The Blair Witch Project Review
by Mr. Bryan Frankenseuss Theiss (franknseus AT aol DOT com)August 4th, 1999
MY QUITE LENGTHY TAKE ON THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
<This interminable essay is low on spoilers, but you definitely shouldn't read it anyway if you haven't seen the movie>
When a variety of credible critics claim that a new horror movie is one of the scariest they've ever seen, I make plans to see it. That's just how it works. I love a good horror movie (sometimes even a bad one) and if a movie really is scary, I want to experience it. However, the film festival and promotional screening buzz of the Blair Witch Project has grown to such a deafening roar that it seems inevitable that it won't live up to the hype. "It couldn't be as scary as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," I told myself, "But hopefully it will be good."
At least in the circles I travel, The Blair Witch Project is easily one of the most anticipated summer movies of '99. Everyone wants to see if it lives up to the hype - will it be another out of nowhere, low budget first feature horror classic, like Night of the Living Dead or Texas Chain Saw Massacre or The Evil Dead? Artisan Entertainment has cruelly but cleverly used this anticipation as a promotional gimmick by going ahead and releasing it on a mere 27 screens nationwide. The scene at the Neptune in Seattle is, I would assume, typical - the box office swarmed all day, every single show selling out hours in advance, enormous around-the-block lines completely unprecedented for this one screen, semi-arthouse theater. And while I was waiting in line two hours in advance for a 9:45 showing, clutching tickets I had bought at 3 in the afternoon, people would walk by, see the lines and exclaim variations on "This must be the movie of the summer." No doubt these people will check the movie out "when the crowds die down" and it's playing in multiplexes.
Another thing that has apparently helped to promote the film is the "let's pretend it's real" approach to some of the marketing. I never thought the web site or other promotional materials were intended to deceive people into thinking the Blair Witch was real. Nevertheless, I heard the guy behind me in line telling a long, fanciful story about how the filmmakers were found dismembered and the footage was buried in someone's backyard and blah blah blah. Other people were overheard referring to it as a "true story." (I can't help but suspect that these are the people who will be most disappointed by the movie. They ought to realize it's a "hoax" as soon as it ends - would a real snuff film have credits?)
The premise of the movie, as you surely must know, is that three student filmmakers venture into the woods to make an amateur documentary about a local legend involving a witch and a series of child murders. The filmmakers, we are told by the opening title, disappeared, and one year later their footage was found. We watch their black and white 16 mm footage and goofing-around digital video, edited together to tell the story of their experiences getting lost in the woods.
Early on, I was skeptical as to whether the found-footage conceit would work. They interview some locals about the "Blair Witch" legend, and the very first interview is rather stiff. The director of the film within the film, Heather, records some narration in a cemetery, and it's almost too bad to be believed. She changes her accent to sound more serious, and the results are laughable. (Otherwise, the amateurishness of the documentary-in-progress seems dead on accurate. I am absolutely positive that the aspiring filmmakers I went to college with would have taken the same approach - static, black and white 16 mm for the "scary parts," plus lots of crappy video footage of the filmmakers hiking and fooling around in the hotel room.)
But the film quickly won me over, and I found that there were very few touches that rang false. Almost none of the dialogue seems like it could have possibly been scripted (apparently, the directors led the actors on sort of a role-playing scavenger hunt, leading them through the story with a series of notes). As far as I can tell, most of the characterization is not so much storytelling as footage of the actual bonding between the actors. They joke with each other in ways rarely captured on film before - not clever quips, just the kinds of things people say to each other when they're hanging out together. One of my favorite such moments is when Michael jokingly reprimands Heather and Josh for incorrectly referring to the Skipper on Gilligan's Island. "Let's stop calling him 'The Captain,' you illiterate TV people. It's… *the Skipper*." What results from this improvisatory technique is perhaps the most realistic group of protagonists in horror movie history. I can relate to the heroes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Dawn of the Dead, but not as effortlessly as I can here. The clever quasi-Method techniques used to get these performances really help pull you into the movie. These are real people, really reacting - it's just that what they're reacting to, of course, isn't real. But suspension of disbelief was not a problem for me. I felt like I really was going to "shoot doc" with these people, and then getting lost in the woods with them, and then running blindly through the trees screaming with them.
One particularly realistic touch is the way the fear slowly builds throughout the movie. Some horror movies have their protagonists take their situations too lightly, like when Jennifer Love Hewitt goes tanning shortly after witnessing murders in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. But I think most horror filmmakers, had they made The Blair Witch Project, would have had the protagonists terrified out of their minds for the last two thirds of the movie, giving it a melodramatic feel that probably would not have worked.
