American Cheerleader

To get into the spooky spirit of things, I’m doing a countdown of my favorite scary movies of all time. Now, these flicks may not be the freakiest or even the most popular or acclaimed of the genre, but they’re MY faves.

Tune in every weekday for another movie, until we get to my favorite scary movie of all time! Now, a recap of my faves so far:

#20: Jaws

#19: The Last House on the Left

#18: The Faculty

#17: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

#16: The Exorcist

And coming in at number…

#15

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

directed by Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez; starring Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard & Michael C. Williams; Rated R

**This movie is NOT suitable for kids under the age of 17!!

Being that I’m from an island in the Northwest, where I’m surrounded by woods on all sides (I even had to go to Wilderness Survival Camp for school in 6th grade), this movie scared the heebie jeebies out of me. In The Blair Witch Project, three student filmmakers travel to the sleepy town of Burkittesville, MD, to follow their instincts on some local folklore. After rumors tell of a ghost woman who snatches up people in the woods, the teens set out into the woods with their video cameras, set to document their experiences with the Blair Witch. The movie is said to be the actual footage found after the filmmakers disappeared.

WHY IT’S SCARY: If you’ve ever gotten lost in the woods by yourself, you can understand why it made my list. Every little noise, twig break and breeze sounds like it’s being made by someone (or something) that’s about to get you.

SCARIEST SCENE: During the climax, when Heather is running through the cabin, screaming for her friends, she ends up in a room where her buddy’s just standing in the corner…it’s seriously bone chilling.

SCARY STORY: A year after seeing this movie, I went camping with my family. My sisters and I slept in one tent, and my parents in the other. We were awoken in the middle of the night to a scratching sound on the outside of our tent. Each of us refused to go outside to see what it was (Hello?!?! Isn’t that the first rule of horror films? You don’t go out to check on the weird noises), so we ended up screaming for my dad to come and help us. It turned out that a bunch of slugs had slithered onto our tent and the scratching sounds were from them moving around.

These aren't dream catchers, kids.

FUN & FREAKY FACTS:

* The Blair Witch had some of the most creative marketing for a movie known to date. To get moviegoers to fill theaters, they created with fake interviews with townspeople and newspaper stories about the disappearances, so that people would think that what they were seeing was actually real. The producers even claimed it was real footage while they were promoting the movie.

* To an extent, the actors’ reactions to what was happening was real. They were only given a brief history of the mythology behind the Blair Witch, all lines were improvised and the events that happened were unknown to them before they transpired.

* Some theatre goers got physically ill as a result of the handheld camera movements.

* Before the film was released, the three main actors were listed as “missing, presumed dead” on the web.

* The movie cost $22,000 to make and made back $240.5 million.

* It only took eight days to film this movie.

Go sit in the corner and think about what you've done!