying mirror, now on display at the British Museum in London.

Reflective surfaces serve and have served multiple purposes, then: first they show us truths, then they seem to be showing us something unreal. They can be harmful, they can be hazardous, or they can be enlightening. All of these are things, of course, which have been said about cinema, which must have seemed like magic of its own at its inception.

Before we really come to talk about the mirrors of horror cinema on this whistle-stop tour, though, I’d like to divert briefly and mention some uses of mirrors in literature, as to me these foreshadow important and key developments in horror on the screen. The first of these is Snow White – best known as-written by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, but probably influenced by older European folk stories. In this story, we have an interesting bisection of vanity, cruelty – and magic, specifically a magic mirror. The wicked queen famously demands of the magic mirror in her possession, ‘Who is the fairest in the land?’ (this was changed to ‘fairest of them all’ in the Disney animated adaptation, probably to underline their Evil Queen’s more universal villainy). The magic mirror responds, and must respond, truthfully. So, when it finally answers that the queen is no longer the most beautiful, but that Snow White is, her injured vanity leads her to seek the child’s murder (asking for the child’s organs to be brought to her in several versions). Here, magic begets murder, or attempted murder.

Also of note is Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass (1871). No one has ever been able to convince me that Carroll’s best-known books aren’t horror stories. I know, I know. But I found them deeply unsettling as a child and I do as an adult, with Through the Looking Glass worse, somehow. Still, here we have a popular children’s book, one which is widely-recognised in the modern day, where a character crosses into a same-different world by clambering through a mirror. Once into this parallel and illogical world, things at first seem exactly the same, but the room contains different things, and then beyond that room, there’s a host of nonsensical characters. This idea of crossing into the world by using a mirror as a portal has been used to horrific effect in films (even if you think I’m mad for finding it pretty horrific here!)

Last, but not least, just prior to the rise and rise of cinema (so close that Stoker’s widow threatened Murnau with copyright infringement for his original screenplay of Nosferatu) Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) brings us back to this age-old anxiety about mirrors and souls. Whilst he wasn’t the first author to describe the belief that, being damned souls, vampires cast no reflection. As Jonathan Harker shaves using a small mirror in Castle Dracula, he is startled to observe that, although Count Dracula is standing right behind him, he cannot see him. He looks again…

“This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in the mirror! The whole room behind me was displayed, but there was no sign of a man in it, except myself.”

Magic, parallel worlds which don’t follow our rules, and malevolent, damned souls. The scene is set for cinema to take up the reins…

Delusion, Revelation and Malevolence: a Selection from Horror Cinema

Now, this part of the article is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every use of mirrors in horror films. I’ve had to leave many out, and I’m sure there are some which I’ve forgotten outright, but the examples I’ve chosen to use are in here for two reasons. Firstly, I like them. I think they’re interestingly done and entertaining. Secondly, they relate to what we’ve discussed already.

So, to come back to the story of Dracula, here we have the basis of the first horror committed to celluloid, as well as the basis for one of our most recognisable boogeymen; the mirror motif from Stoker’s original story is frequently retained in filmed versions, as it is a pithy, early way in which the Count is shown to be not just abnormal, but supernatural. Coppola’s Dracula (1992) has divided audiences, but its shaving mirror scene is reasonably true to the book – if a little more overblown, with the mirror smashing into smithereens when the Count notices it.

Again returning to our earlier notion of scrying mirrors, Britain’s Hammer House of Horror made an interesting contribution with one of its episodes. ‘Guardian of the Abyss’ charted an attempt to raise the god of the abyss, Choronzon, through an occult ritual hinged upon scrying, via an unwitting innocent. The results show that some knowledge should be hidden…

One significant use of mirrors in horror is where it juxtaposes madness and clarity. Characters may be already moving away from the everyday, usually via exposure to the supernatural – an encounter with a mirror at this juncture both shakes them out of this state, and in so doing makes it worse. For instance, in The Shining (1973), Jack is already under the sway of the demonic residents of the Overlook Hotel when he’s called upon to check out Room 237. He duly goes, there encountering a nubile young woman who attempts to seduce him.

