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A Cool head reviews THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, with some FatherGeek notes in talkback
FATHER GEEK has seen THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT twice already. I can't wait for Harry to get back from Holland so I can see it with him. He'll love it! His sister did, she was squrimming in her seat the whole time, and when it was over... well she babbled on about it for hours on the phone with different friends. Geeks the real feel of this one is complete, but here read Daniel's report...
The last original horror film is nigh and it will blow your mind.
Faux Cinema Verite has always yielded interesting results. Films such as Spinal Tap and Man
Bites Dog are mostly improvised films which, through the use of hand-held photography and
location sound recording, further the illusion of truth which cannot be captured while lugging a
100 person crew. Through the use of hand held home video and 16mm footage The Blair Witch
Project pushes this use of Cinema Verite technique to extremes uncharted in narrative
filmmaking.
Emerging alongside three years worth of post-Scream horror film parodies (with more to come)
this cinema verite/horror film takes it’s place as the final chapter in horror. One which is
defined by true terror and not a comic derivation based on psychologically disturbed mask
wearers. Once you see The Blair Witch Project, the horror film as you know it will be forever
affected and ridiculed.
In 1994 three film students disappeared into a Maryland forest with hopes of making a
documentary film about the local hoax of the Blair Witch killings which supposedly took the
lives of several hunters years before. Neither the hunters nor the students were ever found.
What you will see is the recovered footage these kids recorded (Video and B&W 16mm), edited
into an exhausting 87 minute home-video style masterpiece.
The Blair Witch Project plays upon the fears that everyone experiences while walking in the dark
after being told a horrifying campfire story. It takes the Boogey Man concept to the next level as
someone unseen and even more frightening and unbeatable than you can even imagine. It will
turn you into a bunny rabbit, so scared you cannot move an inch one way or the other, for fear of
a wrath too gruesome and painful to imagine. It relies on the genius of your own rampant
imagination and of what you are afraid to see and it is petrifying and exhausting to watch. You
are with those kids in the forest for days. You feel their constant tension and fatigue. You feel
their hunger and delusion. You feel their camaraderie and dissent. It is real and your body is
clenching. I sold myself to this film and paid the price you pay with all great horror. My
demons were laughing with glee.
Being a filmmaker myself, the most fascinating aspect of the film to me is the relentless
documentation of the event by the main character, Heather, who refuses to halt filming with her
video camera even in the most dour of times. She is constantly recording personal moments of
naked emotion and raw nerves touched by the thought of terror, sometimes causing her two
friends to turn against her for exploiting them. I have experienced these emotions of being
exploited as well as exploiting the emotions of friends for the purpose of film and found the
character’s disdain for her eerily ringing true.
The film is so tense throughout that I began thinking that no possible pay-off would be climactic
enough to satisfy, but the end is so poetic and is just perfect. Also, the climax is shown to us
from multiple points of view as the Home Video and 16mm are cut together to provide double
the terror.
In my opinion The Blair Witch Project belongs in a category of horror films that have advanced
and perpetuated the genre at the time of their release. Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, Chainsaw,
Rosemary’s Baby, Exorcist, Suspira, Evil Dead and Scream (even though the latter two rely on the
comedic archetypes of horror to be effective). These films are responsible for the mass of
schlock horror that pervades the video store aisles. For the most part, I hate these contrived
films, no matter how "funny and stupid" they are. Schlock involves the audience by placing the
cute metaphorical bunny on screen and then twisting its neck. The Blair Witch Project is a wholly
original concept which will have you rigid with fear, but not out of sympathy for the bunny,
which is the reason why teen slasher films are effective, but out of fear for your own life once
the film is done. Yes, this time, for the first time, the bunny is you. Thank you, sweet Lord for
allowing me to experience this film in a packed theater and not at home, alone with those
witches.
Daniel
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If anyone knows about this, please answer. Will this film be out in limited or wide release? For some reason, I can't really imagining it being released nationwide as a television commercialish movie. Is my perception off? I hope so. I live in a city that only gets the wide releases, and it'll be torture if I can't see this movie after hearing so much about it. About a week or two ago, I visited the official site (www.haxan.com), and read the story and the journal and watched the clips, which didn't show much, and THAT got me scared of the dark for the next couple days.
