The Blair Witch Project is undoubtedly an important moment in cinema history. The found footage format became a mainstream approach to filmmaking, in horror or otherwise, and the viral marketing that surrounded it was inspired.
The fleshing out of the fake Blair Witch legend, alongside the found footage format, gave the whole film a rather unique touch of reality, and while the sequel essentially copped out to become a straight horror film, the legacy of the Blair Witch would find expansion in the realm of video games.
The year after The Blair Witch Project hit cinemas, a trilogy of PC games was created to build upon the lore of the Blair Witch and its origins. The games began with Rustin Parr, followed by The Legend of Coffin Rock, and were rounded out by The Elly Kedward Tale. The three games were released in the space of just under two months from October of 2000.
Each one was a psychological horror adventure, and each one was made by a different development team (collectively known as Gathering of Developers), but all three would be on the same game engine, Nocturne.
Interestingly the engine is taken from Gathering of Developers’ first game (also named Nocturne), which technically acts as a prequel to the first Blair Witch game. It shares no named link with Blair Witch, but story events in Rustin Parr tie into those prior to the Epilogue of Nocturne.
So Blair Witch Volume 1: Rustin Parr kicks off the trilogy of tales. Its developer, Terminal Reality, had burst onto the scene with aerial 3D shooter Terminal Velocity five years prior, and worked on Nocturne just before Rustin Parr.
Horror would turn out to be a big part of the studio’s ongoing legacy after Blair Witch, as it went on to make BloodRayne, Ghostbusters: The Game and The Walking Dead Survival Instinct (I didn’t say it was a great legacy). The last of these was sadly the final game by the developer, as it was liquidated in 2013. Terminal Reality had also worked on one of Guillermo Del Toro’s doomed video game projects, Sundown (a Left 4 Dead style title that never saw the light of day, as is unfortunately the norm for GDT’s game pitches thus far).
Back to the past though. Rustin Parr’s story takes place in the year 1941, and mostly takes place over the span of four days. It follows research scientist Elspeth “Doc” Holliday, who is sent to the town of Burkittsville by the Spookhouse, a classified government agency that investigate all manner of paranormal shenanigans. Her job in Burkittsville is of course to investigate the legend of the Blair Witch, and its involvement in the disturbing case of the titular Rustin Parr.
The tale of Rustin Parr might sound familiar, and that’s because it’s explicitly mentioned in The Blair Witch Project itself (though Holliday is never mentioned in this story). Parr is a hermit who abducted seven local children, and murdered six of them in his basement, while making the seventh, a boy named Kyle Brody, stand in a corner, facing the wall. Brody had to listen to the screams of the others as Parr brutally killed them. After the slaughter, Parr left his forest home, went to town and told a local shopkeeper that he ‘was finally finished’.
Parr claims to have been influenced by an evil entity whilst committing the murders, and that’s where Holliday comes in to investigate the validity of those claims.
She does so alongside her partner the ‘Stranger’. Though not for long, as Stranger’s scepticism concerning the Blair Witch legend leads to Holliday going off on her own for much of the game’s duration.
The game is mostly about detective work as Holliday quizzes the inhabitants of Burkittsville about the murders and digs for clues. When not being Murder She Wrote: Occult Edition the sleuthing is interrupted with bursts of survival horror combat where Halliday faces off against some rather unsavory types in the woods that supposedly house the Blair Witch herself.
There’s a decidedly creepy vibe to the town. People either blatantly ignore the supernatural gossip and put Parr’s crimes down to that of a madman. Or you get those wholeheartedly embrace the sinister legends and have fear that it could happen to anyone now. When Halliday gets to meet the poor single survivor of Rustin Parr’s reprehensible act, she finds a broken shell of a boy, left in what appears to be a catatonic state from the trauma. Kyle Brody is not the only child damaged by this event, a young girl by the name of Mary Brown claims to be haunted by the ghosts of Parr’s victims.
Blair Witch Vol.1: Rustin Parr was, and still is, a better game when it is telling its story and ratcheting up the creepy dread feel of the town. The combat was middling in 2000, and now it’s often a decidedly painful, or worse -dull, slog to endure as you hope to crack open the good stuff in the story itself. The game engine was designed for adventure fare, and it clearly struggles with Rustin Parr’s action.
The nightmare sequences are probably still the standout segments where combat is concerned. The locals seem to become demonic zombies (or Daemites) in need of dispatching, and the game world goes a bit odd a la Silent Hill. It’s still unfortunately almost as bewildering as trying to get out of the Burkittsville woods.
Interestingly, the game doesn’t do the obvious and give you the Blair Witch as the payoff. Instead, Holliday discovers the source of the problem is an evil spirit called Hecaitomix. Said spirit is revealed to have influenced Parr (and Elly Kedward) and currently possesses the shellshocked Kyle Brody.
Holliday exorcises the boy, and foils Hecaitomix’s immediate plans (to replace the child it is feeding on in its realm with Mary Brown). Holliday and Stranger eventually enter Hecaitomix’s realm, retrieve the child, and seal the spirit away within its realm.
Blair Witch Vol.1: Rustin Parr would turn out to be a moderate success. It sold a decent 50,000 copies on PC (not bad for a time where PC gaming was not anything close to the profile it currently holds) and reviewed fairly well. The complaints and praise for it were pretty uniform (good adventuring, icky combat). It definitely seems to have a legacy of its own, whether that is directly intentional or not.
If you were looking for a more modern equivalent of Rustin Parr, then you need look no further than cult oddity Deadly Premonition. Both take place in a backwoods town with strange happenings and feature detective work, but its the nods to Twin Peaks that really seal it. There are quotes from David Lynch’s surreal show and has a character suspiciously like Dale Cooper (to ram it home he even uses the “Damn fine cup of coffee… and Hot!” line).
Of course, there’s one question that is of the utmost importance. Is Blair Witch Vol.1: Rustin Parr actually a good horror game? Well, it was actually a pretty effective horror at the time of release thanks to the menacing atmosphere and otherworldly moments. That impact has definitely been lessened thanks to the ravages of time, but you can definitely feel some of that creeping atmosphere today, and it offers up background information on a notable location and story found within The Blair Witch Project itself.