It’s only when he catches a glimpse of them both in the hotel room’s mirror that he sees something else. It’s not quite the truth, but it’s a different version of what he believes he is seeing. However maniacal he is by now, his horror at the revelation is very real.

At a similar midpoint between reason and madness – though wildly different in tone – is Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II (1987). The premises are smaller but an unholy blend of demonic entities and isolation have taken their toll on Ash, the chief male protagonist. He desperately tries to get a hold of himself, telling his reflection in the mirror, “I’m fine…” His reflection, now its own beast and reaching out of the frame to grab him, begs to differ. “I don’t think so. We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw. Does that sound fine?” In each case, the moment of clarity worsens the ordeal. Its existence drags each man further into their madness.

Certainly, mirrors themselves are plot devices in these examples, but in other horrors, they figure far more highly – asserting the central focus in the narratives. One of my absolute favourite of these actually forms part of a portmanteau horror, made by the good folk at Amicus. From Beyond the Grave (1974) features stories based around a mysterious antiques shop, and its proprietor (played brilliantly by Peter Cushing). The horror here can usually be attributed to the behaviour of each of the characters, giving the film something of a moralising tone, which means that the terrors which befall Edward Charlton are due to him misrepresenting the pedigree of an antique mirror in the shop, so that he can get it for a knockdown price. The resultant tale is The Gatecrasher: Charlton wishes to use the mirror for a ritual of his own, namely a seance – awakening an entity which demands that he kill so that it can ‘feed’. Whatever wrongs Charlton (David Warner) has committed up until this point, you can’t help but feel some pity for him as his ordeal breaks – and then transfigures – him. The mirror, hanging on his wall, is the alpha and omega of his sufferings, and we’re also shown that the ordeal is never going to be over. It’s a neat tale, but a devastating blend of magic, murder and arrogance: a horror tale which feels like an extension of a fairy tale where the bad and the vain perpetrate crimes, but also get punished.

In many ways, The Gatecrasher foreshadows the final film I’ll discuss here, although in the case of the final two films, each set of victims is somewhere between flawed and utterly blameless. Kiefer Sutherland’s character in Aja’s remake Mirrors (2008) is a broken man, but not a bad man. In trying to rebuild his life, he takes a job as a caretaker in a department store – and when he begins to see things in the building’s multitude of mirrored surfaces, his ex-wife assumes this is the result of his medication. He is hallucinating, nothing more. However, as he begins to uncover the story of the building, the entities in the glass show that they can harm people in the ‘real’ world by acting on, and as, their reflections. This is noteworthy, and in the film’s most shocking scene (the ‘jaw scene’ featured at the top of this page) a reflection takes on a life of its own, to murder someone by controlling their image. To me, this is the ultimate extension of fears about a mirror ‘stealing’ something from you, except this time it’s not the soul – it’s the body. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s an interesting one, and it extends the horror of mirrors to its furthest modern point.

Which brings me to the final film in this feature – Oculus (2013) (mild spoilers).

This is a film I saw only recently, but one which I think is an outstanding supernatural horror. It describes, through a sophisticated structure which flashes back to the childhood of the main characters throughout, siblings Kaylie (Karen Gillan) and Tim (Brenton Thwaites). We learn that a tragedy befell them; their father became abusive, and in an accident the eleven year old Tim shot and killed him after enduring too much. Tim was institutionalised after this incident, but ten years have passed. When we meet him in adulthood, he has come to terms with it enough to be considered rehabilitated. However, on his release, he talks about the event with his sister and realises that they have very different takes on what happened that night, and in the weeks which led up to it. Kaylie is adamant that the presence in the home of an antique mirror was somehow behind what happened to them. More so, she has procured the mirror in an auction, and intends to prove her version. The results of her labours expand upon the story of their childhood and also, to my mind, craft an impressively sinister horror tale, in which the mirror is again key.

