The Blair Witch Project Chad'z rating: ***1/2 (out of 4 = very good) 1999, R, 88 minutes [1 hour, 28 minutes] [horror] Starring: Heather Donahue (Heather), Michael C. Williams (Mike), Joshua Leonard (Josh); produced by Robin Cowie, Gregg Hale; written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez.
Seen July 31, 1999 at 6:10 p.m. at Crossgates Cinema 18 (Guilderland, NY), theater #10, with Reneé Gentile for free using my Hoyts season pass. [Theater rating: ***: very good picture and seats, average sound]
`Things crawl in the darkness That imagination spins Needles at your nerve ends Crawl like spiders on your skin Pounding in your temples And a surge of adrenaline Every muscle tense to fence The enemy within...'
-from `The Enemy Within' by Rush
Is there really anything scarier than the unseen? Don't you get scared to death when you come across one of those science shows on PBS about the millions of bacteria crawling all over you? Don't you freak out when you wake up in the middle of the night and hear a loud noise coming from within your house? Have you ever been told an urban legend while sitting around a campfire or walking down a dark alley? That paranoia associated with the little voids that exist within our own, supposedly secure and advanced world is what `The Blair Witch Project' attempts to deal with through a unique style of filmmaking almost never utilized by the movies. The film puts itself forward as a collection of `real' footage shot by three film students who were never seen from again after they set out into some supposedly haunted woods in October 1994 to make a documentary on the local legend of `The Blair Witch.' There is no narration or outside footage except what was shot by the students (the actors) themselves. In case you don't know, the directors/creators Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez conceived the film as being the most realistic work of fiction an audience could see. They didn't write a script, all they did was come up with the major plot points and character traits and then sent the three actors out into the woods to make the movie themselves. Myrick and Sanchez and a few of their crew members kept tabs on the actors through global positioning units and had `booby traps' set and waiting so that everything the three experienced would be real. This technique certainly works for the film's many emotional points, although the lack of interesting dialogue and characterization serve as noticeable flaws. I'm not sure which is the most innovative concept at work here: the way the film was made; the fact a distributor decided to take a chance on it; or the fact that mainstream audiences seem to be just as excited and anxious to see something of the tiniest scale as they were for a few other summer flicks of the largest scales. Anyway, the film starts out with a lot of interviews with the local townsfolk and their interpretation, stories and alleged personal experiences with the Blair Witch. Some blow it off as nonsense, but others take it seriously. This lays the foundation for the bulk of the film and the actual climax itself which probably would have worked as well as it does whether or not this attempt at a backstory had been included. In fact, this is the film's weakest aspect because the interviews are a bit too short and informal and the characters don't think much of it either. Oh yes, the characters are: Heather (Donahue), the director who shoots almost everything she and her crew say on home video (which gives the film a realistic feeling because almost everyone has seen themselves on their parents' or their friends' home videos); Mike (Williams), the sound guy who doesn't say much at first except for a few snide remarks and one-liners, but who will later become full of emotion; and Josh (Leonard), the cinematographer who uses a grainy 16mm black-and-white camera. The three set out into the woods to hike to some specific landmarks associated with the legend which includes your common tall tale stories and places such as `Coffin Rock' and an old hermit's home and stories of children and hunters who were abducted and slaughtered by the witch. What ensues is not the three students' serious study of the legend, but of the psychological terror they will endure when they get lost, run out of food, fight with each other and then panic when they all fear they are being hunted. It's obvious to us why the three begin to break down and lash out at each other and what the strange sounds are that they hear at night. The most chilling and enduring scenes last only a few minutes when the three set up camp for a night and are awakened by noises and movement in the dark they attribute to either backwoods survivalists, animals or just the wind, but they never say what's clearly on their minds (and ours) - it's the witch. One of the single, most frightening moments I can recall occurs during one of these scenes where the crew is awakened by a presence outside their tent and the three flee into the woods, cameras rolling, and in the distance we see Heather running away and she screams, `My God, what the hell is that!?' This is what makes `The Blair Witch Project' so superior to the countless Hollywood gorefests about monsters, serial killers and vicious animals. It relies on our own imagination to determine just how horific the elements at play might be. Throughout the film the three encounter signs of an intelligence such as piles of rocks and stick figures hanging from trees that weren't there before. These things are so simple yet they are frightening because of their nature alone. We want to believe that we can logically explain any occurrence in this day and age, but the atmosphere of paranoia is too thick and overbearing and thus it's all pure fear. The final scene is the culmination of everything the film is. It's disturbing, scary and realistic and when the climax ensues and there hasn't been a drop of blood shed or a villain in a costume or a CGI, it's a powerful moment. However, I take issue with the fact so much more backstory about the Blair Witch legend and the students' film expedition has been covered on the movie's web page and other media sources than what was included in the film itself. To have the film be entirely a string of Heather, Mike and Josh's footage is a great idea and works well, but what if the film had been a fictional documentary about the students' documentary? It could have been complete with a vast historical background of the Blair Witch legend and the rescue efforts that supposedly took place in the days after the students were declared missing. That might contradict the theory Myrick and Sanchez were going for, but I doubt it would have hurt (especially considering the film's running time is less than 90 minutes and seems to fly by). Still, as my friend and fellow film critic Dustin Putman said, to see `The Blair Witch Project' is not just to sit in a theater and watch a movie, it's to really experience something. It works on an emotional and intelligent level I've not seen since `2001: A Space Odyssey,' in that an invisible powerful force has outsmarted us in a day and age where we think we know everything there is to know.
`The more we think we know about The greater the unknown We suspend our disbelief And we are not alone...'
-from `Mystic Rhythms' by Rush
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