The film, however, allows the characters to feel better when the daylight comes. They may have witnessed something spooky last night in the dark, but in the sunny afternoon everything seems safer. They allow themselves to rationalize what happened, or to put it out of their minds, or to assume that they can make it out of the woods before darkness hits again. For a long time, they assume it's just someone trying to scare them, which still scares them because "something has to be wrong" with someone who would bother to do that. But as the film progresses, the situation gets worse, the nights get scarier and the chances of ever finding the edge of the woods begin to seem miniscule. It's a slow burn. Rather than start out with something scary, then introduce the characters, then get scary again, The Blair Witch Project starts out funny and really has to build toward the scary. And it works.
I don't want to say that The Blair Witch Project is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. The more times people say that, the more the expectations are built, and there will most certainly be people who see it years later and have heard for so long how scary it is that when they finally see it, it seems laughable.
But the fact is, a movie has never before scared me the way this one did. Maybe The Shining or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre would have done the trick if I had seen them for the first time at the right age and in a theater. Or maybe The Exorcist, had I grown up Catholic. Only time travel will ever settle that. But when shit went down in the Burkittsville woods, I felt a powerful, vibrating chill all across my skin - the same feeling you get when you almost get hit by a car or otherwise feel just a little too close to death. My girlfriend and I like to watch horror movies together, and she usually squeezes my hand tight during the scary scenes. This is the first movie that has prompted her to bite my finger in fear.
Many hardened skeptics and contrarians are already popping up to claim that it's all hype, and that the movie actually isn't at all scary. I don't think many of them could have been at the 9:45 Neptune show, though.
Throughout the film, people all around me were looking at the film intellectually, or just not taking it seriously. As the opening text unfolded, the guy next to me continued a conversation with his girlfriend about some Buffalo Springfield song that they had been reminded of by one of the trailers. Later he said out loud, "That's a scary shot," dissecting the movie, probably an aspiring filmmaker. Even late in the film, when things had gotten real scary and uncomfortable, the theater would rumble with laughter every time a character made a semi-amusing comment. It didn't seem like the kind of audience that could be terrified by a movie.
But at a certain point late in the movie, when the protagonists stumble upon a certain thing, I heard an entire packed theater get scared out of their wits. This is not a sudden jolt or a blunt scare like a dead body or a pool of blood. It's just the unexpected discovery of something that at this point in the story makes the audience fear what might happen next. A massive, communal moan of dread rumbled back and forth between the walls of the theater. You could hear the entire audience squirm in unison. This is not the "BOO! Made you flinch," type of shock that is so prevalent in modern horror films. This is more like true blue, horrified, horrible, reeling in horror type of horror. I wonder if this might be the closest I'll get to ever experiencing something like the terror that people allegedly had when The Exorcist was first released.
So why is it so scary? It's not virtuoso cinematic technique, or pushing the boundaries of horror subject matter. I think what the filmmakers did was push aside most of what they've seen in horror movies and instead try to imagine what it would really be like in real life. What would really be scary? A guy with an ax chopping off a guy's head? Yeah, that would be scary. But what about something more subtle? Like, just hearing footsteps when you're out where there shouldn't be people? In a slick studio horror movie, the idea would be ludicrous. But in a raw, low budget movie that so unerringly captures reality, it wrenches your stomach.
What's wrong with today's horror movies, many people have tried to convince me, is that they show too much, when the real way to make a movie scary is to leave everything up to the imagination. I think that's overstating the argument, though. Yes, some of the most horrifying events in, say, Psycho, take place off screen. You can't really deny that Jaws and Alien wouldn't be less scary if their respective creatures had much more screen time. And I think it is notable how many people remember horrendous amounts of blood and bodily mutilation in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, even though the actual movie is virtually bloodless.
But just because it works so well in these classics doesn't mean it's the only legitimate approach to making a horror film. Would Night of the Living Dead be scarier without the shot of the zombies munching guts? Was I imagining it when I thought the gruesome bloodletting and eye-munching tarantulas of The Beyond made my heart beat fast? Would The Exorcist be scarier if we had to imagine Regan turning her head around?
I don't think so. But The Blair Witch Project takes the other approach - leaving it to the imagination - and succeeds tremendously. I am certain that it will become the most frequently used example of the "tell, don't show" technique of horror.
