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So, if you were around when The Blair Witch Project came out in 1999, you'll likely be aware of the huge amount of tie-in material that went with it. These include a selection of mockumentaries, the movie's website, and the endless advertising campaigns that aimed to convince the average viewer that the movie was real footage of an actual disappearance. And that's not even getting started on the merch that Artisan Entertainment cranked out to cash in. One such piece of tie in media was the movie soundtrack, which went by the name: The Blair Witch Project: Josh's Blair Witch Mix.
If you've watched the movie and didn't know it had a soundtrack, then you're probably confused why it even exists. The only song in the entire thing is the end credits score by Antonio Cora, and that's less of a song and more of an ambient background noise. Hardly marketable on its own. So where did the other 11 tracks come from? Do they have any relation to the movie at all? Is this just an excuse to sell a compilation of unrelated music by a greedy distribution company?
Well, yes, but it is in fact linked to the film in more ways than merely sharing its name. According to the liner notes, the contents of the Disc were originally on a mixtape found in the car of Joshua Leonard, one of the students that went missing in the film, which was recompiled for the CD. Obviously, this is a bit of a stretch, even by TBWP's standards, but it's not entirely implausible. Thankfully the choices of music is not just a collection of popular music from 1994, when the movie is set. This would've been the obvious choice had the company not cared in the slightest. Instead, a selection of murkier picks were chosen, including Industrial, Post Punk, and Gothic Rock, many of which are rather obscure and the average listener would not recognize. It's fairly believable that a college student in the 90s would have music like this on their mixtape. This helps make the album stand out more from other soundtrack albums, which are usually just collections of well known material. This presentation is fairly similar to the concept for the soundtracks to the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies, which are established to be mixtapes owned by the film's protagonist, Peter Quill.
Also included is the previously mentioned end credits score by Antonio Cora, which makes sense as it actually did appear in the film. A deleted scene from the film appears in the enhanced section of the CD, likely cut due to a plane flying overhead. On a couple of tracks as well, sound clips from the film are tacked onto the start, probably to remind the listener the movie the album was based off. This does break the immersion of it being the original mixtape, as it seems weird to add these sound bytes in like it's The Beavis & Butthead Experience, but it thankfully doesn't ruin the tracks themselves.
As promotional material for The Blair Witch Project goes, you can definitely go way worse than this (the EIGHT young adult novels were probably pushing it a tad). This, at the very least, is able to tie into the film without being stretched too hard, and the music choices are pretty good. Plus, it helped make the story of the movie feel slightly more real, coupled with the other tie-in material. Then again, nowadays this kind of advertising campaign isn't really effective, but eh, what can you do.
You can buy the album here: https://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Blair-Witch-Project-Joshs-Blair-Witch-Mix/release/835030
A special mix of an included Public Image LTD song ("The Order Of Death") was also released as a single, but not included in that form on the main album, the original is on there. If you'd also like the single mix, it's available here: https://www.discogs.com/Public-Image-Ltd-The-Order-Of-Death-The-Blair-Witch-Mix/release/542326
Trailer for the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x9iMtfPZA8
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