The Blair Witch Project (1999)
director: daniel myrick, eduardo sánchez
cast: heather donahue, joshua leonard, michael c. williams, bob griffin, jim king, sandra sánchez, ed swanson, patricia decou, mark mason, jackie hallex
Fake-u-mentary
about three dumb-ass film students who get lost in the Maryland woods while
making a documentary on an equally fake witch from a fictitious town called
Blair. It’s “Living in Oblivion” meets “Deliverance” and shot like an episode
of “Cops.” If you’re not a fan of “earthquake cam” then this film is guaranteed
to give you a headache and should be avoided at all costs. Luckily for me, I
love the whole hand-held, on-the-fly style. A highly conceptualized project,
“Blair Witch” was shot, “written” and directed by the actors themselves. The
two guys credited as the film’s “writers/directors,” Daniel Myrick and Eduardo
Sanchez, didn’t write a word of dialogue or even a screenplay in the usual sense
and were rarely on “set” for the filming. For that reason, a more accurate description
for them would be producers and/or “the guys who came up with the concept.”
Not that this is such a bad thing to be. Many films could benefit with a breather
from the “auteur theory.” Jan De Bont should consider this style of film making
for his next movie. The results couldn’t be any worse than “Speed
2” or “The Haunting.”
“The Blair Witch Project” is more like an interesting performance art piece than a standard movie, since the actors really camped out in the Maryland woods and shot their growing discomfort, first person, over the course of eight days of hiking around and across the same creek again and again. The “directors” would drop off canisters daily with instructions on character motivation and a general outline of the next bit of action as well as doing their best to terrorize the Thespians during the night. Since there wasn’t a script, the actors (Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard) improvised their way through the story. Further blurring reality and fiction, the actors used their real names in the film.
“The
Blair Witch Project” effectively taps into two primal fears. One: fear of the
dark, where most bad things seem to happen. Two: fear of the unknown, because
nothing is scarier than the monsters we create in our own heads. Much has been
made of the scariness of this low-budget pic and it is scary but really it’s
more creepy than terrifying. To me, terror is mostly perpetrated by ordinary
human beings against one another (such as in “Schindler’s List”) and creepiness
belongs to the alien and the supernatural. “Blair Witch” is an all out creep-fest.
There were scenes where I felt goose flesh and chills. What you might not have
heard is how funny “Blair Witch” is. There are some classic moments of ineptness
as the three blundering moviemakers begin losing their cohesion as a group.
The bits about “the metric lens,” “the topographical map,” “Are you laughing
at me?” and “I think this log looks familiar” are instant classic bonehead-isms.
We’ve all experienced the feeling of being lost and the infighting that erupts
between Heather, Michael and Josh is very funny because of its frantic familiarity.
Even their slipping grip on reality from lack of sleep, food and warmth has
its darkly comic moments. Next to “Ed Wood,” “The Blair Witch Project” is the
closest recreation of what low budget filmmaking is really like!
The biggest problem with “The Blair Witch Project” is its ending. It’s probably the biggest “huh?” ending to a horror film since Kubrick’s “The Shinning.” Most of the audience I saw it with clearly didn’t get it, and even if they did get it, didn’t find it to be very satisfying. The crowd actually booed and hissed as the credits started to roll. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie get such a negative reaction at the end, including Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” where most of the audience began getting up and leaving well before the credits even began rolling. However, with “Blair Witch,” I really think that the negative reaction at the end was a credit to how high the expectations were by that point. It’s like reading a really good story and just as it’s reaching a climax, “fini” is suddenly tacked on to make an ending. To take the analogy to a logical conclusion, it’s like having really good sex and just when you see “the light at the end of the tunnel,” your lover says goodnight and turns over and goes to sleep. The crowd (myself included) was very much into the film until the end. Not many films manage to raise the bar of expectations these days but “The Blair Witch Project” did. Since seeing the movie, I’ve heard that Mr. Myrick and Mr. Sanchez didn’t know how they were going to end it until shortly before its filming. If they were waiting for inspiration, it didn’t happen.
Few
recent movies have generated as much debate as this film. Some people I’ve spoken
with feel that “The Blair Witch Project” is going to be a wake up call to Hollywood.
