The owls are not what they seem
The Blair Witch Project A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1999 by Michael Redman
***1/2 (out of ****)
As I sit in front of the glowing screen in this pre-dawn hour thinking about this film, everything around me feels eerie. The usually-comforting piles of clutter and artifacts that fill my office are alien. When my cat walks across the keyboard causing me to delete his gibberish, it's not an annoyance, it's foreboding.
I walk to into the living room and put on some Jimmy Buffett -- the least frightening music I can think of. It doesn't work. There's still a strange atmosphere haunting the house.
This is the power of "The Blair Witch Project". It's been two days since I saw the movie and the reaction remains.
Three student filmmakers wander off into a Maryland forest in October 1994 to film a documentary about the Blair witch, a local piece of folklore. They disappear, never to be found. A year later, anthropology students discover a duffel bag containing film and video cassettes buried under a 100 year-old cabin deep in the woods. The movie we see is the found footage.
Knowledgeable members of the audience know this is all fake. The actors playing the students are still alive. The film team never existed. None of them were lost or killed.
The footage is a combination of the black and white 16mm supposedly filmed for the documentary and video shot for a "Making Of" feature. Much of it has the appearance of what you get when you take a camcorder out for the day. Scenes are poorly lighted. Subjects are out of frame. Often it's difficult to make out what you are seeing or hearing.
It's the most unprofessional film cinematography ever seen on the big screen. And possibly the most realistic. The amateur quality is what makes it work. Like even the worst home movies or old grainy 8mm porn films, there's a fascination because there's something real going on. It's as if you are eavesdropping on someone's life.
No matter how much they try, high production values can never accomplish this. The very nature of the unprofessionalism erases the barrier between the audience and the film.
Anyone who has spent a few nights in the woods knows the fear of the night unknowns that creeps into your mind at times.
Usually when I'm camping, it's with a large group of ten to a few hundred people. There's always weirdness, but I have an idea of what most of it is. On the occasions when there's only been two or three of us, it's a different matter. Unidentifiable sounds come from outside the tent and you know there's _something_ going on out there.
In the film, some of the "somethings" can be attributed, as you do when out there at night, to animal activity. But some of them decidedly can not.
After the students are lost, they hear disembodied voices. They awaken one morning to find piles of rocks outside their tent. The night scenes never show us anything beyond the few feet the lights shine. Whatever is there, is beyond their -- and our -- knowing.
Some of the most frightening scenes are from the camcorder left on as they run helter-skelter through the forest in the dark. All we see are branches brushing past the lens. All we hear are panting and a few excited words. It's chilling.
The three actors (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael Williams) use their real names in the film and are completely convincing as people you might run into walking down the street. Ordinary people scared out of their wits.
The movie has some flaws. We don't learn enough about the Blair witch. When I left the theater, I felt disappointed in the last two minutes. Too much was neatly wrapped up and I thought it would have been better had the film ended earlier.
But days later, the final five seconds stay with me. It's more terrifying now than it was then.
Although the film is undeniably ground-breaking, it's unlikely we're going to see a lot of movies copying it as is the tradition. It's a concept that can't work more than once or twice.
In some ways it's a one-trick pony. But it's a remarkable trick.
(Michael Redman has written this column for 24 years and during that time has seen a lot of weird things in the woods at night. Email your camping experiences to redman@indepen.com. No, really. Do it.)
[The appeared in the 8/5/99 "Bloomington Independent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at Redman@indepen.com]
-- mailto:redman@indepen.com This week's film review: http://www.indepen.com/ Film reviews archive: http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman Y2K articles: http://www.indepen.com/
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