The Blair Witch Project (1999)

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)
A Film Review by Ivana Redwine
Copyright 1999 Ivana Redwine

After being a little bit seduced by the advance buzz for the low-budget Sundance indie "The Blair Witch Project," I entered the theater expecting to see one of the scariest movies ever made. And I did experience moments of sheer terror--especially toward the film's end--but overall it isn't all that scary, although it is extremely unsettling. To my mind, this movie doesn't fit neatly into the horror genre category--it's more of a psychological thriller. What affected me even more intensely than the undercurrent of horror in the film was the tension that continued to build slowly throughout, culminating when the pressures of being hopelessly lost in the woods (and possibly hunted) cause the sanity of the characters to slowly start to snap. In some ways, I found "The Blair Witch Project" reminiscent of the 1972 adventure/thriller "Deliverance," although that film is stylistically quite different.

Employing a cinema verite style, "The Blair Witch Project" tells the tale of a three-person student film crew that went out to the woods near Burkittsville (formerly Blair), Maryland, in 1994 to make a documentary about the legend of a local witch. The film opens with stark letters on a black background, stating that their footage was found a year after their disappearance and comprises what we are about to see.

At the beginning, the students laugh and joke in an easy, relaxed manner. But as things go fatally wrong during the creation of their documentary, their mental and physical condition progressively erodes, causing them to become brittle and start to turn on each other. The gradual deterioration of the film crew's state of mind is heartbreaking. Particularly devastating is the degeneration of the documentary's plucky director. Finally realizing that they will probably not get out alive, she films an apology to her own parents and those of the crew in the movie's most memorable scene.

Adding to the realistic nature of "The Blair Witch Project," Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, who co-wrote and co- directed the film, make extensive use of improvisation in collaboration with their actors, resulting in scenes that seem natural and uncontrived. The first names of the characters are the same as those of the actors who portray them. Heather (Heather Donahue) is the documentary's director; Michael (Michael Williams) the sound man, and Joshua (Joshua Leonard) the cameraman. The acting is so convincing that at times I had to remind myself that this was fiction rather than fact and that these were actors rather than the characters they portrayed. I found this reminiscent of the films of John Cassavetes--one of the pioneers of independent filmmaking--who also made extensive use of improvisation.

>From its uncomplicated premise to its stark visual style, much of the film's impact stems from its simplicity, and this is particularly true of the film's stunning cinematography. While emulating the look and feel of a student documentary production, it also manages to slyly conceal a slow-release emotional wallop cleverly hidden in its seemingly naive delivery. The vertiginous, jerky hand-held camera work, along with the constant intermixing of film stock--much of it grainy and often shot from disorienting, oblique angles--create a dizzying visual edge. This cleverly complements the mood of uncertainty, bewilderment, dread, and ever-encroaching doom that permeates the movie.

In "The Blair Witch Project," imagination is the ultimate special effect. One of the most daring aspects of the camera work is that it sometimes drops down to velvet black; there is nothing to be seen, except for what exists in the audience's imagination. These moments of absolute darkness are extremely disturbing because your mind wraps itself around the ambiguity, conjuring the rest out of whatever happens to lurk in your subconscious.

I think "The Blair Witch Project" is well worth seeing, although it probably won't meet most people's expectations of what a horror film should be. Despite a meager budget, Sanchez and Myrick have created a remarkably original, vividly realistic movie that reaches down deep into the personal and psychological aspects of fear. It's a film that shows what can happen when talented independent filmmakers follow their creative vision without compromise.