"Josh!!"
"JOSH!"
"JOSH - TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE, JOSH!"
"I am so scared! I don't know what's out there. We are going to die out here! I am so scared!..."
So, I've finally seen the Blair Witch Project.
I know, technically, this is movie-blasphemy, but hey! I was 11 when the movie came out, alright? The Space channel was airing it as part of the 10th anniversary addition and I sacrificed a watching of a hockey game for this piece of celluloid. So, you know what? The karma of the film-gods should be pleased. :P
I have to say, I wasn't expecting much. The most prominent memories of the 'Blair Witch Phenomenon' I have are those of my eldest sister making her own Blair Witch-type documentary film with a handheld when my whole family was camping in Driftwood Provincial Park. I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but I guess you have to get that kind of film-terror down to an art to make that kind of film work.
Which the directors of The Blair Witch Project did. And that's why it became such a phenomenon.
I liked it, if you haven't already guessed. The movie is a masterpiece of classic movie horror. I'm sure it's not the first movie of it's type (i.e. handheld documentary-type filming), but it's damn fine in it's execution.
It's scary, and not like Scary Spice from the Spice Girls scary - I mean genuine make-you-very-very-uncomfortable-your-seat-wish-you-weren't-watching-it-alone-because-the-witch-will-get-you-if-you-don't-run-now kind of scary. It hit a little cord in the back of my mind because I've spent a lot of time out in the woods too and heard some scary crap of my own in a tent at night. But you see, it's not terrifying in the sense that there's a tangible bad-guy/witch out there. In fact, the only evil you can relate to is Sound in this movie - it's a character on it's own. It manifests in so many interesting ways: footsteps, voices, cries, screams, cackling, etc... This is a movie that preys on the most basic fear of all homosapiens: something that goes BUMP in the night. Then, they escalate that fear into the primal one that everyone thinks when they hear that Thing that goes bump, even if they don't want to: the Thing is after YOU - and you can't run from it.
It's like having that nightmare we've all had that has something stalk you, then attack you and all you can do is bloody stand there and scream.
But wait! That's not all! Because the Thing also has physical manifestations, but none of them are your typical horror. We see strange things that appear without the aid and threat of Sound (i.e. the bundles of sticks, rock towers and slime) and see things that have long been there but cannot be explained (child hand prints and strange symbols on the walls of the house, Witch dolls in the woods...).
The resulting ensemble with handheld recording is brilliant. It grounds the film with a sense of reality before f**king with that reality by giving you pure, human petrification.
It was filmed and directed in a very unique way as well. There was no crew around the actors and the actors used their real names when they started doing their jobs. The three main cast members were put in a forest by themselves with just cameras and script directions came in notes left around the forest site they were using. The director even gave them sleep deprivation and screwed with their food supply.
This is definitely up there with Alien as one of my favorite horror movies now.
SPOILER ALERT! THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS CONTENT OF THE FILM!
Favorite scenes:
1. Gotta be when Heather opens up the bundle of sticks that's tied by Josh's shirt-bits and finds the bloody parts and teeth (REAL teeth, by the way! The director acquired them via the dentist in the local town). Just the sounds of Heather's reactions and the way the camera is used to observe the remains looks so damn genuine. It's such a foreboding act too since she doesn't tell Mike about it. It's like her own personal curse.
2. All of the 'Sounds at Night' scenes - especially when they start looking for Josh. They're just SO scary. Can you imagine hearing your friend cry out like that? Would you go looking for him if you knew that something was just waiting for you to do so? Wouldn't it drive you NUTS when you couldn't figure out exactly WHERE his cries were coming from? *Shivers* It gives me the creeps just thinking about it.
3. I love the 20 minutes of foreshadowing that starts at the beginning of the film. The cast walks through the town and it both establishes the story of the Blair Witch while making you believe that these guys and gal are normal students and friends. Which makes it even easier to connect your fear to theirs in the next terrifying hour or so.
4. The last shots of the film that has Mike facing the wall... I googled it and the only thing people can come up with is the mention that Parr (the dude who did the Witch's bidding and killed seven children) used to bring two children down into the basement and make one face the wall... while he killed and disemboweled the other one.
I think this means Heather dies first, people...
Yeesh, not gonna sleep well tonight folks...