Oculus, the inspiration behind this article, merges all the anxieties and beliefs about mirrors discussed so far, weaving them into an original and gripping tale. It uses urban legends, beliefs about unnatural and sinister occult powers (though by intimation, another strength of the film) and shows us a mirror – an artifact – through which you can travel or from which others can come. It is a gateway to a dangerous place, and crucially, it is a home to lost souls, brought right up to date and given a brutal, modern feel. This makes it one of the best films of the year, what I feel is a superb development on our theme and a fitting point at which to end this feature.

By Matt Harries

It’s 1984. During that year of Orwellian portent Hollywood warns us of the great danger that lurks in our sleeping minds. Our cosy dream-reality can in fact be usurped by others. Others who are seemingly omnipotent in their murderous intent. Others who may attack with razor sharp claws that spring from their hands. This can happen despite the close attendance of experts in the field of dream research, monitoring your vital signs while your eyelids flicker and you toss and turn. Shockingly, the actions of these dream killers do not merely leave us screaming, sweat-soaked but awake, terrified in our beds. Dream death means real-life death, the murderer free to return to their own body in the waking world.

Sound familiar? What if I told you this movie acted as an early springboard to the career of a popular leading man? Or that one of the stars was a big-screen veteran who produced arguably his most famous role in 1973? Well I suppose you’d be forgiven for thinking I was referring to Wes Craven’s seminal and hugely successful A Nightmare On Elm Street, which saw a young Johnny Depp begin his rise to prominence, and John Saxon (star of Bruce Lee classic Enter The Dragon) play a supporting role. Swap Depp for Dennis Quaid and Saxon for Max Von Sydow of Exorcist fame and everything else is as stated above. An uncanny number of similarities I’d say…

The most obvious similarities though are plot based. Apparently Craven’s script for A Nightmare On Elm Street had been rattling around Hollywood for a few years prior to its release in November 1984, a few months after Dreamscape. What chance that someone heard of this dream manipulation plot, and decided to try and trump the makers of Elm Street? Who knows, but one area where the films differ considerably is with the budget – Dreamscape’s $6 million considerably dwarfing Elm Street’s $1.8 million. Sadly for Dreamscape’s makers the film went on to make roughly half of what Elm Street did in the box office. Perhaps that goes some way to explaining why I, 30 years later, had never heard of the film until the opportunity to review it came along?

For all the similarities between the two films, and the relative disparity in future success, Dreamscape remains an entertaining, if rather uneven affair. It all begins with venerable Von Sydow lending a much needed air of gravitas as Dr.Paul Novotny, tracking down former test subject Alex (Quaid), a one-time psychic prodigy who grew tired of life as a lab rat and who now subsists by using his powers to cheat at the races. Novotny wishes to rekindle his relationship with the wayward Alex in order to further his government-funded research into dream manipulation, or ‘dream-linking’. He hopes that by placing a psychic within the dreams of a willing patient there may be an opportunity to heal the patient of sleep disorders – or as in the case of one young boy, recurring nightmares. His scientific zeal is carefully monitored by the hawk-like Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer), who represents the gub-ment and its altogether more unseemly interests.

Alex soon develops a romantic interest in Dr.Novotny’s smouldering assistant Jane (Kate Capshaw), and through her begins to show an interest in helping troubled Buddy (he of the recurring nightmares). Egged on by Jane and threatened with the IRS by Dr. Novotny, Alex enters Buddy’s dreams despite the last psychic to do so being literally wheeled off by the men in white coats. It is here, in the sleeping mind of this young boy, that Alex meets the terrifying ‘Snake-Man’, a fairly ludicrous looking specimen who in essence comprises the body of a man with a long neck and cobra head. Can Alex help Buddy overcome his dream nemesis, and therefore prove the potential of dream-linking as a force for good – or evil?

