The Blair Witch Project Review
by Kevin Patterson (Kevin_Patterson AT Brown DOT edu)September 14th, 1999
Film review by Kevin Patterson
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
Rating: ***1/2 (out of four)
R, 1999
Directors/Screenplay: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez Starring Cast: Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael Williams
Almost everyone predicted that cinema in 1999 would be the year of Lucas and Kubrick, but few would have guessed ahead of time that one of the most talked-about films of the year after THE PHANTOM MENACE and EYES WIDE SHUT would be a micro-budget horror film called THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. The film was made (do I even need to repeat this story?) on a budget of $37,000 and boasts an intriguing premise: it claims to be the footage, only recently discovered, shot by three film students who disappeared in the woods near a small town called Burkittsville while making a documentary about the local legend of the "Blair Witch." This is, of course, a piece of fiction, though reportedly much of what we see was improvised on the spot by the three actors (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams, all using their real names), who really did shoot the footage themselves and who were given only a broad outline by co-writers and directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez.
Since the scenes were filmed by the actors, with the directors waiting off-camera and out of sight, there are no special effects or scenes of gruesome murder in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and the witch herself never actually appears on-screen. The "horror" rests instead on slowly escalating psychological tension, as the students become lost in the woods, their map disappears, and unseen menaces seem to draw nearer. They seem to be surrounded by strange noises at night whose origins they cannot determine, and in the morning, ominous-looking stick figures made of twigs and leaves are found outside their tent. One night, children's voices are heard outside and their tent suddenly collapses on them, but when they run outside, there is no one in sight. As their situation grows more desperate, they start to turn against each other and lay blame for their predicament, mostly on Heather, who had conceived of the project and who insisted beyond all reason that they were not lost.
John Carpenter said once that horror revolves around the loss of control, and Myrick and Sanchez seem to understand that. Until the last five minutes, the overall effect of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is more disturbing than it is "scary" in the way the word is typically understood. Since none of the apparent supernatural elements are ever witnessed on screen, there are very few moments that are likely to make the audience jump out of their seats in fright. Instead, we come to empathize with the three characters as they endure day after day that is dominated by fear and confusion; what the film lacks in visceral thrills is compensated for by the human tragedy that plays itself out. Towards the end, Heather records a tearful apology to Josh's and Mike's families as well as her own and accepts responsibility for the untimely end which she knows they will soon meet. This scene is matched in power perhaps only by the final five minutes, which will truly scare many viewers witless and which end with an ambiguous but unsettling visual that will not easily be forgotten.
All three performers pull off their roles almost flawlessly. Heather is perhaps the most interesting of the trio, as her later need to put some sort of emotional distance between herself and the increasingly grim situation accounts partly for the fact that the entire ordeal is caught on camera. Even when they are hopelessly lost and running out of food, she insists that they keep filming, and Josh, who had earlier screamed at her to turn the camera off, later takes a look through the lens and tells her he understands, because watching through the camera rather than through one's own eyes is "not quite reality." She is also the most flawed of the three, as it was her initial overconfidence that led indirectly to their predicament. Both Josh and Mike are also quite believable and sympathetic, though the way in which one of them is revealed as being responsible for the map disappearing doesn't really work: it strikes me as an amazingly boneheaded stunt, however frustrated the guilty party may have been.
I don't know if there's really much of a theme or a point to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT aside from some fairly routine "humankind's arrogance in overstepping its boundaries" implications. It's a story that exists mostly for its own sake, as an experiment in blending two cinematic approaches that are usually incompatible, i.e. the supernatural thriller and the verisimilitude of a pseudo-documentary. On this level, however, it does definitely succeed. There is never the sense that we are watching actors perform a scene, and the supernatural elements are necessarily implied rather than shown (an appearance by a CGI-rendered Blair Witch would have turned the whole thing into a long joke with a bad punchline). The key to the film's success is the realization that, for the most part, stories sink or swim with their characters. By giving the protagonists center stage and keeping the spooks off-screen, Myrick and Sanchez have made THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT into a film that is not only disturbing and occasionally downright chilling, but tragic and empathetic as well. It's a bold debut, and I would be surprised if I see a better horror film any time soon.
Send comments to [email protected].
http://members.aol.com/ReviewsKTP/reviews.html
More on 'The Blair Witch Project'...
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
