The Blair Witch Project Review
by Michael J. Zwirn (zwirnm AT ari DOT net)July 28th, 1999
Kibbutz Music Reviews #66, "I am so scared"
27 July 1999
Glancing at the calendar, I note that only two weekends remain before I leave Washington, more or less permanently, for graduate school in Boston. This means that, barring an unprecedented burst of enthusiasm for music reviewing, or a completely predictable disinclination to pack, this will be the final column I write from my home on Capitol Hill. Had I thought some things through, I could have wound down my tenure here in Washington with a comprehensive overview of some local bands, or a best-of-DC list of some sort, but I tend to be a bit haphazard in my approach, and this column is no different.
As turns out, summer 1999 will be remembered for my move from Washington to Boston, for my somewhat-delayed entry into graduate school, for my grandmother's move to a nursing home in Atlanta, and for a misbegotten two-month romance that unfortunately coincided with these other three concerns. It will also be remembered as the summer of The Blair Witch Project, a film which has cast a long shadow over the past year, as rumors and buzz began to circulate about the film and its directors and cast, all of whom are based nearby in Maryland. Washington is ground zero for what has become a brilliantly orchestrated cult phenomenon around a movie that cost less than an SUV and is infinitely more memorable than George Lucas' limp, lukewarm Jedi Knights. By the time the film finally opened in limited release on the sixteenth of July, I had become thoroughly immersed in Myrick and Sánchez' artful mythology, and perhaps read too many reviews and spent too much time on the website. My internalization of the arcane details on the site, which allowed for a more nuanced but perhaps less visceral viewing of the tightly edited 82 minutes of film, came at the expense of many hours that I could have spent working or packing, but I consider it time well spent. So, on July 16th I was among the first group of filmgoers in Washington to catch The Blair Witch Project at the frankly crummy Outer Circle theater.
Is the film good? Yes, very good. Does it live up to the hype? I'm not certain, and I'm not the best judge of this. I had become so fascinated with the film and engrossed in the mythology that perhaps I'd too many reviews, spent too much time on the website, and already internalized too much of the storyline to be shocked at some of the details. Perhaps, in fact, I am more in love with the ideas behind the film than the film itself. There is something so brilliantly simple and elegant about a piece of fiction in which the actors don't act, the directors don't direct, and the dialogue isn't scripted. The mythology of the film, which could have become cloying sentiment of the Friday the 13th variety, is genuinely eloquent and eerily vague enough to be resonant with its audience. Is the film scary? Assuredly. What is so remarkable about The Blair Witch Project is that the fear is derived internally, rather from the outside. We don't see witches, we don't see dead bodies, we don't see gore. It's what we don't see that makes us empathize so thoroughly with Heather, Josh and Mike. The stress, the misery and the loneliness of being lost in the woods, combined with the steadily more bizarre and terrifying experiences, conspire to slowly drive the three into a state of continual near-terror. Everyone is on edge and cracking under the strain of being assailed by an unknown enemy, including the audience. There is one (well-described) moment when Heather is chasing something through a ravine, lit only dimly from behind by Josh's camera, and she lets out a horrified shriek. "Oh my God what is that?" We don't see anything, and the film is stronger for it.
Ultimately, since we see everything through Josh, Heather and Mike's eyes, The Blair Witch Project differs from the average horror film (which makes the murderer or villain the central character). Ultimately, these are your average college kids, which makes them easy to empathize with, and their occasionally stupid and self-destructive behavior is all the more heartbreaking because we all do stupid and self-destructive things. They know arcane pop culture trivia (Cal Ripken, Gilligan's Island) but can't read maps or interpret a compass reading, and get blasted before launching into the woods. Josh's laid-back stoner façade crumbles first, Mike's stolid core tries to stabilize the three, and Heather's veneer of overconfidence and machisma collapses with horrifying finality into stark terror. There is no acting per se, so this is probably the closest we will ever get to watching three human beings completely collapse on film. The ultimate realness of the three makes this a rare film in which we genuinely care for characters even when we don't like them. The ultimate primal fear of getting lost in a dark, strange forest is something we can all identify with, and many of us
have experienced under less gruesome circumstances. As the stress of that situation mounts we find ourselves put in Heather, Mike and Josh's shoes, looking through their eyes via the cameras. Heather's confession, which isolates the tears falling from one eye, is utterly gutting in its heartrending honesty.
