Cast:
Heather
Donahue
Joshua Leonard
Michael
Williams
Directors: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez
Previews: An Autumn Tale($$$), Trick ($1/2), Run, Lola, Run ($$$$), End Of Days ($$1/2), The Insider ($$), American Beauty ($$$1/2) Note: Ratings on previews are based upon how much it makes me want to see the movie, and/or how well done it is in my opinion."In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found"
These words are the ominous beginning to the cult phenomenon known as The Blair Witch Project. However, they also lay the masterful groundwork for what is to come. The first-time filmmakers employed a Hitchcock style technique of letting the audience in on something that the characters on screen are not aware of. Hence, they build suspense and tension, and make it last and linger inside us. Then, slowly and methodically, we are introduced to the students, the town, the legend. Once we know the people, know the story and such, we are taken another step deeper, and it’s all brought together, upon the journey into the forest. More than that, though, it is a journey into what scares us the most. Our fear of the unknown, of being more scared of what we cannot, and do not, see: the dark, those things that go bump in the night. In fact, if Hitchcock had a camcorder, this is what he would’ve filmed.
This is
pure and simple realism to the hilt. There are no narrators, no musical score, no fancy
effects, no camera angles. We don't see things that the characters don’t see. We are
there with them, with one exception. We have seen the ending, the final result, we just
don’t know the journey, and the journey is the key here. It’s not just about the
disappearance of 3 students. It’s more about the effects that fear and terror can
have on the human psyche. These students react like normal people, not how actors would.
Natural emotions, real reactions, and the gamut of feelings, from exhilaration, to denial,
to frustration, to anger, to acceptance..all with that underlying sense of keeping one eye
looking around you.
This is a triumph on just about every level possible. It is the most cinematically original thing to appear on screens in a long while and the prototype of the little engine that could. Sanchez and Myrick took a budget of under $100,000 and a shrewdly masterful marketing campaign, fueled mainly by in-person and online word of mouth and a strategically timed Sci-Fi Channel documentary and built into something that they could never have dreamed. The performances are powerful because they are real. These are the true emotions of these people, no editing, no removing the bad moments and no hiding from the camera.
The Blair Witch Project does for
camping, what Jaws did to me for swimming. I’m not going in any woods, alone, or with
people, for a long, long time. If this movie doesn’t scare you, then you cannot be
scared. This is a true intellectual’s horror movie, because it turns the reigns
of control over to your mind, rather than just your eyes, scaring you from the inside out.
In my opinion, Blair Witch is what The Haunting wanted to be, showing the true effects of
fear, for quite a bit less, and definitely without all the glitz and glamour.
There are people, and they were in my theater too, who will not get this movie. Those who were raised on the ideals that it takes more blood and gore than suspense in order to fall into the classification of horror. This actually qualifies as more of an intellectual "scarrrry movie", because it forces your mind to work, rather than spoon feeding the images to you.
There were comic moments in this movie. These natural situations and group interactions that occur when people are put together in a situation. Maybe that lulled these naysayers into thinking that it was a fun movie. However, as things tend to go in tense situations, slowly, and surely, the light nature is eroded away. We start off with joviality and laughter, but as things go on, and degrade, the humor becomes more of a defense mechanism to fend off impending insanity and madness that descends. The crowds may not get that, and thus, may never take this movie seriously. In my opinion, that is not giving this movie its fair due. Open your minds up people. This is what making scary movies is all about. This one is worth the price of a full admission, but if you see it then, I suggest you see an early one, take someone special, or park close. Trust me, you will see why, but just go see it! ($$$$ of $$$$)
Actor and movie information courtesy of the
Internet Movie Database Images courtesy of Mr Showbiz and The Official Blair Witch movie website
of which I am a proud
member.