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The Blair Witch Project
(rating 8 out of 10)
(1999, directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel
Myrick)
(Do Not Read This Review If You Don't Want To
Know Specific
Details About What Happens. Ending Revealed.)
In modern cinema, hype can be a monster. Hype is that insidious
and ever-growing creature which almost always ends up ruining the film experiences of
throves of filmgoers. The Blair Witch Project is quite a good film but it has one
sickly, diseased Hype-monster on its back.
It's very rare when a low budget film gathers as much Buzz as The
Blair Witch Project. Since its debut at this year's Sundance Film Festival, it became
one of the most highly anticipated films of the year not neccesarily because of its
subject matter but because of the cleverness with which a couple of filmmakers have
revitalized Horror cinema. And they're to be commended, The Blair Witch Project is
one of the best Horror films of the decade though not neccesarily the scariest. With a
paltry budget of $30,000 and the use of improvisational documentary filmmaking techniques,
Blair Witch manages to quicken the pulse and capture the imagination.
Blair Witch is the mock-documentary of three college
students, Heather, Joshua and Michael, who head out into the Maryland woods around the
small town of Burkittsville to pursue the legend of the Blair Witch, more accurately a
number of strange incidents which occured there. The film has been marketed as a Real Life
Story--a teasing special recently aired on the Sci-Fi Channel makes the film look like a
segment of that strange-phenomena TV series, Sightings. As you look at the film, you might
be fooled. There's no soundtrack, no smooth camera movements or edits, no special effects
but just the film and video footage of the trip into the woods.
Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick,
creators of The Blair Witch Project.
At the top of the Indie Film Mountain
right at this very moment.
Where Blair Witch succeeds is in creating and keeping an
atmosphere of tension and numbing terror. After a seemingly innocent opening, in which the
three students meet, interview some of the locals and head out, the film's vibe begins to
change but not deliberately. In documentary style, we're presented with signs that dark
things are going on: Piles of rock appear seemingly out of nowhere, Obscure wooden charms
hang from trees, and strange noises come from the deep dark at night. The phenomena is not
rock solid in itself but its effects are paralizying on the three students who are subject
to them. As Blair Witch charges to its sudden, shocking ending, the combination of
noises, darkness, and drunk-on-fear characters is stirred to maximum effectiveness. The
fact that 90% of the film is shot with jiggly, unfocused cameras becomes a style in
itself; the filmmaker's signature.
Ultimately, Blair Witch is not a film about three students
who are swallowed by a mystery in the deep dark woods, but about the experience of fear
itself. Who was it that said that "We have nothing to fear but fear itself?"
Whoever he was his quote is proven into a truism in this movie. All the characters seem to
drop straight down a well of fear and paranoia as soon as things start getting slightly
spooky. They turn on each other, lose the ability to think straight and end up sitting,
rocking back and forth and rambing nonsense in sheer despair. This draws the audience into
their predicament very convincingly. Fear is like a black hole from which nothing seems to
escape; not common sense, not even sanity. If there is one film that should be required
viewing on psychology courses of the future it's surely Blair Witch.
But personally, I can't go as far as saying that Blair Witch
is a "masterpiece", an "instant classic", that it "redefines the
Horror film", or that it's "scary as hell" as many critics have written
about it. Being a huge fan of Horror films myself, Blair Witch does dissapoint in
several areas, the first one being the lack of any visible sights of spookyness along the
film. We get shaky camera shots of people running and screaming along the night forest. We
also get what I call "horror-movie stupidity" from the main three characters.
These three kids lose their marbles the second day out in the woods, finding themselves
scared at piles of rock and hanging effigies--come on, please. I wouldn't have freaked out
so hard and fast in their situation. And who goes on a serious trip into the woods these
days without food? What is rule number one about camping out? Build a fire. These kids
obviously had no clue about that rule nor of any other basic survivalist rules. It was
frustrating to see these people make such mistakes. Apart from the other phenomena
mentioned above and an incursion into a deserted house with children's handprints on its
walls, the film doesn't offer any other proof that something horrible is going on here.
It's like watching one of those cheap TV docu-specials about things that go bump in the
night only to be shown grainy pictures with a "grain of light" moving around
like some aimless firefly. I left the film feeling excited for its achievement but feeling
quite cheated. I understand that the film was done using an improvisational script and by
having the three actors react to cues the filmmakers left for them. That's commendable,
but the results aren't what I would call "an instant classic."
I don't expect all horror films to offer sights of explicit gore
and multimillion computer effects, in fact too much gore and effects have ruined many a
horror movie, but on the other hand, not showing anything seems to me like another crime
altogether. When Blair Witch is over, we have no clue as to what killed the three
students. Could it have been the ghost of a witch? Could it have been the spirit of a
demented child serial killer? Could it have been a gang of hillbilly revelers capitalizing
on a local legend? No idea. I understand that mysteries in films such as this one must be
kept--it's the cinematic thing to do--but should they be kept this obscure? Many critics
have gotten on an unilateral bandwagon of praise for this film, hooray-ing it for its lack
of gore as it is some sort of revelation that someone finally made a film that shows
graphic restraint and leaving the audience with more questions than what they had when
they came into it. Clearly, it's a backlash to the trend of hip, teen horror flicks from
the past few years, movies like SCREAM and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER,
the Kevin Williamson era of Horror where everyone knows they're in a horror film yet
managed to get terribly murdered anyways. I hope Blair Witch doesn't mark the
beginning of a series of copycat films which show absolutely nothing at all and claim to
be scary, 'cause I will find myself yelling at a lot of film screens.
Ultimately, Blair Witch is a good film and my detractions
from it are due more to the machinery of Hype and my own personal concept of Horror than
the actual film itself. The final minutes stick very vividly in my mind, specifically the
last minute--the final shot in which the camera falls just a moment after showing us
Michael puzzlingly facing the basement's wall and then Heather's bloodcurling scream. And
it will be an unimaginable success for its creators, Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick. A
film which costed $30,000 could end up making more than $30,000,000 at the box office,
more than 100 times its budget; count all those zeroes, boys. Success is sweet indeed. But
to the audience I say: Enjoy The Blair Witch Project but Beware the monster of
Hype.
Armando Valle
Jul/27/99
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