It seems strange to think of directing or cinematography when the three characters, all novices at filmmaking, are in charge of the cameras and sound. But the editing and cutting of the film are quite remarkable, particularly in a final sequence so terrifying that I won't discuss it, except to say that it ends with one searing image. Splicing 20 hours of (mostly boring, one supposes) hi-8 video and 16-mm film footage and DAT audio into a cohesive 82 minute film can't have been easy, but the amateurish filming occasionally yields moments of stunning fright and beauty. Did I say beauty? Yes. There is one scene shot in high resolution black and white through the window of their car as they drive into the woods that is simply stunning. Some of the film is completely black as they turn their cameras off in fear, but leave the DAT recorder running, and those are perversely among the most affecting moments. The final sequences are edited frenetically and disorientingly, which probably serves as an accurate reflection of the actors' own terror.
The art design and sound were the understated keys to this film. In the barest and most minimal way, Myrick and Sánchez use bits of wood, twine and rocks in utterly ingenious ways to create the impression of an entire forest suffused with an evil presence. It's brilliant. They create pure terror out of a bundle of sticks tied together with a bit of cloth, the likes of which could never be equalled with a grandiose Hollywood budget. The sound is the final piece to the film's shocking success. Indeed, the soundtrack to The Blair Witch Project alone, absent the visuals, could be bloodcurdling. In the interest of authenticity and to preserve the semblence of faux-verité, there is no sound other than the voices of the actors, the ambient noise of their journey into the forest, and the horrible wails that reverberate around their campsite in the middle of the night. Other suspense and horror films rely on garish violins, spare keyboards or predictably nihilist industrial or metal to create an atmosphere of fear and tension; The Blair Witch Project's most frightening moments are audible only through the gasping breaths of the actors and the crunch of twigs being snapped.
It was several weeks before the release of the film that I had the idea to make a mix tape to interpret some of the elements and moments depicted in the film. Obviously, I had to watch the movie first, but by the time I finally saw the film I was dead set on the idea. For the purposes of this little project I ended up delving into some of the realms of my collection that are usually side interests outside the broad category of pop. Pop musicians are great at selling soundtrack albums, but generally bad at scoring films, and I was trying to create an audio complement to the film rather than a marketing tie-in. (Indeed I came to find out shortly after the film was released that there is an album, called Josh's Blair Witch Mix, allegedly assembled by Joshua Leonard. His taste leans toward dour and bludgeoning metal and industrial, music too vulgar to adequately represent the chilling elegance of the film.) I relied largely on a mix of modern classical, some experimental and electronic compositions, a few pop selections, and a number of innovative multimedia and soundtrack pieces, particularly those with an Eastern European or Middle Eastern flavor for reasons that seemed more aesthetic than authenic. I was also able to rely on the superlative Blair Witch Project website for some brief audio and video segments to cut into the music. The result is a 90-minute cassette, my attempt to represent the Blair Witch Project experience on tape.
Side One
Heather, Josh, and Mike, "Off to the shack? The shanty?" .mov file. A seemingly jaunty trio shoulder their packs, leave their car behind, and head into the woods outside Burkittsville, Maryland.
David Byrne, "Ava" (Nu Wage Remix), from the Forestry EP. A lurching classical piece presciently remixed with jittery proto-trip-hop drums, borrowed and adapted from Byrne's 1991 theater piece The Forest.
Taylor & Rifle, "Main theme" from the soundtrack to Amateur. A luminous orchestral piece with choral vocals, led by a spare piano line, originally from the 1995 Hal Hartley film soundtrack that also featured the Jesus Lizard and Yo La Tengo. Perfectly evokes the scene shot in high-resolution black and white through the window of their car as the three embark into the forests of rural Maryland.
The Kingdom of Leisure, "Across-the-Bow," from This is the New America. An echoing, swampy blues riff from the DC-based innovators of tripgrass.
Heather, Josh, and Mike, "Argument" .au file. The three, lost and hungry, argue bitterly over their location and Heather's leadership.