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Damn. I loved "Man Bites Dog" and if this is any kind of roller coaster like that gleeful little punch, I'll be the first in line. Sounds great.
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I know this played at Sundance, does anyone know how it did there?? I HEARD it got picked up by Artisan, but that is just hearsay. Anyway, i can't wait to see this one. When is the release?
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Here's the Website for the people who did the Blair Witch Project.
http://www.haxan.com/homeframe.htm -
Glad to see you guys get on top after working so hard on this flick! Great movie! Watch the immitators start to follow!
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I CAN NOT wait to see this film! I haven't heard of a horror film getting so many fantastic reviews since.....I can't remember. It sounds very much like it has a 'Citizen X' kinda feel, but much more intense. Something about the 'witches' genre always evokes a terrifying feeling in me. This better come to Wide Release soon, or I'm going to be EXTREMELY disappointed.
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This film is getting kudos for two things: the originality of its storytelling idea, and the execution of that idea. For whatever reason, nobody seems to remember that the storytelling idea has been done already, back in the late 70's with a low-budget Italian flick called "Cannibal Holocaust." That film originated the notion used in "Blair Witch Project," wherein the documentarians disappear but their footage is recovered later and reveals their horrific adventure. Admittedly, "Cannibal Holocaust" is pretty much a gorehound's dream, whereas "Blair Witch Project" is (for the most part, anyway) mostly psychological, and is in fact much, much scarier. But it's worth pointing out that the central plot device isn't as original as everybody is claiming it to be.
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It looks like Artisan is going to try and release it this summer. The www.blairwitch.com site has a mailing list and they send out regular and informative updates. Father Geek, how do you get to see movies like this before they are released? I also had a hard time getting to sleep the night I first checked out the web site and am really eager to see this movie.
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TONY BLAIR IN WITCHCRAFT SCANDAL!!!
Has our Prime Minister been up to something that even the UK tabloids don't know about? And here's me thinking that it was Bill Clinton who was the, how shall I put it, "bad boy"?!
Go Tony!!! -
This sounds suspiciously similar to a film called "The Last Broadcast," which was a faux documentary about two guys who ran a cable access show called "Fact or Fiction." While doing a special episode in the woods looking for, I believe, the Jersey Devil, they are slaughtered by some unknown force. The film consists of interviews with people involved in the show and also footage shot by Fact or Fiction's producers in the woods. Not to bring The Blair Witch Project down, as it sounds great, just pointing out that this is a concept that has been done before in a film that so far has gotten very little attention.
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This FATHER GEEK at Harry's computer. The story telling concept used in "Blair" is indeed not new. What really is? It is however the execution the filmmakers achieve in "Blair" that is remarkably well done. The Cinema of Truth style of shooting has been around since film first ran through a projector. They taught it to me in film school in 1965. It is just telling a story from the 1st person perspective to enhance the impact. Great story tellers have been doing that since we lived in caves. Poe did it in his short stories 180 years ago. Carpender did it some in Halloween, no it is not new. However it is rare that a feature attempts to do its entire film that way. My favorite in this style is a 1989 Vietman war film called 84 CHARLIE MOPIC about a routine search & kill patrol where things suddenly go all wrong. It captures the true feel of combat better than anything I've seen. Patrick Duncan places an Army signal corp cameraman in this unit to film a PR short, but what occurs is totally different, the camera runs, dodges, and jumps . It drops, twists and eventually dies. The film gets recovered later and we have our movie. Just like "Blair". These are in my opinion the 2 most successiful uses of this style in a start to finish full length motion picture, FATHER GEEK signing out.
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I got sick the day a bunch of us were going to go up and see it at Sundance. It didn't matter as everyone else bagged at the last minute as well. I *really* want to see this thing.
