The Blair Witch Project

This film is not a feature film. For a start, it is not feature length, also, it is not shot on film. More importantly, it does not have what feature films have these days: star actors, special effects, exotic locations, explosions. Instead, seeing B.W.P. is seeing something else that a cinema can be: a place where people can share an intimate experience created by a few people on a tight budget. I would be glad of its success if only for that reason.

The first section of the film appears at first to be amateurish and slow. In fact, it is very deft, and very efficient at what it does. It tells the audience everything it needs to know about the characters and situation, and nothing more. Also, it gets the audience into the habit of viewing the film's format: alternating between black and white (very grainy and poorly focussed) film, and the washed out colours of shaky pixilated video. The film makers managed to set up a rationale for why the film is so cheaply made. Three people hike into the woods for a few days to shoot a documentary, with borrowed equipment, and are in the habit of videoing everything for the hell of it. They cannot carry tripods, steadicams, dollies, large lighting rigs, or the like, so everything we see is lit either by raw daylight, or by a single light fixed to the camera, which illuminates just what is within a few feet of the lens. The film creates its own excuse to be cheap. This is intelligent.

The acting and script are both excellent. The well-cast actors are presumably playing pretty-much themselves, and are convincingly naturalistic, and neither too likeable or too dislikeable. The slow route into hysteria is well documented. Rather than simply having a character say "We're lost!", we see many scenes which show the trio getting more and more hopelessly lost, and more annoyed with each other for this. By the time they are thoroughly lost, the audience shares the despair.

My friend and I, after seeing it, both felt a little sick. I put this down to my having been tense for a hour, he put it down more to motion sickness. The jerky, badly-framed camerawork is hard on the eye and stomach, but I applaud the director for its uncompromising use. Similarly, no compromise is made with the dialogue. Some of it is very quiet and must be listened for, some is technical jargon, which is left realisticly unexplained.

One of the great strengths and weaknesses of the film is the editing. It is good in that it does much to heighten the tension, with many key moments lasting just a little too long for comfort. Each time the characters find something nasty, the viewer is made to want the editor to cut soon to the next scene, and the fact that he doesn't adds to the sense of being trapped, as the characters are. The problem with this, though, is that one is left wondering about the motives of the fictional editor. In truth, of course, the film is edited to create these effects, and to entertain, but the film's rationale is that these are the rushes of a documentary put together posthumously by someone other than the film's original creator. Why, then, would an editor piecing together such footage, edit for dramatic effect rather than for clarity? Why would he keep cutting back and forth from the video footage to the film footage, when neither shows any more information than the other?

The film is stark. After one simple caption at the start, all that follows is the "rushes". I wonder if the film might not have been improved with an introductory section which documented how the rushes were found and edited. A programme was made for television which did this. Perhaps a portion of this might have been added to the film, making it more complete, and more believable (and proper feature length).

While I applaud the fact that young original film-makers have managed to create a mainstream hit out of a simple idea, well-handled. I dread the possible avalanche of inferior copies which may come.

Most horror films these days are created not for the audience, but for the makers. The departments of special effects, make-up, model-making, animation and so forth all try hard to show potential future employers what they can do. The result is that nothing is left for the audience to do, since everything can be seen and heard, and the viewer's imagination can be switched off. Today, it is possible to see pigs fly on the screen, and so film-makers show off and show us a formation of Tamworths, which is something which will look impressive in the trailer. To show us less is to make our minds fill in the gaps. This way, we create our own terrors, perfectly fitted to ourselves. The ghastly face I see in my head, is the ghastly head which I find scary. The ghastly face I am shown may be one I can cope with quite easily. If I see a believable character screaming in hysterical fear at something I cannot see, my own brain creates demons for my night's dreams, demons far more mighty than anything CGI graphics or a latex mask could portray.

This film will stay in your thoughts for some while.

I saw this film last night, LONG after all the hype and reviews were made about it. I settled in with the right mood for any film: no expectations. If you expect too much, you may be let down (take note for any Kubrick film). I watched the entire film without interruption and came out with a great feeling. "The Blair Witch Project" is one darn good movie.

Many critics and moviegoers complained about the film for its length, its amateurish photography/editing, and its lack of adequate acting. I feel these things MADE THE MOVIE. First, the film has to be at most ninety minutes long: any more, and it would be too long and boring. Second, the amateur video take gives the audience the feel that they are actually in the woods, listening to the rippling water of the creek, snapping branches under their boots, and hearing things go bump in the night. I greatly admire the use of two video cameras (one black-and-white, the other color) to denote which character is shooting the film. Lastly, the incessant screaming of whiny Heather, the constant complaining of average-joe Mike, and the Dudley-Do-Rightness of Josh make for great acting. Yes, these are regular people and up-and-coming actors from your local community theater, but YOU KNOW THEM. You've met people like them.

