For as long as I can remember, horror movies have been the bane of Hollywood's existence. In fact, "Silence of the Lambs" is the only horror movie that has ever won an Academy Award for Best Picture since the Academy started giving awards in 1929. Even worse, this lack of recognition has been mostly due not to an Academy bias but to the fact that most horror movies are simply bad. Even the few clever ones including the self-reflexive "Scream" prompt awful copycats such as "I Know What You Did Last Summer."
Daniel Myrick's and Eduardo Snchez's "The Blair Witch Project" changes everything. Finally, summer moviegoers will receive a horror movie unlike any other -- creative, innovative and most of all -- terrifying.
The premise of "Blair Witch" is surprisingly simple but still imaginative (although controversy has arisen about similarities to 1998's "The Last Broadcast"). Three student filmmakers attempt to film a documentary in a Maryland forest about the Blair Witch, a legendary evil force that terrorizes people in the night. The filmmakers become lost, and a year later, their documentary footage is found. The "Blair Witch" that we see on the silver screen is a fake documentary in the spirit of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" that supposedly comprises the students' discovered footage.
It is not surprising then that Artisan, the distributor of "Blair Witch," decided to use an ethically controversial ad campaign hinting that the film's contrived footage is entirely real. Artisan went as far as to prohibit the movie's actors from giving interviews until the movie's release, and actor Joshua Leonard said (after the film's release) that his high-school friends thought he actually died in a Maryland forest. Not only does this make the film more frightening, but Artisan's strategy also highlights the film's single most impressive quality -- through stellar acting and realistic dialogue, the film masterfully convinces viewers that it is indeed real documentary footage.
"Blair Witch's" realism is truly astounding. From the opening scene where we get a peak into the three students living their everyday lives to the movie's discreet finale, never does the film let on that it is fiction. The actors who play the Maryland residents interviewed by the students seem right off the streets of any random town.
But the townspeoples' performance does not come close to the excellent performances by the three primaries, Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams (whose characters hold the same name). Donahue's performance gives a lot of insight into her complex character from the moment she steps onto the screen. Throughout the film, she refuses to drop the cameras because finishing the documentary is so important to her, but when she finally breaks, she lets out a spectacular flow of emotion, screaming, "Please stop taping, please stop taping." Viewers learn to admire her for her conviction and hate her for her narrow-mindedness. Even when the hate takes over, it is hard to deny an attachment to her character.
Leonard plays a compelling and charming sidekick and convinces viewers to like him instantly. Not until later does his darker side appear, but by then he manages to build such a strong attachment to the audience that his character can be forgiven. Williams receives less screen time than the other two, but also turns in a realistic performance. He manages to impressively flesh out a tender bond between his character and Heather. Like any good trapped-in-a-bottle film premise, the characters form strong relationships with each other to which the audience can easily relate by the film's end.
Another refreshing aspect of "Blair Witch" rarely found in other horror films is its clever and self-reflexive dialog. Because, according to a Hollywood.com interview with Heather Donahue, the actors improvised most of the film, the smart dialogue impresses even more. Eerie lines such as, "We'll all look back on this and laugh heartily," and "We have enough battery power to power a small country" cleverly foreshadow the dangers ahead while still seeming realistic.
While the point-of-view handheld camera work the film employs may make some viewers nauseated, it also adds to the film's effect. The directors and actors use a number of inventive camera shots to add to the film's eerie atmosphere. Shots at the beginning, in which Heather films herself in the mirror, and at the end, when she films herself up close, are especially notable. But the real genius of "Blair Witch's" camera work is in the directors' refusal to reveal on screen any of the frightening images that the characters glimpse.
Unlike the greatly inferior work of director Jan de Bont in this summer's horrendous "The Haunting" and the camera work of many other horror movies, "Blair Witch" manages to frighten without showing gore or supposedly scary creatures. In fact, some of the film's scariest sections occur during the one to two minute blackouts where no image appears on the screen and viewers can hear only the characters' movements in the forest.
My only major complaint with "Blair Witch" is that the movie is not terrifying enough. While many sequences gave me goose bumps, the lack of a quality chase scene with the handheld cameras disappointed me. The directors could also have spent a bit more time building suspense before the creepy ending. This movie would not suffer if it were slightly longer.
Nevertheless, "Blair Witch's" distinctive presentation of fiction as reality scares enough that the film works. As Heather says in the film, "It's totally like a filtered reality. It's like you can pretend everything is not what it is."
Obviously, "Blair Witch's" distributor, Artisan, has embraced this philosophy, and moviegoers who let themselves be deceived will experience the terror and thrill that directors Myrick and Snchez hope they will.