Does anyone else notice how similar is sounds to the old HP Lovecraft short stories you used to read as a kid? I don't mean the later imitations or 'collaborations' but those early ones where nothing ever happens until the final moment where you realize all your fears were real. It is the reality that you are in denial of breaking through the nice structured world that made Lovecraft's psychological stories so great. This sounds like it captures it perfect. -
This sounds like a highly scary & effective specimen of the
"horror in a modern, mundane
world" school (Omen, Exorcist
Halloween I, that sort)
These are always the scariest kinds of movies, because they
hit so close to home. However, they're also incredibly BORING between scares. Yeah, Ellen Burstyn
& Linda Blair interacting is
important to the Exorcist plot,
but I defy anyone with half a brain or a quarter of a soul to
find it interesting. Blair Witch
will no doubt become a classic and inspire legions of imitators,
but it will also be far less amusing than those old James Whale Universal thingies. Heck, it'll probably even make Coppola's Drac look like high entertainment. -
Successful horror films, as this one will surely be, should help to usher in the new era of low-to-no-budget digital production here in the U.S. You have to hand it to Lars Von Trier, that prince of Danish suspense, horror and melodrama, for showing us the way. Now his seven-hour miniseries, THE KINGDOM, about a hospital in Copenhagen built on a haunted bog, evinces great horror through a staccato hand-held POV, deep video grain, and a sickly patinas of green and burnt orange. If you haven't seen this, rent it this weekend! What's more Von Trier's philosophy - that a greater truth is rendered by minimizing the means of production and technical enhancements to the film - as laid out in Zentropa Productions somewhat tongue-in-cheek manifesto, "Dogme '98." Last year's excellent CELEBRATION by Thomas Vinterberg followed Von Trier's "Dogme," and also featured a ghost lurking in mirrors, dreams and grainy shadows. Of course, Von Trier has predecessors, Lynch's TWIN PEAKS being the most obvious and frequently copied. I just saw Michael Antonioni's THE MYSTERY OF CAMILLE - done in the early 80's, it's the first experimental use of video to film transfer in a feature that I'm aware of. At any rate, I'm hella-lookin' forward to the hella-BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.
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Ilvenstang, from what I can tell, it's not "amusing" they're going for. And also from what I gather from everything I've heard (and I've DEVOURED everything I could find on this movie!), the parts "between scares" aren't marked by boredom, but rather by a steadily increasing sense of menace and terror even though nothing is happening on the surface. I am SO looking forward to this movie, even though I just know it's going to mess me up big time! The last thing I can think of that went for a "mood of terror" rather than shocks was "Twin Peaks" back in '90-'91, which also seriously messed up my sleep patterns for months. Why am I helplessly drawn to this, even though I know it's going to do this to me? Father Geek, can you give some insight?
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There are NO boring times between scares in this flick. This flick is one excruciatingly tense trip into the woods. I couldn't sit still when I watched it. It made me EXTREMELY nervous. It is NOTHING like The Omen or The Exorcist or any of the current crop of non-scary "scary" flicks. I hadn't been scared by a "scary" flick in years, then I saw Blair Witch. Y'all are in for a REAL nervous time watching this one. AND you may throw out all your camping gear afterwards, too!
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entertaining is more like it.
There are horror movies which go in for the fantastical or exotic, good English language
examples being Kubrick's Shining and the 1st Elm Street
movie. These movie are INTERESTING, because of the fantastical element. Even if Shining were an unscary horror movie (it isn't), it would still be an entertaining 'fantasy'. It would still have a good 'star turn' by Jack Nicholson. It would still have cool sets, cool images, and an interesting ghost mythology.
Then you have the cinema verite school, like Exorcist. There is nothing particularly entertaining about the human interest stuff in Exorcist, nothing particularly bizarre about the film's universe.
If Exorcist were not such a good horror movie, it would be a darned uncool movie.
What has this to do with Blair Witch? Well, the makers are definitely gambling all on their ability to build up tension, as Obnoxious B. put it. Well, there's a fine line between "I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen" and "I was on the edge of my seat in the process of getting up because nothing was happening." And when tension fails, there's nothing to fall back on - not Bruce Campbell's humor, not Ennio Morricone music, not Jack Asher lighting. And if the tension succeeds, well, what then? Everyone watches it once, says how scary it is, and goes back to Army of Darkness, or FDTD, or some other "amusing", unscary movie. Blair Witch ends up as one of those brilliant, boring movies that everyone praises and nobody goes back to see.