The biggest complaint, however, comes from the film's supposed "lack" of scary moments. This film reminds me of the classic horror film "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," and though not as gory and as shocking as that film, "The Blair Witch Project" shows just enough fright in the group's search for a way out of the woods, stalked by people and/or things they may never understand. In the older film, the long interval between opening credits and first gory act of violence is about thirty minutes long; it is even longer here, but the suspense/fright (just as in the older film) begins right from the opening credits: you just don't see it until the film's over. These are three people out to make a documentary in the woods with handheld camcorders--these are REAL PEOPLE. And GREAT ACTORS. Heather whines a lot and screams and reminds you of the girl you hate so much you fall in love with her. Her screams sound real, her cries are genuine, and she is DEEPLY DEEPLY sorry for bringing the others into the woods in order to film her documentary.

I really dig the beginning. It seems so real to me I may delve into my old home movies for nostalgia. Heather and Josh pick up Mike, then go to the store for supplies. This opening sequence really packs a punch. These are three Generation Xers out for a camping trip. We all know what happens to them, but we're glued to the screen, intent to know what actually happens.

The interviews give us some detail into the Blair Witch legend, but most of the audience is too busy thinking about the actual trek into the woods that they don't listen. This is wrong. Listening is good. The interviews, which also sound real and not rehearsed in any way, are like movie reviews: the critics tell you what they saw, but mostly they don't want to ruin it for you...unless they hated it.

And that's what I'll do. I won't ruin it for you. 8/10.

This kept me a nervous wreck throughout. Considering the reviews I've seen, looks like you'll either love it or hate it. I personally love it, and think it's better than a lot of films I've seen with an all star cast, and a much higher budget.

One time as I entered a theater the usher was handing out 3D glasses for a short demonstration before the main film. After the previews finished and we were instructed to put the glasses on, there was a brief shot of a virtual theater in 3D, then it ended! Several members of the audience, including me, said in unison, "That was it?"

That more or less describes my feelings about "The Blair Witch Project." When it first came out in the summer of '99, a fellow told me that it was the scariest film he'd ever seen. That's what many critics had indicated as well. Since I love being scared, I eagerly went to the theater, thinking I was in for the experience of a lifetime.

The movie tells the story of three college kids who do a research assignment, go on a long camping trip into the woods, and ultimately lose their way. As I watched the kids grow increasingly panicky and finally get separated, my interest began to perk...and then the movie just ended! I sat there in confusion. That was it? Where was the fear that everyone spoke about?

My complaint is not that the film lacked violence. On the contrary, I'm genuinely tired of the sort of horror film where explicit gore substitutes for true terror. I believe that the most effective horror movies leave a lot to the imagination. Shortly after seeing "The Blair Witch Project," I saw "The Sixth Sense," which scared the pants off me without containing much explicit violence. A movie does not need violence in order to be scary, and, indeed, too much violence can detract from a movie's suspense. But one thing a good horror movie absolutely must do is establish a real threat, something that "The Blair Witch Project" does not do.

In the early scenes, I was unable to make sense out of the local legends the kids were investigating. The stories that the residents tell are unconvincing and contradictory. One resident talks about seeing a "white misty thing," another describes what he saw as "an old woman whose feet never touched the ground." This is the kind of naiveté associated with popular folklore like the Loch Ness Monster, and I could not connect any of it with the movie's later events.

While we are told that the kids were never found, the footage presents no clear-cut evidence that anything actually happens in the woods, other than that the kids get lost. In one scene, Heather begins screaming frantically at something she finds in a pile of leaves. I later found out that she was supposed to have seen severed human parts, but that was far from clear to me. Fans somehow piece together the various sections of the film and concoct a coherent story of supernatural murder, but to me it looked more like a case of hysteria than an encounter with a Blair Witch.

Despite my criticisms, this isn't a bad film. As a fake documentary, it is well-made. The kids look, talk, and act like real college students. While not scary, the film is far from boring. I enjoyed watching the story progress while giving the appearance of being something spontaneous.

Curiously, the Razzie awards nominated both this film and Heather Donahue's performance as the worst of 1999, one of the few times I've disagreed with their selections. We tend to overlook how hard it is for actors to act like they're not acting. People who argue that Donahue's performance was over-the-top have never, I suspect, seen someone panic. There was not a moment in the film that felt wrong or fake to me. Perhaps the reason I didn't get scared is that I felt smarter than these characters, who behave in ways that I do not think I would have behaved in the same situation. But I still found their reactions plausible.

If I was disappointed, it was only because the hype surrounding this film gave me a certain set of expectations, which failed to solidify. This movie was an early demonstration of the power of the Internet, a cheap $20,000 production that never would have attained so much popularity if not for a website that helped propagate the legend to the public as something real. It was more than just a film: it was an act of showmanship. This all amounted to an interesting demonstration, but not the sort of film I expect will endure.

I've seen worse movies, but not many. Yes, I like horror films. Yes, I can distinguish cheap, sensationalistic splatter-horror from from the more chilling, show-less-and-frighten-more variety (and I prefer the latter to the former).

I still hated Blair Witch. I don't lack imagination, but this movie certainly did. I've seen Tampax commercials that filled me with greater fear. The film lacked wit, style, story, plot, suspense, or verve. I don't need expensive cinematography or stellar acting, but a film does need something to redeem itself (other than a sophomoric, if marginally clever, idea), and this film did not have it.

It is unfortunate that a bad movie has come to represent to many the epitome of independent cinema. For a real horror masterpiece, see Ringu (The Ring), which, though it was probably filmed on a larger budget, worked because of talented direction and great storyline.