When Class Projects Go Bad
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
When snot is outlawed, only outlaws will sling snot.
Several months ago, driving around with my niece and my daughter on a visit to the local dam at night, I made the mistake of bringing up The Blair Witch Project. These children love horror films, but live in a rural, wooded area. Just the sort of area that is supposedly haunted by Elly Kedward, the eponymous Blair Witch. I wasn’t terribly worried if they saw it on TV or DVD, because almost no one I know liked it that way. I saw it in the theater, and it scared the shit out of me. Then I had to go back to my house in the woods of Kentucky, certain that some creepy, furry ghost witch bitch was going to take me away forever. Also, I was 24 when I saw the movie. Well past the age of being impressed by such things.
Let’s start with the obvious. This movie was shot on a camcorder and 16mm film stock in such a way as to make you think of amateur student film. It is in this conceit that the movie adds enough realism to a shaky premise to make you pay attention to these three foulmouthed kids. They tromp around the woods, seemingly lost against all odds. How, with the aid of a compass, have they been coming to the same area of the woods over and over again? What do these odd piles of rocks mean? Who is making the strange sounds in the woods at night? Why is one of them being singled out?
In a decidedly non western film tradition, this film is all about the anticipation of the answers to these questions. Not all will be made clear, but the film’s last scene, and I won’t spoil it, (but, surely you’ve seen it, heard of it, read about it by now, right?) is the very definition of “minimalist jawdropper”. Never have I seen so many people frightened and unnerved by so little. Maybe that’s why I like this movie. It’s not slick, it’s not polished, and for the most part, the reactions of the people involved seem genuine. One other bit of tech that I appreciated about this movie is that the 16mm camera they shoot with has no audio, so, while it is in another room, the audio on the camcorder has to supply all sound. It’s almost vertigo inducing.
If you ever get the chance to see this in a theater before you see it at home, take it, by all means. You’ll appreciate it more…especially the more people are around you. If you have to watch it at home, well, sorry. You should have been in a theater ten years ago to really get what this is all about.
And, in a short note…avoid the sequel Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows at all costs. I’d rather floss my ass with barbed wire than watch THAT piece of shit ever again.
Posted on October 9th, 2009 at 11:29 am
I, too, am one of the few people who love this movie. I didn’t fall in love with it at first sight… I actually left the theatre disgruntled. I was a younger movie watcher then, though, so I wasn’t completely over my whole spoon-fed plot devices phase.
I think I gained my ultimate appreciation for it when I figured out that, no matter how I felt about it, it bolstered the inspiration to become a filmmaker that had already been fostered by the films of Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, and Steven Spielberg did.