Peter Gabriel, "Of These, Hope - Reprise," from Passion: Soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ. Peter Gabriel is perhaps the popular musician best equipped to produce a full soundtrack score, as he did for Scorcese's Last Temptation of Christ. Passion makes use of remarkable field recordings from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, giving them a lush and overwhelmingly engrossing studio veneer.
Domácí Kapela, "Prizraky" [Phantoms], from Nedêle. Gripping, off-putting and to Western ears, unspeakably bizarre, this Czech art-rock composition gives off the impression of Enya and a lost klezmer band trying desperately to make sense of fuzzy photocopied samizdat transcriptions of Queensryche.
Heather, Josh, and Mike, "Are you happy?" .au file. Josh protests that he's supposed to be at work the next morning; Mike begs the two to be civil in the unpleasant circumstances.
Dawn Upshaw, "The Girl With Orange Lips," from The Girl With Orange Lips. >From the 1990 album of the same name, one of a lengthy series of cryptic and moving poems (by Stephan Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, and others) set to brief and often jarring classical orchestration. Also features one of the most astonishing and lyrical cover photographs in my entire collection.
Andie MacDowell, "Define Violence," from the soundtrack to The End of Violence. Wim Wenders' soundtracks for Until the End of the World and The End of Violence were models for this project, and Andie MacDowell's drily accusatory rebuke can apply nicely here. Plays over a nice ambient piece by the film's music director, Ry Cooder.
Duane Eddy, "Trembler" (remix), from the soundtrack to Natural Born Killers. Trent Reznor, who shows every indication of being a completely unpleasant human being, nevertheless is a remarkably ingenious manipulator of sounds and images. Nothing illustrates his gift more effectively than the jarring, hallucinatory soundtrack to Natural Born Killers, an album that conveys the message of the film far more effectively than the film itself. Eddy's rumbling bass guitar introduction is one of the moments on this tape that still makes my heart stop, even after repeated listens.
Heather, Josh, and Mike, "My God, what is that" .mov file. Heather, sprinting through a ravine in the middle of the night, lit only from behind by the light from Josh's camera, sees something in the distance.
Lauren Hoffman, "Look Like Shit" (4-track demo), from the A Harmless Little Kiss EP. Hoffman's numb, aching vocals and raw guitar playing are testimony to the circumstances of the song's recording and a musical journal for the strain of sleepless nights and grinding terror. One of the four musicians on this tape I'm privileged to know personally, even if only from a distance.
Golden Palominos, "Prison of the Rhythm," from the Prison of the Rhythm EP. Lori Carson's breathy vocals and Anton Fier's frenetic drum programming conflate sex with God with fear, which isn't quite the point of the film, but it works in context.
Nine Inch Nails, "Down In It," from Pretty Hate Machine. The best "wind rushing through a moral vacuum" noises ever made.
Towering Inferno, "Edvard Király," from Kaddish. Maniacal, hysterical screaming in Magyar, a thumping, ominous bass drum, and what sounds like the ghastly looped braying of some tortured donkey. It seemed apt.
Andie MacDowell, "Unintentional Prayers," from the soundtrack to The End of Violence.
Low, "Below and Above," from Long Division. By Low standards, this is a spritely little number. By anyone else's standards, Mimi vocals are icy beauty over the aching, needful simmer of Alan Sparhawk's carefully chosen guitar notes, doled out sparingly as if the band is deathly afraid that they don't have enough to reach the end of the song.
Heather, "Confession" .mov file excerpt. An excerpt from Heather's midnight confessional.
Aphex Twin, Disc One, Track 11, from Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Like sonar pinging the depths of the soul.
Kronos Quartet, "Kyrie I," from Early Music (Lachrymæ Antiquæ). A haunting piece of Fourteenth Century liturgy that sounds strangely of a piece with the modern Eastern European masters.
Side Two
The Moon Seven Times, "My Game," from 7=49. Perhaps m7x's sparest moment, with Henry Frayne's ringing guitars excised in favor of a dry, thumping rhythm line that exposes every breath and quaver in Lynn Canfield's haunting vocals.
