The Blair Witch Project
by Devin Rambo
The movie's setup is both simple and diabollically clever. The opening
text tells us that three student filmmakers disappeared in the Maryland
woods in 1994 while filming a documentary, and that their footage was
found a year later. The entire body of the film is footage that they shot
while out there.
It bears mentioning that the filmmakers have created a detailed mythology
surrounding the events on a website
and in a Sci-Fi Channel special titled "The Curse of the Blair Witch."
It is this mythology (some of the more tantalizing pieces of this back-story
are revealed in the film) that sends the three students out into the forest
in an attempt to piece together a documentary about the legend of the
Blair Witch, who supposedly has been haunting the area near Burkittsville
since the late 18th Century.
The film starts with the filmmakers' preparations for the shoot. Heather
is the director, Josh is the cameraman, and Mike does the sound. They
use two cameras: a color video camera for tests and the shooting of background
information, and a black-and-white Super 8 camera for the footage to be
used in the actual documentary. When they reach Burkittsville, they interview
some locals, who provide some background information (one creepy old lady
tells them of a personal encounter she had with the Witch) and directions
into the areas in which incidents concerning the Witch have occurred.
It is when they reach the woods that strange things begin to happen.
I'll leave the particulars for you to experience firsthand at the theater,
but let's just say that they have several nocturnal encounters with someone
or something that becomes increasingly hostile with each passing night.
The efficiency with which the film reaches pee-your-pants frightfulness
is due to several stylistic caveats. One is the acting, which was largely
improvised, and consequently feels spontaneous. Another is that it isn't
designed to be a film as we generally think of it. Great care has obviously
been taken to make it look like footage shot on the spur of the moment
as things veer out of the control of the trio. Shots are shaky and off-balance,
sometimes leaving us for a few moments with a picture of the side of their
tent, or a tree. But don't be fooled into thinking that the "look" of
the film wasn't well-planned; the film is set in October, after most of
the leaves have fallen in the Maryland forest, and the skeletal look of
the trees lends the film a very intimidating sense of visual foreboding
that sets the mood for us almost subconsciously.
The technical aspect of The Blair Witch Project that will probably
be the most discussed is the ingenious use of sound to scare the hell
out of us. The scariest parts of the movie are those in which we and the
trio can hear unusual noises out in the woods without seeing what is causing
them. And what may be worse is that we hear their shrieks and screams
as they endure the night terrors, which builds our own hysteria. The film
does nothing to release the tension of all of this either, taking us right
up to an ending which is all but unbearable to watch in its hysteria and
eventual ambiguity. Don't be surprised if the images in the final thirty
seconds of this film stay with you for a long time.
If you don't already know it, The Blair Witch Project is the
brainchild of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, who made the film for
a paltry $75,000, but have come up with what should rightly be regarded
as a landmark in the genre of film horror. Be impressed. Be very impressed.
If I may be so bold as to steal
a clever line Roger Ebert used a little over twenty years ago to describe
Halloween, then I would say that The Blair Witch Project
is a film that you do not watch so much as you have it happen to you.
More succinctly put, though, let me just say that never in my moviegoing
life have I been so scared in a theater. Rarely has a film elicited a
physical reaction from me as this one did.