Artisan Entertainment, Rated R
Written and Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez
It began at Sundance, the buzz built around a very low-budget horror movie about three film students lost in the woods, the only thing found of theirs being the footage they shot. This is the first time I heard of The Blair Witch Project. The idea intrigued me and I next heard of this movie on a trip to Florida. The movie was sold out at the Florida Film Festival and everyone was abuzz about the film (unfortunately I missed the chance to meet the directors, I had to settle for e-mail). Then on July 16, word came that it was selling out every one of the 30-something theatres it was playing in. It opened wide July 30 and the rest is already history. It's now past the $100 million mark, and has become one of the most profitable movies ever made.
Starting from an idea the directors had and an investment of less than $60,000 (the video camera was even returned to Circuit City for a refund), The Blair Witch Project is undeniably the biggest sleeper sensation of the summer, but mainstream audiences have had an extremely mixed reaction. It's a real shame and gives one a sobering look at just how jaded and attention-span-deprived today's audiences have become. This movie is nothing short of a masterpiece. It's rare that I see a movie that rings true so consistently in terms of dialogue and acting (Election may be the only film this year so far that I might consider better).
Heather Donahue, Joshua Williams and Michael Williams play themselves, working on a documentary on the very real-sounding legend of the Blair Witch. They are never found again and what we see is their missing footage, no more, no less. Like the best works of Stanley Kubrick and others, audience members who pay close attention and take the time to analyze the actions and dialogue of the characters are handsomely rewarded. The three actors, especially Donahue, never hit a wrong note. The footage is astonishingly convincing and the humor alone is totally convincing as being the actions of real people. What is it that haunts and eventually causes the three to go missing? That is never conclusively shown but there are plentiful theories out there, not unlike the classic films 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner. If they had actually seen what was frightening them in their camera lens, the movie probably would not have worked as well or been as convincing. It's all well and good and frightening at first for someone to face their attacker head on (of course they never really see them in most recent movies since their face is concealed) but we have seen this situation so many times that it's laughable (hence the success of the tongue-in-cheek Scream series). There's something fresh, yet also primal, about never being able to see or know what is tormenting these characters. In the tradition of Halloween (one of the few horror films I would rate above this), the first-person perspective is alarmingly effective and one identifies with the three filmmakers and becomes worried and frightened with them (the masterful pacing helps as well). One would truly be challenged to find a more suspenseful or chilling movie this decade. ****
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