Crime and the City Solution, "Adversary," from the soundtrack to Until the End of the World. Perhaps the best pop-music soundtrack ever, the Wim Wenders soundtrack for Until the End of the World is a seamless exploration of minor-key dread and pre-millennial desperation. Crime and the City Solution's "Adversary," a menacing and completely convincing open letter from predator to prey, is one of the film's perfect matches of music to visuals.
Tama Renata, "Screaming Pipes/Haka," from the soundtrack to Once Were Warriors. The Maori haka is a ritual chant and dance designed to intimidate, belittle and terrify tribal enemies on the field of battle. In Lee Tamahori's frightfully authentic and visceral South Auckland slums, the embrace of this warrior tradition is both a rallying call and a deadly siren song.
Moby, "New Dawn Fades," from I Like to Score. A dense, ominous and searing Joy Division cover with a darkly moving vocal from Moby himself.
Forgiveness, "Kol Nidrei," from The Jewish Alternative Movement: A Guide for the Perplexed. Groaning with the weight of four thousand years of sin and repentance, this interpretation of the classical Sephardi liturgical motif from the Yom Kippur service sounds like it could have been performed in a dark, dank woods itself. It's also my musical elegy for Joshua Leonard and his undisclosed but presumably dire fate.
Balanescu Quartet, "East," from Luminatza. A jittery chamber piece that leaps from a buzzsaw cello introduction into a bracing, cutting violin finale.
Lanterna, "Turbine," from Lanterna. A clattering, churning, surging instrumental from Moon Seven Times guitar wizard Henry Frayne.
Heather, "Confession" .mov file. When The Blair Witch Project is examined in retrospect, this scene and the mindbending finale will be the landmarks that guarantee its place in cinema legend.
Sugar, "Tilted" excerpt, from the Beaster EP. Bob Mould's tortured Jesus Christ imagery scales new heights in this swirling, anguished piece of feedback and sampled demogoguery.
Kate Bush, "Army Dreamers," from The Whole Story. Perhaps an atypical piece for this collection, but I find the contrast between the lilting guitar and vocal lines and the stately waltz rhythms, and the mournful lyrics, remarkably effective.
This Mortal Coil, "Fyt," from It'll End in Tears. A rare instrumental from Ivo-Watts and his assembled 4AD minions. Murky, lurching and resonant with dread.
Nine Inch Nails, "March of the Pigs," from The Downward Spiral, intercut with "News Reporter" .mov file. Despite the remarkable variety of noises that Trent Reznor manages to coax from his formidable arsenal of machines, instruments and computers, he's perhaps at his best when he uses silence as a weapon instead of bombast.
Towering Inferno, "The Rose II," from Kaddish. An otherworldly vocal in Magyar by Márta Sebastyén and an eerie poem in English over Richard Wolfson and Andy Saunder's liquid synthesizers. "This sky will cover you when you fall down."
Loveliescrushing, "Bones of Angels" excerpt, from Beneath the Icy Floe: A Projekt Sampler Vol. 4. Perhaps surprisingly, the moody synthesized goth stylings of the Projekt bands didn't altogether suit this compilation, but Loveliescrushing's ghostly reverie fits here nicely.
Mystery Machine, "Pound for Pound," from Decadence: Nettwerk Records boxed set. It's to the credit of this innovative band from Vancouver that I can't pin down their sound as dizzying rock guitar with progressive metal leanings, blistering punk, twitching indie or soaringly anthemic. This song from the Nettwerk box set me in search of their other work
immediately.
Moby, "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters (edit)," from Everything is Wrong. Perhaps the most stunning of Moby's richly orchestrated keyboard pieces, this staggeringly beautiful eight minute piece has also found a home on the soundtrack to Heat and in a range of additional contexts.
Lisa Germano, "...callin'," from On the Way Down from the Moon Palace. Perhaps it's the optimist in me that reached for a vaguely elegaic minute-long violin and guitar piece to close this album, promising a gentler end than Heather, Josh and Mike ever found.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael J. Zwirn [email protected] ICQ #34272068 Kibbutz Music Reviews: http://www2.ari.net/zwirnm/kibbutz.html Current: The Blair Witch Project
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