THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT  (1999)  ***

Reviewed 7/16/99

The Blair Witch Project arrives with a great deal of buzz, having accumulated many raves since its Sundance appearance in January. This ultra-low budget debut feature by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, is a faux documentary of the horrors three filmmakers encounter before disappearing forever in a haunted forest. Critics love Blair Witch for being a throwback to atmosphere-laden (instead of special effects-driven) horror films like Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie. However, while Blair Witch is a well-realized concept, the film is more admirable than ultimately satisfying.

The film's insistence on carrying its documentary aspects to the extreme result in two problems. The first is that its apparent haphazard takes lead to difficult editing, and difficult editing makes for uneven pacing. Second, anyone who knows that the film is actually fictional probably has a harder time suspending disbelief the harder the film tries to maintain that disbelief. It becomes extremely unbelievable for example that the characters would be running around while operating their cameras when they are by the end. This is avoided in other fictional documentaries like This Is Spinal Tap, which doesn't even pretend to be real, or Dadetown, which follows more conventional documentary structure.

Kudos however must go to the three main actors who play characters with their own real first names -- Heather Donahue as the doc's director, Joshua Leonard as the D.P., and Michael Williams recording sound. Much of what they do is improvisation, and as such bring a naturalness to their acting that few films match. The most striking element of Blair Witch is just how hilariously funny it is because of the actors' dialogue and their delivery.

The horror aspects are more moderately successful because the characters seem to respond basically the same way every time, by cursing like a sailor at the top of their lungs. So the film gets repetitive and begins to peter out before the end. Myrick and Sanchez could have developed the horror aspects more, but oddly did not. As it is, any horror the audience experiences comes almost solely from those limited reactions of the characters.   Critics have praised the film for leaving much to the imagination, but there is such a thing as leaving too much to the viewers' imagination and not doing enough hard work on the filmmakers' part.

It will be interesting to compare The Blair Witch Project to the forthcoming The Haunting.   The former uses no special effects.  The latter is being sold entirely on its special effects.


Copyright © 1999 George Wu