The premise of Blair Witch Project allows a good twist on being Left To The Imagination (for now on, to be referred to as LTTI). Since the film pretends to be an attempt to document actual horrific events, the audience is made to feel like they are examining the footage, squinting at it, trying to find the evidence in there somewhere. When something happens off screen, you don't think, "Nice cinematic technique." It's more like, "Damn, they didn't have the camera on." Like real videos of alleged supernatural phenomenon, the eeriness of the footage largely lies in how frustratingly incomplete it is. You're always searching for a quick glimpse of something, somewhere in the frame. In the instances when you do see something horrifying, the camera is shaky and unclear enough that it's debatable what you saw. Even the eerie sounds heard in the night are largely LTTI, because they are covered by the ruffling microphones and unzipping tents of the terrified film crew.
I didn't even notice it until after the movie, but I think the lack of music really helps, and almost falls into the LTTI category. A good score can really add a lot to a horror film, particularly those of the atmospheric, gothic variety. There are terrifying movies that don't work at all when viewed without the music, like (according to John Carpenter) Halloween. But Blair Witch Project has no music to poke at your emotions, or enhance the creepiness, or tell you how to feel. The story is left to fend for itself. Even the end credits, thankfully, don't try to cheer you up or appeal to your sense of irony with a catchy tune. Instead, they leave you with ambient noises, as if to say, "Keep thinking about it, sucker. This movie isn't leaving right away."
So since the movie really does live up to the hype, and since the overwhelming crowds of the limited release seem to be a genuine phenomenon, I think it's safe to say that The Blair Witch Project will be a monster hit that will signal a new era in horror films. Perfect timing, too, because the short lived Scream cycle seems to be on its last legs.
Hugely successful horror films always inspire a slew of half-assed imitators that miss the point, and a few pretty good ones that don't. It will be interesting to see how studios and other filmmakers will try to capitalize on and/or learn from The Blair Witch Project. Here are a few predictions:
1. Much lip service will be given to the LTTI technique. This week, Dreamworks releases Jan De Bont's effects heavy remake of the LTTI classic The Haunting. I predict that 75% of all reviews will mention The Blair Witch Project as a superior alternative, because it doesn't try to show everything. Perhaps some of the next slew of horror films will put more thought into the ancient art of making the audience fear what they might see, instead of what they do see.
2. One or two studios will try picking up low budget supernatural horror movies by unknown directors. They will be met with much less enthusiasm than The Blair Witch Project.
3. Someone will try making a movie with a Scream style, plucked-from-TV cast encountering a supernatural horror in the woods. The trades will call it "The Blair Witch Project meets Scream."
4. I fear that particularly unimaginative filmmakers will try copying the mockumentary angle. Blair Witch Project isn't the first horror movie to do this, but another horror mockumentary inspired by its success would still count as a rip off. Other filmmakers will have trouble duplicating the realism of Blair Witch Project.
5. Hopefully, the movie's success will inspire filmmakers to think about what really is scary, rather than what is traditionally used to scare people in horror films. They will probe their own fears and try to figure out how to depict them realistically on film. I don't think they should abandon the use of extravagant visual effects, but it should free them up to realize that audiences don't need them.
A postscript concerning The Blair Witch Project and my precious Texas Chain Saw Massacre:
Although the films are very different from each other, it is my belief that BWP was heavily influenced by 'Saw, from the opening text implying (but not outright stating) that the story is true, to certain witchly artifacts reminiscent of the dangling bone ornaments in 'Saw, to the ambiguous marketing which has confused people into believing BWP is a true story. There are still many people who mistakenly believe 'Saw is based on a true story (Ed Gein, who didn't live in Texas and had no chainsaw to massacre with, doesn't count). After 'Saw, director Tobe Hooper went on to make one unacknowledged classic (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2), one above average sleaze thriller (The Funhouse), and one mainstream success that most people credit to Steven Spielberg (Poltergeist). Most of the rest of his output has been either substandard horror with limited appeal (Eaten Alive), or unmitigated crap (Spontaneous Combustion, The Mangler). I still hope he will someday recapture the demented magic of his two 'Saw films, but most write him off as the director of a fluke one-off.
I hope Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, the creators of The Blair Witch Project, don't suffer the Curse of Tobe Hooper. So far, the odds seem against them. Much of the strength of BWP lies in the mockumentary gimmick, which one would hope they won't repeat. But we don't know if these guys know anything about other forms of cinematic storytelling, or directing scripted actors, or even writing dialogue.
On the other hand, we do know that these are clever guys who came up with an original way to film an extremely effective horror movie. Here's hoping they have more tricks up their sleeves.
--Bryan Frankenseuss Theiss
"I write rhymes so fresh I try to bite my own verses." --Tash
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