This is technically a movie review, but it's hard to call The Blair Witch Project a movie. There's something unjust about placing something this breathtaking and original in a category that includes the collected works of Steven Seagal. However, people are paying money (lots of money) to see it played on big screens so let's assume for simplicity's sake that it is indeed a movie, albeit one that defies easy labeling.
In order to have a good movie, you're supposed to start with a good script, right? Wrong. Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez never even bothered to write one, and the lack of a distinct word-for-word plan is the source of most of Blair Witch's success. Their cast of unknown actors (Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard) was sent out into the Maryland woods guided by a simple premise: they were film students who disappeared while shooting a documentary about a local legend of a witch that had haunted the area. A year later the footage was found, and the audience is shown the harrowing record of their final days.
After a bit of background is given through interviews with the townspeople, our heroes begin their trek into the woods to get footage at the locations of horrible acts allegedly committed by this witch. Things quickly start to go downhill as they can't find their way back to the car and start hearing strange noises outside the tent at night. By not having set lines to remember, their performances capture the closest thing possible to the honest, panicked reactions of a group slowly losing control of what they thought would be an easy hike through the woods. Not every situation was created by the actors (Myrick and Sanchez left them daily hints as to what would happen that day), but the dialog was all spontaneous.
The result parallels that of improv comedy: because it was just made up, when it works it's that much funnier, sometimes in ways that a whole team of gifted writers couldn't have come up with. The same sort of thing happens here. As their situation worsens and they become convinced that they are not alone, the performances of all three actors have an edge-of-a-nervous-breakdown intensity that could never be repeated and can't be adequately described in print. Donahue's transformation is the most notable: from bossy and overconfident ("This is America. You can't get that lost in America.") to scared beyond belief as she films herself apologizing for getting them into the whole mess ("I'm scared to close my eyes, and I'm scared to open them").
Thanks to the fact that the film was shot by the three actors on two cameras, the audience is drawn into their fear in a way that no other horror movie has been able to accomplish. The viewer is yanked from the usual position of the semi-omniscient observer and has to experience the characters' ordeal through their eyes and ears. Not being able to see what's around a corner or clearly hear a sound from somewhere in the dark heightens the tension in a way that conventional film making couldn't have done. Other movies tell a story. This one puts you in the middle of a nightmare, and there's no waking up until the credits roll.
And what do they see that is so frightening? With few exceptions, nothing. The fear is created by showing as little as possible. Rather than feel shock at what you see happening, the result is the dread that comes with anticipating something horrible. This may be the first non-violent horror movie ever, with only one brief use of blood (but it hits with more force than anything John Carpenter or Wes Craven have ever done). Without a musical score to tell you how to feel at every moment, the viewer's imagination is as free to roam as those of the three helpless characters crammed in their tent.
By all measurable standards, The Blair Witch Project shouldn't have worked. A movie without a script? Horror without gore or violence? Yeah, right. Yet somehow those apparent contradictions helped this film to do something that a movie hasn't done in a long time: scare the life out of people. It will no doubt be often imitated, but will not likely be equaled. Let's just pray we don't get The Blair Witch VII a few years from now.
(Rated R for pretty much nonstop profanity. It could also have been rated MS for "Motion Sickness". The shaky hand-held camera work has made some people sick and should be taken into account before viewing.)
Brett MacAlpine (8/11/99)