One of the problems with Dreamscape is the way it tries to shoehorn different plots together into a cohesive whole. Other than the dream-linking, we have a political/cold-war thriller angle; some fairly dismal light romance between Quaid and Capshaw; as well as a haphazard blend of comedy and action, science and fantasy that leaves us with a veritable treasure trove of cinematic tropes, including monsters, martial arts, chases, fights and quasi-magical goings on. While this melting pot approach does make for a confusing journey it is also a part of the film’s charms. There is a childlike abandon to the way so many elements are thrown together. I can imagine that if I watched this as a youngster I would probably have loved it.

Alas, the days of my youth are long gone. So, watching Dreamscape for the first time as a veritable ancient, weighed down with the cynicism of adulthood and with years of great cinema behind me, it is hard not to notice a few faults. The romantic moments are a little cringe-worthy. The special effects are a bit of a mixed bag, and there is a little too much going on plot-wise for it to make a great deal of sense. But if you can step back into a more innocent time (I find alcohol helps), and you fancy a few laughs (intentional or otherwise), you could do far worse than watch Dreamscape.

By Keri O’Shea

A lot of cult movie stars end up being synonymous with one of their qualities or attributes, but for me, Marilyn Burns will forever be associated with her scream.

I first encountered The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on a copied VHS cassette as a teenager, just like many others (I Spit On Your Grave being the other film on that tape, which made for some introduction to 70s horror and exploitation). I knew the film by its formidable reputation only, having seen some stills reproduced in the independent press and nothing more – no internet, no plot synopses, no trailer reels. I wasn’t even sure if the film was in colour. It of course was, and even refracted through the murk of several copies, it was a lurid affair, though its opening scenes were starkly-lit death scenes. It is an unflinching intro telling us in no uncertain terms that terrible things had already happened – but to whom?

TCM, made forty years ago, was way too early to be weighed down with expectations of how things should be done, or the importance of audience expectations, or Final Girls. It was full-on rookie nastiness, and though the group of traveling kids we encounter in frankly the worst advertisement for Texas would seem to be in danger, we have no way of knowing what will happen or indeed, ‘who will survive and what will be left of them’. However, The Family pick off most of Sally’s friends quite quickly. Although the early, notably bloodless killings make for remarkable scenes, it is Sally’s ordeal which makes up the bulk of the rest of the film.

And boy, could that girl scream. And boy, who could blame her? The dinner table scene set the bar on both physical and psychological torture, with Ms. Burns screaming so continually that it almost becomes background noise at some points – almost. But her confusion, her desperation and her wild-eyed terror ensure that her plight remains believable – we care about Sally. When she finally escapes from Leatherface, leaving that warped fucker swinging his chainsaw in frustration, the audience is with her. They want someone to survive, and her utter jubilation makes us so glad it’s her. Sally’s escape is one of the most famous, most formative scenes in horror history.

It’s (literally) criminal that this seminal movie didn’t make the cast and crew a fortune, what with the mobsters who muscled in on distribution soaking up most of the killer profits made by the film in following years. It certainly limited Marilyn Burns’ future prospects and it certainly took a lot of the impetus out of working as an actress, which of course it would. She should have been huge, but she didn’t act in many more roles – despite again working with Hooper on a Texas/cannibalism schtick in Eaten Alive a few years later, and then in a handful of other parts during the rest of her cinematic career: biker horror Kiss Daddy Goodbye, Future-Kill (which I confess I haven’t seen) and the decent Manson drama, Helter Skelter. Still, it’s such a short filmography for an actress who starred in one of the most famous gonzo horror movies of all time, and this is something which will always feel like an injustice.

Marilyn Burns’ death at the age of 65 is a sad loss, and we’re in her debt for her part in the history of the horror genre. A lot has happened in the forty years which have passed since The Texas Chain Saw Massacre appeared – a hell of a lot – but one of those things relates to a phrase. The phrase is ‘scream queen’, and it has come to mean many things, for good or ill. Yet Marilyn Burns will always be the original scream queen – as well as one of our best-loved final girls. She did all of this with both good grace and modesty.