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I'm firmly in the "wait and see" camp as far as Von Trier's edict goes. While THE CELEBRATION was certainly a triumph, I have a feeling that every undisciplined filmmaker alive will try to create their own little masterpieces under the umbrella of Dogme '95. In fact, America's worst living director, Harmony "Gummo" Korine, is currently filming JULIEN, which is a candidate for Dogme '95 approval. Word is, though, that Von Trier already hates the hack. At least he has better taste than Werner Herzog, who's an unabashed fan of Harmony.
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Sorry, you're right, that's "Dogme '95" not "Dogme '98." True, there'll be a lot grist a-churnin' through the low-cost digital production mill - however, as one of the Marx Brothers (I think it was Carlo) once said: "Great art is not produced by means, but by necessity." Speaking of Werner Herzog and scary movies, did y'all know that his kick-ass take on Dracula - 1979's "Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht," starring Klaus Kinski, Bruno Ganz, and Isabelle Adjani - IS NOW ON VIDEO!!! This is one hell of a creepy film - my favorite vampire movie ever. You can even find it at Blockbuster in the New Releases section.
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No one who's actually seen it seems to think so. I haven't heard a single person who's seen this movie say it was boring or not entertaining. Ilvenstang,you seem to think that anything that is cinema verite (or fits your concept of cinema verite) is automatically boring, and thus Blair Witch will be too, but you haven't seen the movie so you don't really know do you? The Exorcist was made to seem as realistic, as documentarian as possible, but I wouldn't say that makes it cinema verite. I certainly wouldn't say its' boring. It may seem slow-paced when compared to the kinds of Attention Deficit Disorder-afflicted films that Hollywood puts out today, but it builds a steady frightening tension better than any film I've ever seen, and by the end you're completely engrossed. By all accounts Blair Witch manages to do the same thing. I don't know what you consider entertaining, but the Exorcist is one film I can watch over and over again and still be scared by it and still enjoy it. Sure I love to watch a good fun film repeatedly too, and there are certain films, like Schindler's List, which is a brilliant movie, but certainly isn't "entertainment" and I can't bear to watch repeatedly, but there's no reason that a horror film can't both be entertaining and be taken seriously at the same time. Oh, and btw, what world are you living in where a chick can have her head spin around and float 6ft. above her bed and it's not considered "fantastical"???
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I heard the filmmkers worked at the orlando theater were the last broadcast was shown, did they steal the idea? Sounds a little a little to close to me.
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Yeah, Parrish, you're right, better run and hide under your bed, and not trouble yourself that this could be a great movie. Better to worry that someone borrowed an idea. Gee, that's never been done before.
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I don't consider myself a 'grown-up' witch, but am learning the way everyday I can. Kind of intrigue about the movie even though the portrays of witches in this movie is geared towards the darker side.
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Daniel hits the nail on the head when he attributes the true source of horror in this film to your own imagination.
I was physically exhausted as I walked out of the theatre. The adrenalin load and tension my body was under during some of the more terrifying scenes literally fatigued me.
As I've told some of my friends, if you are looking for the typical excess of special effects that passes for horror films today with a nice tidy ending - stay home.
This film is a psychological thrill ride that expoits all the fears of the boogie man, the creature under the bed, the thing in the closet that you had as a child. Most horror films succeed in temporarily shocking you with things jumping out at you or gory special effects. Immediately after the suprise is over, though, you can laugh at yourself for jumping and relax. The Blair Witch Project affords you neither of these luxuries.
As the terror in the faces and voices of the characters grows so does your own. Yet because they can find no solace or redemption neither can you. Sure you can leave the theatre, but you'll still be lost in the woods hunted by God knows what. See this film. Oh, yeah - and try to sleep well. -
I was a bit confused about the ending. Was Michael standing facing the wall when Heather saw him or was he dead? I thought he was the one who had fallen first? can you clearify what you think the ending was? thanks! loved the review by the way.
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