The Blair Witch Project
USA - 1999
|
|
|
Movie Review By Blue Velvet
A hauntingly memorable outsider from this summer's pool of over-budgeted horror films is "The Blair Witch Project." Directed and written jointly by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, this unassuming super low-budget debut powerfully captures a disturbing thorough study of sheer primal fear. With a script and setting so real, audiences will question for days whether parts of the film could possibly be fictional.
Up front the film states that in 1994 three college student film makers headed out into the Maryland woods to shoot a documentary on the legend of the Blair Witch. They never returned but a year later, their surviving footage was found and thus begins the film. The film stars Heather, Josh, and Mike as themselves, the doomed students who ramble off into the Black Hills Forest for a weekend and end up in an inescapable vortex of confusion and growing terror.
What really grabs the audience is the acting. Although the film isn't riddled with jokes, its likable characters are periodically brightly funny and effectively believable. Also the audience essentially must share the same eyes and ears of the filmmakers as the film comprises of what the filmmakers' saw and heard with their two hand-held cameras. As strange events occur, the audience's extreme voyeurism quickly captures the characters' frustrations and fears.
With no soundtrack, the lore and legends of the Blair Witch convert the wide quiet forest into a claustrophobic primitive threat. Simple nature finds like twigs and stones translate into direct messages of evil. Cleverly and naturally, "The Blair Witch Project" pieces together terrifying intangible events to colorfully unfold the film makers' fate.
If you're in the mood to see a horror film that resonates with raw fear instead of contrived monsters and gore, see "The Blair Witch Project." Also to learn more details beforehand about the witch's legend, visit the Mythology section of the web site www.blairwitch.com. Your future hiking and camping trips may take on an entirely new spin.
© 1999 - Blue Velvet - Air Date: 07/14/99
