Movie Review: The Blair Witch Project (1999)

 

This of course was not my first time watching The Blair Witch Project. It was, however, the first time I had watched the film in about 15 years, since it first came out. Despite its huge popularity, I saw the movie back when it was released, hated it, and have pretty much avoided it ever since. Texas Frightmare Weekend got me thinking about it again some months ago because the actors were reuniting as guests, so I decided that it deserved a second chance.

A plot synopsis is probably not necessary but that's what I always do in the second paragraph of my reviews so here we go: Three young filmmakers head into the woods of Burkittsville, Maryland to make a documentary about the Blair Witch, a local urban legend. Never seen again, the only clues as to what happened to them is in the video footage they shot, which was found one year after their disappearance.

Since I felt like I was basically watching the movie for the first time, having hardly remembered it from so long ago, I was actually hoping that my feelings about it would change. Not the case. Mostly, I still found the movie to be very boring and disappointing. It is not a movie about the Blair Witch at all but rather a movie about three people lost in the woods. The only tension you feel is the relationship between the characters and there is not a single scary moment in the whole movie having to do with what we are supposed to be scared of.

And actually, that is still my biggest problem with the movie - I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to be scared of. All of the interviews at the beginning about the Blair Witch, the man who murdered children, and the incident at Coffin Rock - none of these things are ever connected to be the work of one thing. The piles of rocks that appear outside of the kids' camp? The stick formations in the trees? I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, and again, no idea how it connects to the supposed Blair Witch, so how can I be scared of it? Why should I be scared of the sound of branches breaking in the woods? There are animals in the woods, if I'm not mistaken, and they can make noises - like branches breaking. Okay, teeth... yes, the teeth thing worried me a bit, but it almost comes too little too late. And I don't know if this was my bad hearing or what, but if it weren't for the closed captioning on my TV, I wouldn't have heard some of those supposedly scary noises the kids were hearing outside the tent - even with the volume turned all the way up.

One opinion that did change was the one I had about the characters. They are more likable this time around and what is really impressive is their acting when the situation gets worse and worse. Heather's articulate voice makes her a good leader, and it's less annoying because she doesn't do as many slip-ups as one would probably do in real life. Mike and Josh are not douchebags in the least, and are so sympathetic and wonderful, even when they are being mean to Heather. Their acting shows true frustration and desperation, completely believable and real, and I applaud that. It's hard to get right.

My only, tiny character problem is this: I have a bit of experience interviewing people on camera, so I can't not say anything about what a HORRIBLE interviewer Heather is. The people she is talking to are trying to tell their story and all you hear in the background is Heather going, "Uh-huh", "Right..." "Really?", and she continuously interrupts them in the middle of sentences. Shut. Up. Maybe it's a good thing they disappeared because the audio on their documentary would have sounded like shit.

I also have a bit of experience with found footage movies now, so the shaky cam didn't even faze me, and in fact, it's not really that bad to begin with. It's bad enough to look like it was shot by an amateur (and actually, I think it was) but there is some good framing here and there. For some reason I really like the shot of Heather running away from the tent. I think it's spooky looking the way the woods are so dark and she's so starkly white - very cool. Can't really say the same for the parts when Heather zooms in on a bag of marshmallows or Mike's hairy chest, but what are you gonna do.

I know that "less is more" in a horror film, but The Blair Witch Project relies too heavily on the "less" for my taste. It was unclear who or what the villain was. I understand that it is probably this very idea of the unknown that has other people scared by the Blair Witch, but it was too much of the uknown for me. Had I been given a more detailed picture of the Blair Witch and what she represented and/or was capable of, maybe the film would have had more of an effect on me. I do, however, appreciate The Blair Witch Project a lot more now for the phenomena it started and all the amazing movies that came out of it. Kudos for sure.