By Keri O’Shea

Can it really have been fifteen years since Blair Witch slipped into the modern horror consciousness? Love it or hate it – and people seem to fall into one or other of those categories – it has significantly shaped the horror cinema which followed in its wake. Since Blair Witch, nothing has been the same. It’s easy – all too easy – to scoff at the film now, and people who didn’t care for it in 1999 are often even more vociferous in their criticisms today. But Blair Witch made such a ferocious impact that it became ubiquitous almost immediately. That image of a bleary-eyed Heather, speaking so close to the camera that you could see her nose streaming as much as her eyes – well, it made people laugh or roll their eyes when it was taken out of context and reproduced over and over again, but people soon knew precisely where it was from. Critics frequently bemoaned the lack of craftsmanship in the film because it didn’t look much like anything else they knew, but they paid attention nonetheless. Mainstream TV and radio began wondering aloud what all the fuss was about. Blair Witch did well enough quickly enough that it began to play in bigger cinemas, where it was seen by those crowds of non-horror fans who always rock up to spoil it for the rest of us by being incapable of imagining anything or even sitting quietly. Christ, it even made it into that lazy, barely-written and supremely unfuckingfunny Scary Movie. Not bad going, for a movie with a budget of around $60,000.

From a personal perspective, I absolutely love this film. I’ll be the first to bitch and moan about the ‘found footage’ thing (more on this later) but, like most viewers, I had no idea what Blair Witch would spawn all the way back then. More than that though, and here’s where a lot of people look at me as though they’re a tad disappointed, I’m happy to admit that when I first saw this film, it seriously unnerved me – to the point of having nightmares. Yep. It’s one of those rare beasts for me; a terror film, with no real brevity, no bombast and no gore.

Many fans of the genre spend a hell of a lot of time trying to recapture that feeling, myself included – that terrifying feeling of something bigger than them, or of the dangers of knowledge, of finding out that you are even so much as on the periphery of something powerful, something harmful beyond you. This is why, although I count it amongst my favourite films, I have only seen The Blair Witch Project once. It’s not that I’m anxious that I’ll be afraid all over again, but anxious that I won’t.

Although the film got its release fifteen years ago today, I had to wait until Halloween before I got to see it in the UK. At the time, I certainly classed myself as a horror fan, but I’d only picked up on some of the hype (which I eventually checked out in retrospect). I knew that the film was a documentary and I knew it was a horror; I didn’t know a great deal more. The film itself – consisting of footage ostensibly found buried in the Maryland woods, a year after the disappearance of a group of three student filmmakers – had nothing in common with anything else in my collection. I’d seen fake ‘snuff’ footage in films, but the purpose of that was not, seemingly, to scare, only to shock or sicken. I hadn’t seen a horror film shot in this way before. The plausible idea of making an amateur documentary about a folk legend, as well as the explanation that this footage had been cribbed together by those investigating the subsequent case, worked fine with the rather piecemeal style. In addition, the distinct lack of features I’d associate with most films, such as conventional credits, added nicely to the veracity.

The impact on the audience that day was nothing short of strange, though. We collectively went from chatty at the beginning, as normal, to absolutely silent – but the silence carried on after the end of the film. What had we just seen? Of course not everyone sat there that day loved the film, but you could tell it had done something. People don’t usually file out of a film in absolute silence. If anything, they’ll moan. Nobody did that. Why?

One of the many criticisms now leveled against Blair Witch is with regards to that shooting style which made it stand out then, but makes it the unwitting parent of a whole sub-genre now. It is definitively ‘found footage’; this term now lends itself to an ever-growing number of films which emulate or extend the Blair Witch model. And why do they do it? Well, the filmmakers responsible obviously perceive it as being incredibly easy and want to make a fast buck along the way, which may enable them to move on to bigger and better projects, either within the horror genre or without. Let’s be honest though: if you’re reading this as a fan, a writer or anything in-between, then it’s likely that in the last decade or so you’ll have seen some truly dire found footage films. Here at Brutal as Hell we are frequently exasperated by the calibre of the films sent to us, and it’s meant we often fight over not reviewing them – which is unfair to those few which still put the format to good use.

