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The Blair Witch
Project
****
Cinema
Releases - October 29, 1999
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez. Starring
Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael Williams.
Earlier this year, a nasty little slasher pic called
"Urban Legend" displayed a wonderful premise: A killer terrorising superstitious
college kids by re-enacting campfire scare-stories. "The idea," I wrote in
my review, "has the potential to be terrifying... it could play with our
minds and stay with us."
This is exactly where "The Blair Witch
Project" succeeds. It freaks us out with recognisable myths and tales,
plays on our fear of the dark and seems like it could be true. Purporting
to be fact, this masterful fiction film by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez
features a main cast using their real names and an ominous opening declaration:
"In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near
Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary. A year later their
footage was found."
Through this handheld footage, which holds the
trio's planned shots on black-and-white 16mm film, and extra material and
their video diary on Hi-8 camcorder tape, personalities and journey details
emerge. Heather (Heather Donahue), the director, is smart, sexy, funny, and
an arrogantly ambitious leader. Josh (Joshua Leonard), her wisecracking
cameraman, is a loveable slacker type. Mike (Michael Williams), the sound
man, is unsure whether to dive into the filmmaking adventure with the other
two or make sure to keep things in order, swinging between moods of goofiness
and impatience. All three confidently click off scripted shots and capture
interviews with Burkittsville locals, smoke, drink, eat junk food, mess around
and traipse into the local forests to investigate further into their movie's
subject -- tales of witchcraft surrounding the inordinate number of child
murders in the history of the area.
Our friends get the footage they're after, and
head back home. They become unsure of their way, and then lose their map.
Forced to set up camp night after night, their food supplies dwindle and
their cigarettes run out. They argue, which is distressing. They pull together
again, and hold onto each other tight, which is scary.
Things get worse, as methodically-arranged piles
of rocks, giant stickmen and medieval stakes appear out of nowhere. Josh
finds slime on his backpack. Rustling and children's cries are heard at night,
from every angle. Heather loses her composure, her looks and her control.
Josh tries in vain to assess options, before lashing out through ugly tirades.
Mike degenerates into a shivering wreck.
And guess what? Things get worse, then worse again,
and once more, before one of the most shocking closing scenes I've ever seen
in a motion picture. Not that the film is dependent on shocks -- while even
classics such as "Halloween" and "Jaws" are at their most effective when
creating immediate fright, "The Blair Witch Project" intensifies our anxiety,
frustration and disgust. In revealing the backwoods to be hell, it earns
comparison with "Deliverance", and in levels of sheer terror, surpasses
it.
The realism of the film is crucial in intriguing
us during the careful set-up, and this verisimilitude is not simply the result
of shaky camerawork. Donahue, Leonard and Williams, who improvised the majority
of their dialogue, earn our affection with a sharp, relaxing sense of humour,
and use this involvement to shatter us when the wicked their way goes. Heather,
for example, upon realising she's doomed, makes a tearful apology to the
camera that is as heartbreaking as her scream is horrifying.
"The Blair Witch Project", which has already grossed
over 4000 times its $30,000 budget, was a huge hit at this year's Sundance
Film Festival, and generated even more amazing buzz after preview screenings
in American colleges. It will not satisfy die-hard cynics, idiots who think
the heavy use of improvisation is tantamount to slapping a film together
or drunken frat-boys demanding "The scariest movie ever made, man!" It's
impossible to be scared if one expects to be scared or if one has no soul.
But viewers with an open mind should have a successful viewing experience,
provided they can accept hands soaked in cold sweat, a body numb with shock
and eyes dripping with tears as "successful". "The Blair Witch Project" incites
and deserves these extreme physical reactions -- it's beautifully conceived,
brilliantly constructed, and, like the villain herself,
spellbinding.
COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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