Supposedly, producers will suddenly realize, “Eureka! We don’t have to spend
$100 million dollars to make a movie, anymore!” but I don’t think this will
happen. Hollywood is about the star system. Anything that is successful outside
of the star system is considered a fluke. I think Hollywood will consider “The
Blair Witch Project” a fluke rather than a new and revolutionary way to make
blockbusters. The idea that producers will suddenly fund a slew of $60,000 “concept”
films without scripts or stars is pretty fucking remote. This doesn’t mean that
“Blair Witch” will be without impact, just of a more expected kind. Expect “the
directors” Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez to helm some multi-million dollar,
teenage/MTV-generation targeted films starring flavors-of-the-moment with snazzy
names like Katie Michelle Gellar or Casper Van Goch. Also, expect a “Blair Witch”
prequel or sequel and a “Blair Witch” TV series which will look more like “The
X-files” than a little black and white indie-film with no stars. Look for Heather
Donahue, Michael Williams and Josh Leonard to land some choice back up roles
in teenage/MTV-generation targeted films as the friends of the flavors-of-the-moment
like Katie Michelle Gellar or Casper Van Goch. Probably the biggest effect “Blair
Witch” is going to have is on a whole new crop of suckers who are going to take
out second mortgages on their homes or borrow heavily from mom and dad and start
shooting their own “Blair Witch” inspired films (I might do it, too!). Out of
the thousands that will be financially stressed by some very expensive home
movies, someone might achieve a movie that is really good.
In a perfect world, the budget of a movie wouldn’t be of any interest to the movie-going public. Who cares (except a movie investor) if a film cost $60,000 or $100 million? Neither amount of cash makes a movie “good” or “bad.” After all, it’s not like the $100 million was dumped in a ditch and set on fire. A lot of people got a piece of that money. But this isn’t a perfect world, is it? The indie tag has become just another way of promoting a film and has about as much meaning as calling a movie “a studio film” at a time that the studios are more like big distributors and film-libraries than dream factories. Much has been made of the paltry $60,000 spent on “The Blair Witch Project.” Not much is said about the $350,000 spent on the re-do of its sound mix or the $15 million spent on its counter-programming promotion. Does the knowledge that “The Blair Witch Project” cost more than $15 million before its release diminish its impact while you’re sitting in the movie theater? How do you feel about the film now knowing that it pulled in more than $40 million in its first week of release or that it will probably gross more than a $100 million? It really shouldn’t make you think or feel anything. It’s a non-issue. It’s a way of skirting and diverting attention away from the real issue of ticket prices. What are we getting for our $9.50 (New York prices)? What are we looking to get for our $9.50 (some oral might be a nice start)? How come when we watch a movie that cost $60 thousand to make, the ticket price is the same as a movie that cost $200 million (“Titanic”)? I’ve worked on a bunch of low-to-no budget films and the lack of cash did nothing to make any them better than the garbage that most were, just as dumping a ton of cash on projects doesn’t make them good. The same could be said of the scores of bad low-to-no budget films that I’ve sat through. The first step in good movie-making is a good idea, and good ideas are without cost while at the same time priceless. The depressing thing about filmmaking is that even good ideas are vulnerable to bad execution and bad luck.
Daniel
Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez should be credited for having the nerve of putting
together $60,000 and then, essentially, walking away and trusting their actors
to shoot the footage for “The Blair Witch Project.” How many of us could place
that much trust in others to come through with something usable? These guys
either have nerves of steel or are totally brain dead; in other words, they
are good producers. It’s also interesting that the women I’ve talked to about
“The Blair Witch Project” have all expressed a deep dislike for Heather Donahue,
the driven and sometimes shrill “director” of the film-within-a-film of “Blair
Witch.” More than a couple expressed the opinion that Heather should have been
the first to die. I’m not sure why this is but it seems interesting, nonetheless.
Personally, I had no problem with her. I thought that all the characters came
across as rather neutral in likeability and none of them displayed much in the
way of smarts. Overall, the handheld camera work, poor focus, sungun lighting,
immersion-styled acting, piles of rocks, talismans and bloody teeth led to a
real feeling of dread. The complete lack of any cartoony CGI is what really
put “The Blair Witch Project” over the top as one of the best horror films to
come out in years. – Tom Graney
$8.50 (a dollar off for an unsatisfying end)
© 1999 Hollywood Outsider™