WhatzUp

The Blair Witch Project
by Derek Neff

Here's the dirty little secret about The Blair Witch Project: despite its amazing success at the box office, despite all the fond parodies of it that instantly appeared on sitcoms and even in trailers for other movies, despite the reviews proclaiming this as one of the most frightening films ever made, many people who watch The Blair Witch Project will be disappointed. Have been disappointed. Are being disappointed, even as we speak.

For a brief period of time this summer, the country went a little nuts, in a way that I haven't witnessed since the mid-70s, when Jaws was released. Nevertheless, both times that I saw Blair Witch at the theater, I heard a chorus of groans and complaints coming from small segments of the audience as the closing credits rolled.

All this, despite the fact that I believe The Blair Witch Project to be a small masterpiece, a film that succeeds perfectly at what it sets out to do, that takes an ingeniously simple premise and does unbelievable things with it. A film that scared me witless, not just while I was watching it, but for days afterward. So, rather than give you a standard plot synopsis or even a traditional review, I'd like instead to offer something of a primer, if you will, in how The Blair Witch Project might best be appreciated.

1. The first thing you have do is not be confused about who is making the picture. Directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick lurk behind each scene, keeping tight rein over each menacing moment, despite the fact that it appears as if the movie's three dubiously talented filmmakers (director Heather Donahue, cameraman Josh Leonard, soundman Michael Williams) are the ones in semicontrol. Do not mistake Heather's heedlessness, arrogance, naivete and pretentiousness for Sanchez's and Myrick's.

2. If you demand easy answers from movies, you will be frustrated by Blair Witch, which offers no answers at all, beyond those which you supply for yourself after seeing the movie. (A supplement to the film, The Curse of the Blair Witch, a superb pseudo-documentary produced by the Sci-Fi Channel, helps, though I wouldn't recommend watching it until after you've seen the movie.)

3. Be prepared: the film has virtually no violence, no flashy special effects and no moody background music. The fact that there is virtually no filter between you and the movie, and hence very little to remind you that you're watching a fictional movie, is what makes it so terrifying.

The mind, like the rest of nature, abhors a vacuum. Sanchez and Myrick know this. That is why, sadists that they are, they often don't supply us with all the visual and intellectual information we need to complete the picture; they know that we will automatically fill in the details ourselves, and that whatever we come up will be infinitely more horrifying than anything they could show us. This is why the movie rewards repeated viewings: our ever-fluxing minds supply different details each time we watch.

4. Another frightening thing about The Blair Witch Project is the way that the three characters, once they have been lost in the woods for a few days, begin to interact with each other. The film, which begins somewhat slowly and light-heartedly, is actually a long downward progression into madness. What ensues is a curious combination of cabin fever and a sort of wide-eyed helplessness in the face of something vastly and inescapably malignant. The acting is superb -- we're told on the websites and in the magazine articles that it's because these guys weren't acting, but since this is not a snuff film we can assume these are bona fide performances, whatever methods the actors used to arrive at them -- not least of which because how they react to each other as the movie goes along is absolutely human. And, in Heather Donahue's now-famous apology scene, in which she turns the camera on herself and says goodbye to her family, we are given perhaps the most acute and strangely articulate portrait of abject human terror I've ever seen.

5. Finally, the movie's unforgettable climax. One reason that The Blair Witch Project should do exceedingly well on video is that you can watch and rewind the perplexing, multi-viewpoint, chilling final sequence over and over, if you wish. (And since the film was made in a square-screen video format to begin with, what you see on video will be exactly what we saw at the theaters.)

I wonder how many of those people I heard groaning while the credits rolled in the theater nevertheless had a hard time getting the film out of their heads in the days that followed. Maybe it shook them more than they realized. Maybe they had simply confused their fear for irritation. Maybe the horror here is so primal, so elemental, that any lessons in how to appreciate it become redundant.