The Blair Witch Project

recommended

by Sam Adams

The story of three twentyish filmmakers who fall prey to a supernatural force in the Maryland woods, The Blair Witch Project thrives on exploiting the terror of the unknown, that which cannot be seen or touched. But in the real world, The Blair Witch Project has pinned its financial hopes to something as elusive as any otherworldly being: the ineffable phenomenon known as buzz.

As they did with last year’s Pi, Artisan Entertainment snapped up Blair Witch following what were apparently ecstatic screenings at Sundance, and has been diligently pushing the film ever since. But since Blair Witch is almost totally dependent on its air of mystery and suspense, Artisan’s promotion has said much while revealing little. The film’s trailer contains no shots of Blair Witch’s three actors, instead interspersing footage of a camera rushing through underbrush at night with text and creepy sound effects. Also included in the trailer is a full-screen plug for the film’s Web site, www.blairwitch.com, which contains numerous video and sound clips. The catch is that almost none of them are from the actual movie. Rather, they "document" the hubbub caused by the filmmakers’ disappearance with fake TV news clips, interviews with parents and so on.

The reason for all this concealment and duplicity is that The Blair Witch Project is carefully constructed to give its audience no hint that anything in the film is less than real. An opening caption — repeated as the first shot of the trailer — tells us the three filmmakers "disappeared while shooting a documentary near Burkittsville, Maryland," and closes with the ominous statement: "A year later, their footage was found." Blair Witch, then, is ostensibly constructed from the footage left behind by the unlucky three.

With its shaky, handheld shots and mix of 16mm and video footage, The Blair Witch Project looks much like any other low-budget documentary — real or ersatz. But the key point is this: Blair Witch really works. At first, the film seems all too real, capturing the petty squabbling and annoying traits of its trio of subjects. There’s Heather Donahue, the bossy, humorless director; Joshua Leonard, the spaced-out hippie cameraman; and Michael Williams, the beefy, belligerent soundman, all of whom seem exactly as annoying as they would be in real life. But as the three progress from interviewing townsfolk to being lost, confused and terrified, Blair Witch’s style begins to take hold, and you find yourself deathly afraid for characters you wanted to smack a half hour earlier.

The subject of the documentary the three have come to film is the Blair Witch, a mysterious figure who haunts the Maryland woods. Its very existence has been nearly forgotten, or at least the residents of Burkittsville, formerly Blair, seem to want it that way. Only snatches of the legend are heard at first: how a man murdered seven children at the beginning of the century, pushed onward by some unseen force; how children are frightened into bed with warnings of an old lady whose feet never touch the ground. One old woman claims to have seen the witch, but her ravings are dismissed as fabrication.

This first section lasts too long, wasting too much time on fake-doc exposition and portentous statements. But once the filmmakers leave their car behind and enter the woods, Blair Witch sticks its fist in your gut and never lets up. First, we hear more gruesome details of the witch’s handiwork, how seven men were bound together and their innards ripped out, strange symbols carved into their flesh. Then, as Heather proves not to be the ace woodsman she’d claimed, pressure begins to build within the group. Both men clearly resent taking orders from a woman, especially a bossy control freak like Heather, and they keep fighting over the map even though she’s the only one who knows how to read it. Next, mysterious objects begin to appear in the woods: piles of rocks, primitive figures made with sticks and twine. And at night, there are the noises: brittle, cracking sounds, like sticks snapping under footsteps or firecrackers exploding in the distance.

Blair Witch’s triumph is that it becomes more believable the more outlandish its circumstances. At first, it seems, frankly, like a bunch of college students farting around, but as terror sets in and the filmmakers slowly begin to lose control, Blair Witch touches on sentiments and fears as raw and as real as anything ever put on the screen.

Most likely, much of Blair Witch’s realism is due to the unique circumstances of its filming. In fact, Donahue, Leonard and Williams — the actors’ names as well as their characters — were sent into the Maryland woods, and did film all of the footage that appears on screen. Isolated from the film crew for days on end, the three were left notes with directions and scenarios, as well as enough food to get to the next checkpoint. No doubt much of the frustration, as well as the fears, seen on screen look real because they are real, if only in part.

Knowing this, it’s hard to figure where Dan Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez get off taking credit for "writing" and "directing" The Blair Witch Project, so let’s just call them evil geniuses. Stunts along the lines of Blair Witch have been tried before — certainly the film’s premise bears a striking similarity to that of the local feature The Last Broadcast — but few have worked so effectively, both as cinema and as an exploration of the limits of the human psyche. In fact, though in some ways it’s just an extremely effective scare toy, the film’s methods put it closer to Herzog than your average Sundance-bound indie flick.

But The Blair Witch Project has only one real purpose, one it accomplishes with force. That purpose is, not to mince words, to scare the crap out of you. And that it does. Hearing Donahue’s snot-filled screams as the camera rushes through the trees away from an unknown force, your chest clenches and your eyes bulge, drilling dread into your bones with a force that the film’s conclusion does nothing to dispel. Walking out, you’ll find yourself hoping, begging, for some kind of verification that what you’ve just seen was only a movie, and not really the last moments of three frightened, lost and terrified people.

You won’t find any.

A Local Blair Witch?
Check out this CP cover story from 1997 on the Jersey Devil
by Frank Lewis