THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: In 1994 three amateur filmmakers went
into the Maryland woods making a documentary about
the local legend of the Blair Witch. They never
returned. This is claimed to be a compilation of
the footage they took showing how they were lost
and ran afoul of something unseen. This is a film
that demonstrates that horror in a film need not be
created by visual effects. Instead the immediacy
created by hand-held cameras and a realistic rather
than artificial style makes this the most intense
horror film since HENRY, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL
KILLER. Rating: 8 (0 to 10), high +2 (-4 to +4).
Following the review is a non-spoiler sidebar
listing the rules of the European film movement
Dogma 95.
There is a paradox in filmmaking. The viewer goes to a film to see an experience, but ironically not really to share the experience. We as viewers want to see the story, but we do not really want to participate in the experience. The filmmakers we consider to be the best do not make realistic films. These great stylists of cinema are mostly people that rather than making a film real for us make it unreal. The most real film is crude footage right out of a hand-held camera. Even using Steadicam is stepping away from reality. As we look at he world our head bobs and jerks. Steadicam smoothes out the bobs and jerks making the resulting film less real. A rare few films use crudity and a lack of style to make the film more real for the viewer. THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is an effective horror film, not because a great stylist polished it but because it looks like it is not polished at all. It is shot in black and white and photographed crudely. It does have music, but it is the music that the filmmakers could get free and the music is rough. Color and a lush orchestral score are a distraction.
As I write this review there are two horror film in wide release. The remake of THE HAUNTING is a highly glossy film with great special effects and images from the imagination of an artist. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT on the other hand is shot primitively with hand-held cameras and has almost no music. And that lack of style makes the film seem all the more real. By showing almost nothing of the menace in the story it allows the viewer's mind complete freedom to imagine the threat. In fact THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT--perhaps coincidentally--very nearly follows the rules of Dogma 95. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT was made on a very tiny film budget, and it is made with almost no stylistic tricks. In fact it has no style whatsoever to distance the viewer from the action. That makes it the most effective horror film we have seen in years.
The plot of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is obvious from the first minutes of the film. We are told at the very beginning of the film that in October 1994 three student filmmakers, Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard (played by Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard) were making a film. They went into the Maryland woods near Burkittesville to shoot a documentary about a local legend, the Blair Witch. They never came out of that woods and we are told a year later their film footage was found. We don't even know how it is supposed to have been unearthed. But we are seeing the raw film footage they shot. It is clear from the beginning that they were incompetents and should not be out in the wild by themselves. It is not hard to guess what trouble they found in the woods and what caused them not to come back. The film spends the rest of its short 85-minute length showing the viewer what was expected to happen did happen. This is not a great plot. It is almost no plot at all, in fact. The viewer knows what is going to ensue and just sits there to see it happen and to pick up the details. Yet just seeing it all happen without having the filmmaker interpose style between the viewer and the story makes this film an experience so immediate and intense that people are walking out of the film rather than subjecting their nerves to the film. The special effects in this film are all mostly sound effects. They are all easy to create, but they tap into a basic fear of being vulnerable in the woods, in the night, in the dark (to paraphrase both versions of THE HAUNTING). This is a film that will tap into some very basic fears.
The film is written, directed, and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez. It is a Haxen Films production (probably named for the classic 1922 Norwegian film documentary HAXEN, meaning "Witches"). The three main characters apparently play themselves. According to the publicity most of the dialog is improvised, giving it a real immediacy. Apparently they were given a rough plot outline and identifying with the characters they argued among themselves in a sort of role-playing game. I would bet that the scenes were filmed in very much the order that we see them in the film to make easier the slow build in the actors' hysteria. The reported cost of shooting the film was $20,000, but the film is playing to full houses. It is the kind of trick that probably can be done effectively only once, though THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is bound to have imitators. This is a film of incredible intensity. It has no sex, no violence, a fair amount of medium-strong language, but less than a lot of other films in theaters. Yet it is too strong for even some of the adults seeing the film. I rate it an8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. In case there is any confusion the film THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, the television documentary "The Curse of the Blair Witch," and any legends or historical factoids found in either are complete fictions created for the film. A possible exception is the television description of the backgrounds of the three film students who were real people and played themselves in the film. There never was a Blair Witch or an attempt to do a serious documentary about her.
Dogma 95 is a European film movement founded by Danish filmmaker Lars von Triers. It is intended to bring film back to a more natural sort of filmmaking. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT follows, as far as I can tell, the first seven of the rules and breaks the last three. However, its compliance with so many of the rules of Dogma 95 may be purely coincidental. The following are the rule of Dogma 95.
I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by DOGMA 95:
1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place).
4. The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10. The director must not be credited.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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