Can The Blair Witch Project live up to its hype? So much has already been said (including ridiculous hyperbole like “The scariest movie ever made”) that it would be nearly impossible for any movie to withstand the inevitable scrutiny of the masses. Thanks to a shrewd word-of-mouth campaign conducted largely over the Internet, the masses will undoubtedly turn out when it goes into wide release this week. But if horror fans go expecting the typical jolts and violence of Scream, they will be disappointed. There are no shrieking girls chased by mask-wearing psychopaths, nothing jumps out from behind a door, and no copulating teens get pitchforked.
By defying recent convention, it manages to be one of the most nerve-wracking movies ever made. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, who wrote, directed, and edited The Blair Witch Project, prove that what remains unknown can be a lot more frightening than what is seen.
Heather Donahue is the director of a documentary about the legend of the Blair Witch. She asks Joshua Leonard to assist with shooting the film and Michael Williams to record sound. They go to the woods in Maryland to shoot the project and are never heard from again. The Blair Witch Project is the footage found a year after their disappearance. It’s a great concept. Actually shot by the actors, the film maintains believability because the action is so close and so real. What is happening to them is happening to us.
The acting is crucial to the sense of reality, and all three of the performances are excellent. Their freak-outs are disarming because they are so believable. Largely improvised, the dialogue effectively matches the changes they go through: from the initial smug, hung over enthusiasm to denial to total dread.
The Blair Witch Project exploits the fear of being lost like no other movie ever has. Most everyone has experienced that bright, hot terror of disorientation, and it can feel like the truest fear. For the three filmmakers, the disorientation lasts for days, and it builds to an almost unbearable point, for both the characters and the audience. The beauty of this movie is that the tension mounts slowly, and before you know it all fingernails are chewed off and you haven’t taken a breath for half an hour. Toward the end, if a branch had snapped in the row behind me, I would have shot out of the theater like a screaming bullet.
Definitely one of the best suspense movies in years, the success of The Blair Witch Project bodes well for movie fans. A smart, anti-establishment, low budget thriller has been a long time coming, and since Hollywood is nothing if not a parrot of former success, hopefully we can look forward to more movies like this one.
+ David Kern
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.