For an entire generation, though, Blair Witch was the first found footage movie. There was no sense of apathy. We hadn’t seen enough of them to spot the flaws really, or we were just more forgiving; maybe we wanted to be catered for, not talked down to, as we were being by even the better-known horror directors. Horror in the late 90s had started to become awfully slick. The likes of Scream (1996) came across as smug, treating the genre as if it was worthy only of knowing laughter, and this even at the hands of the man who made The Last House on the Left, once upon a time. Say what you like about The Blair Witch Project, but at least it wasn’t fucking postmodern. In hindsight, sure, you could say that Cannibal Holocaust really set the bar on the whole found footage phenomenon, but most of us hadn’t seen it back then. The mode is the same, but the outcome is drastically different anyway.

So, we had a reasonably believable framework which felt new and raw to many, and a film which surpassed its budget by being creative in a series of interesting ways. One of the key ways Blair Witch got itself known was through its use of the internet. It was perhaps the first film to really utilise the internet’s potential – not through Facebook or Twitter, which had yet to grace us with their presence, but through official and, soon, unofficial sites, which built up a solid fan base for months before the film’s release. The internet back then was new enough to feel fresh, had rather less static to sift through, and was also rather lower on cynicism; rumours that the Blair Witch footage was actually real did no harm to the film whatsoever, and even went some way towards sustaining a new mythology, one which began to take on a life beyond the film itself which survives to this day. And, despite publicity conveniently beginning to grow itself in this fashion, it was also much easier at the time for the film to maintain mystery. Officially, little was said about the film’s plot: the illusion of realness was easy to maintain with a team of non-professional actors playing under their real names; the filmmakers gave away little of what to expect, and any blurb was minimal. This was bold.

So much for how it was done; how about what it does – which is to draw the audience into a gradually-building, unconventional and tense tale? By using the documentary model, it effectively creates plausible parity between audience and documentary crew. We are never permitted a sense of omniscience, of feeling able to detach ourselves from what is happening. There are no wide-ranging shots, no flashbacks, no back story. Anything we may try to understand about the ever-worsening situation comes directly from Heather, Mike and Josh themselves – and via them it’s still incomprehensible, so that our guess is as good as theirs. We are characters too, not bystanders. Choosing the woods as a setting further contributes to the success of the film. There’s something eternal and primal about the woods (which makes people keep on shooting horror films there, for good or ill) – they boast an odd blend of claustrophobia and scale, as well as showing the ease of disorientation plus all of that potential for watchers in the dark who know this environment better than the outsider. Add to that the way the team’s continual filming causes genuine nausea as they spins wildly lost through the forest, and the sense of unease is very real.

Finally, I think it’s important to remember that The Blair Witch Project is, after all, an occult horror. And in occult horror, however ground-breaking you choose your medium to be, you need to remember that ‘less is more’. Blair Witch shows us real fear – the cast here were truly scared and it shows – but it is wise enough to only allude to whatever is out there in the woods that is so scary. Even the best occult horrors through history have been weakened significantly by showing us their monsters – they never live up to the sense of awe which has been built around them. Blair Witch gives us some unsettling examples of occult symbols, and the tiniest fragments of gore – but everything else is, appropriately, hidden, refracted through the very real terror of the cast and through Myrick and Sanchez’s genius appreciation of the terrors of well-selected audio effects.

In many ways, The Blair Witch Project is a film where old, evil magic collides with the modern world; perhaps Heather really does keep on filming throughout because, as is suggested to her, nothing has to feel ‘real’ through that viewfinder. But in the film it is, and it’s made to feel real, right up to that terrifying scream cut short as she finally drops with her camera to the ground. I’ve chosen not to break that spell by revisiting the film, purely because I found it so successful and so frightening. Whatever has come since, and however jaded or cynical we have become about the sub-genre, the genre, the internet, or anything which worked in The Blair Witch Project’s favour, to me it will always be a groundbreaking film.