It's a case that FBI agents Mulder and Scully would likely be assigned to investigate. It seems three student filmmakers set out to document a supernatural legend, but then mysteriously disappeared with the only clues to what may have occurred to them being found on their later discovered film footage.
While that may sound like a potential episode of TV's "The X-Files," it's actually the starting point of the creepy "The Blair Witch Project." The darling of this year's Cannes Film Festival, this low- budget work from a pair of soon to be known writer/directors is generating lots of buzz and for good reason.
A highly imaginative mix of any Stephen King novel set in the woods and the MTV "reality" show, "The Real World," this film is quite remarkable, especially for such novice filmmakers. Shown entirely and only from the point of view of two cameras, the film creates an entirely realistic, "you are there" sensation that generates two important side effects. For one, the moviegoer is consequently no longer a passive viewer, but instead now an active participant in the proceedings.
Much like the feeling one must get if ever confronted with a "snuff" film (where people are supposedly killed for real with the act captured on film/video), the proceedings here are delivered in such a realistic fashion that one begins to wonder if perhaps this really happened to the "actors." After all, they are playing themselves, at least in name.
What makes the film seem so realistic is the way in which co-writers/directors Eduardo Sanchez & Dan Myrick shot the film. Utilizing a "boot camp" approach, they subjected their performers to living in the woods for the duration of the shoot, with little food, sleep or information of how the story was to unfold. By keeping them off balance, the filmmakers brilliantly extracted some believable performances from the cast.
By forcing the audience to experience the horrors right alongside the actors, the suspense and fright factors are incredibly heightened. Far more important and impressive, however, is that by limiting what we see -- and actually not see since very little is actually ever revealed -- the film uses the most powerful cinematic tool ever available to filmmakers -- the moviegoer's imagination.
Unlike modern "horror" films such as "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" that present cheap and unimaginative chills and thrills -- and in the case of the latter, a particularly less than frightening boogeyman -- this one works more like a scary novel. It gives the viewer just enough information to let their mind race.
As such, the moviegoer imagines events far worse than most similar films deliver, and thus generates far more goose bumps than what any knife-wielding maniac and the resulting blood and gore could possibly induce. The filmmakers are clearly aware that what you can't see is certainly more frightening than what you can, and as such, play off the old childhood notion of a monster being under one's bed or in the closet, just out of sight.
At times, they do take that notion a bit too far when they have the characters turn off their camera lights but still keep the film or video rolling. While we're supposed to be even more spooked by the complete darkness, the sad truth is that today's theaters are less than completely dark and thus the effect is somewhat ruined. If theaters could be pitch black, then such audio-only moments would indeed be incredibly scary.
Thus, the film works far better when we can't see more than a few feet beyond where the camera's lights illuminate the woods and, of course, never see the titular subject or any other sources of the noises and otherwise creepy material.
This is particularly effective due to the well-thought out use of grainy, black and white 16mm film mixed with similarly low resolution color video footage. With the nighttime scenes never being crystal clear or illuminated that well, and with plenty of shaky camera footage as the filmmakers run through the woods, the overall effect is quite impressive.
All of that said, the truly scary stuff unfortunately only occupies less than half the film's nearly ninety minute runtime. While a scary film obviously needs some "down time" where the audience can recover from the frightening material, this picture's other half -- while intriguing at times, begins to wear thin after a while.
Although there are a few jokes and seemingly unintentional humor scattered throughout the production -- such as when an interviewed subject tells her young daughter that the scary story she's telling isn't true, but then mouths to the camera that it is -- most of the daylight scenes simply involve the trio getting lost and getting on each other's nerves.
While the nighttime scenes are truly frightening, the daylight ones, by contrast, are like watching an outdoor episode of MTV's "The Real World." In that program and its many incarnations, a documentary style camera crew follows and records the trials and tribulations of a group of young people assembled to live together.
As most anyone who's been to college can attest, young and non-romantically attached people
are notorious for not getting along -- no matter the best initial intentions -- and eventually tiffs, squabbles and fights ensue over even the most mundane things.
The same is apparently true for assembling some filmmakers in the woods and allowing them to get both lost and scared. As such, and with things progressively worsening day by day, tensions rise and our threesome soon has it out amongst themselves. The effect is initially intriguing, occasionally funny and effectively serves the point of establishing events that will pay off in the spooky nighttime scenes.
Some moviegoers, however, will quickly tire of the increasingly occurring and repetitive arguments. This particularly pertains to the nonstop shooting of film footage throughout where Michael and Joshua continually ask or tell Heather to stop recording their every move. While the refusal to stop filming is partially explained and defended, credibility begins to get strained as the cameras are never put down.
Although it's understood that such later "discovered" footage was essential to make this film, it becomes a bit ridiculous late in the story -- and in particular during the creepy final scene -- that these students wouldn't have chucked the film gear and simply tried to get out of Dodge. Of course without it, we would never have known -- or partially known -- what happened to the three, but the filmmakers could have utilized some different means to get the same result.
For instance, Heather's Hi-8 video camera could have been of the helmet-mounted variety, thus enuring not only hands-free operation and a "you only see what she sees" point of view, but would also remedy the problem of her still filming the events by forgetting that the camera was still rolling.
More effective, however, would have been a greater use of the diary like passages that does occur once during the film. While the moment where Heather turns the camera on herself to record her terrified thoughts is quite unnerving (since we only see part of her wide-eyed, nearly petrified expression), I would have had an "after the fact" narrator read passages from her written diary.
Since the film gear was later discovered, her diary could have been as well, and reading entries from it while seeing the daytime footage would have had two effects. First, it would replace some of the repetitive, "Real World" bickering that eventually grows tiresome during such daylight scenes. Even better, however, it would have added another layer of novel-like creepiness to the film that would then even further accentuate the nighttime material (especially if it contained an ironic, but obviously incorrect optimism of how things would turn out).
Despite the film's daytime/nighttime split personality and the fact that the film's genuine frights occupy less than half of it, this is easily one of the creepiest pictures to come down the pike in years and features some of the truly scariest moments I've seen in a long time (which, quite surprisingly, are not accompanied by any traditional, scary music). The ending is one that's not only disturbing, but will also stick in your brain long after you leave the theater and will evoke goose bumps whenever you think of it.
With a little more creative work the film could have gone down in the annals of the horror genre's all-time best, but even considering its problems, this is an impressive debut for the filmmakers. And for those who prefer to let their imagination do the work and generate some genuinely frightening moments, you clearly won't go wrong with this film. We give "The Blair Witch Project" a 7 out of 10.