THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT A movie review by Joe Barlow (c) Copyright 1999
STARRING: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams,
and Joshua Leonard
DIRECTORS: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez
WRITERS: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez
RATED: R
RELEASED: 1999
In October of 1994, three student filmmakers began work on a documentary about the Blair Witch, a creature of urban legend (ala Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster) which supposedly lives in the woods outside Burkittsville, Maryland. Laughing at these children's tales, which many of the townsfolk still believed, the trio entered the woods in search of material for their 'Blair Witch project.'
They were never seen again.
But their story did not vanish along with them: nearly a year after their disappearance, their film was found by a group of archaeology students from a nearby university. Using this footage, and only this footage, filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez have pieced together an 88-minute account of the trio's last days, revealing an intimate portrait of an expedition gone horribly wrong. It's a raw, heartwrenching tale, drenched in slowly mounting paranoia and madness. Through their own camera lenses, we witness the group's skyrocketing sense of desperation, as well as their growing alienation from one another. Things go wrong-- major things, all of which culminate in their inability to escape from the mysterious entity (or entities) quietly stalking them in the darkness.
There's something cathartic about fear--a certain trait which allows us to put our own lives into perspective. Things could always be worse, horror movies assure us. Many films have attempted to capatilize on our love and need for terror over the years-- stories like Jaws, The Exorcist, Friday the 13th, The Shining, and hundreds more. Often these movies succeed in giving us a harmless case of nighttime shivers (and who among us hasn't enjoyed watching horror movies with our friends, later professing that you weren't really that scared even though you know deep down that you're lying?), but rarely do the images stay with us after the sun comes up.
No film, in fact, has triggered quite the same sensation of impending doom and crawling flesh that I received from a recent screening of The Blair Witch Project. This achievement is even more remarkable since the movie, a small production even by independent cinema standards, contains no name actors, no special effects, no script, only a handful of props, and a budget residing somewhere in the 'used car' price range.
It's very rare indeed to find a film, any film, which offers not only a fresh, intriguing premise and superior performances, but also a complete retooling of the entire filmmaking process. There is no musical score here, nor smooth, clean editing (the story is presented as it was shot--with abrupt starts and starts courtesy of the amateur camera operators). But the movie's biggest surprise is the way that it doesn't feel like a movie at all: it's more akin to a historical record, like the infamous Zapruder Super 8 reel which captured John F. Kennedy's assassination for posterity.
The movie is ficticious, of course, but you'd never know it. The performances are so incredibly astounding that the tale could easily pass for a real documentary (and in fact, it has fooled many viewers). Of particular note is the incredible Heather Donahue, the leader of the trio, who flawlessly conveys many complex emotions and, through her flawless performance, makes us feel them too. She gets the movie's standout scene, the one that will go down in movie lore ala the shower scene from Psycho: a mesmerizing monologue, delivered directly to the camera, in which she begs for forgiveness from her parents and the families of her two male companions. She believes that she is to blame for their current hopeless predicament, due to a judgment error made early in the journey. Heather seems to know, as do we, that time is running out for the group, and her plea for absolution is so hardhitting, the look in her eyes so tragic and terrified, that the viewer can easily be forgived for blinking back involuntary tears of his or her own. The film's skillful manipulation of the audience's fear is only accentuated by our knowledge that these precedings cannot possibly have a happy ending.
In terms of pure originality, The Blair Witch Project is sheer genius. It is quite simply the most original approach to filmmaking I've seen in recent memory, as innovative and disarmingly unique today as Citizen Kane was upon its release nearly sixty years ago. It's proof that films don't have to cost a hundred million dollars to be fascinating. The movie is intense, scary, brilliant, and perhaps the best film of 1999 thusfar.
But be warned: much of the story's terror comes not from watching the events of the story on the screen, but from witnessing them on mental instant-reply as the clock ticks away the long, early hours of the morning, when every sound in the darkness of your bedroom could be the Blair Witch, come to get you. I wasn't particularly scared while watching the movie. Then I tried to go to sleep an hour later.
Damn you, movie.
RATING: **** (out of a possible ****)
(The Blair Witch Project haunts the suburbs of your psyche on July 30th.)
--------------- Copyright (c)1999 by Joe Barlow. This review may not be reproduced without the written consent of the author.
E-Mail: jbarlow@earthling.net Joe Barlow on Film: http://www.ipass.net/~jbarlow/film.htm
---- "Average Joe" Barlow (jbarlow@earthling.net) MiSTie #73097 Joe Barlow on Film: http://www.ipass.net/~jbarlow/film.htm
"The one good thing about the [life-size sticker of Jar Jar Binks on the door of Taco Bell] is you can pretty convincingly throw the SOB a roundhouse punch. I found it satisfying." --Renard A. Dellafave
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews