The Blair Witch Project Directed by: Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick Starring: Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael Williams Running time: 88 minutes My rating (5 star scale): **
I have a confession to make. I scare easily. I can be scared by an episode of Charmed. I can be scared by books, tv, and movies. I've read Lord of the Rings a dozen times and parts of it still spook me. The Blair Witch Project has been touted as a truly scary movie. A movie which scares you with your imagination and not expensive special fx. Now, I agree that kind of scare is the best, but I didn't see it here. At most, I found myself occasionally amused and often bored. But never, not for an instant, really scared.
Heather, Josh, and Mike are three would-be documentarians. They are making a documentary about the Blair witch, a mythical character who haunts the woods near Burkittsville (formerly Blair). They start by interviewing some locals. They hear stories about the witch, a child killer, the mysterious deaths of several men and the disappearance of their bodies. It's all vague and in the past and mostly from pretty unreliable sources.
They head into the woods to camp for a couple of days and film some of the sites mentioned in the local legends. And things start going wrong. None of them is very good at reading the map, which may not be accurate anyway. There are mysterious noises in the night. They find strange piles of rocks and bundles of sticks. They fall behind schedule and start bickering amongst themselves.
Since the movie starts by telling us the film footage was recovered a year after the events and the three filmmakers disappeared, we aren't exactly surprised by the ending. But lots of movies start off by telling you the ending (Sunset Boulevard and DOA are two great examples). They work because you want to see how the characters get to that point. That's where Blair fails.
Blair attempts to scare you by convincing you the story is true. The actors don't recreate events - they are actually living and filming what you see. This means some of the scenes are poorly lit and poorly framed - just as you would expect. Many of the events staged were done without the actors' knowledge - so their reaction is genuine. All this works, we get a film that looks like what it pretends to be.
Unfortunately, realism isn't enough. Even documentary film makers realize they need to have a story as well. There is an attempt to create a story here by having us hear the legends and by having mysterious and unexplained things happen in the woods. I think that's where the directors made their mistake. The movie gets closest to scary when the characters squabble amongst themselves - not when they think they are confronting supernatural beings or rednecks out of Deliverance. It's that internal conflict that should have been the focus and that might have made this a truly scary film.
Instead, we get a movie with an interesting style. I can see why so many critics have praised it. The directors had an idea and followed through well. And what they have is a well executed idea that falls short of success. I saw this at a matinee discount and still felt like asking for my money back. You will miss nothing by waiting for this to be available on video.
-- Allan Jenoff Check out my web page at http://www.interlog.com/~jenoff/
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