The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Blair Witch Project is a once-beloved film that has had its reputation put through the wringer over the decades since its release. Often seen by modern horror viewers (aka teenagers) as slow, boring, and gimmicky, it's a wonderful film that seems to be forever haunted by its infamous marketing that claimed it to be real footage, pissing off regular people who felt duped and those that obviously knew it couldn't be a real snuff film. Its original reception only made the situation worse, as reviews of it tended to call it one of the scariest films ever, which many seem to interpret as a challenge. In my humble opinion however, then and perhaps even moreso in these scorched-earth days of cheap horror exercises for easy box office returns, The Blair Witch Project stands as nothing short of a triumph of the found footage genre.

The film follows a crew of three young adults who aim to make a documentary discussing and investigating folklore surrounding the town of Burkittsville, Maryland. The legends mostly concern a so-called 'Blair Witch,' who takes on different aliases and motives depending on who's telling the story. The three teens follow up on scant leads before suddenly finding themselves trapped in a circular nightmare: the woods won't let them leave. No make which direction they go, no matter how faithfully they follow their compass: they always end up right back in the same place. Are they going crazy? Is there something supernatural, possibly some kind of witch, stalking them? Could there be a magnetic or gravitational anomaly causing their compass to malfunction? Could aliens be involved? Did they all turn into animals in the end? We just don't know.

You see, a good deal of the reason it had such an impact back in the day is how real it felt. These characters don't have much of an arc, and they spend most of the early parts of the film goofing off, which just makes it that much more gut-wrenching when they begin to turn on one another as things turn sour. Their descent into madness feels real. It doesn't go the way you'd expect: after a few total meltdowns, they reach a sort of zen-like state as they begin to accept their doomed fates, and march forward with dignity. They feel human, and you wish them the best even when or, granted, despite the trio acting like pretentious dopes in the first third of the film. And of course, their sympathetic qualities only serve to make the horror inflicted on them that much more effective.

I've always especially liked that little moment where Heather's psyche is put under a microscope, and the film manages to wrench out a fairly compelling argument for why the character continues to film despite their circumstances. Well, you know, besides the inherent explanation that they're attempting to make a documentary and capture spooky shit on tape. It posits to us that looking through the viewfinder of a cheap digital camcorder is easier for Heather than looking through her own eyes when the situation turns grim, and whether you buy it or not, it's nice that they bothered to try and explain it. And I love that when characters argue in this film, the cameras are usually pointed at the ground, or up at the sky, capturing little of the action. It annoys me so much in other found-footage films during moments of conflict where it seems like the character filming should be swinging the camera around like a maniac, even if you accept that they'd still be filming at all, yet everything looks stable and perfectly composed.

It's also got an intelligent streak to it that genuinely reminds me of classic horror literature like The Turn of the Screw and especially the more contemporary Picnic at Hanging Rock. It leaves questions hanging to horrific and surprisingly gripping effect. For example, what did the kids do to incur the wrath of whatever is after them? Was it knocking over the rocks? Stealing a stick-man? Crossing a boundary? Simple curiosity, what? Did Mike kick the map into the river because of a temporary lapse of sanity? Or was it due to the Witch's influence? And what on earth is it that Heather saw as they fled their tents? The thing that made her scream "What the fuck is that?" We'll never know, and that's probably a good thing. Less is more; they say it so much for a reason, it turns out. 

We also don't know for sure whose version of the backstory of the Blair Witch is real. There are certainly hints to that effect, yet those hints don't exactly tell the whole tale. It's cerebral, this film, and then as now, it's damn effective at stimulating the twisted imaginations of horror fans like me. As stated at the beginning, it could be anything at the center of this story: supernatural, science fiction, military experimentation, or Heather may have just been a crazy woman who murdered all of her friends. Maybe she's the Blair Witch after all, ever thought of that? Totally possible, because the camera in this film is wielded so cleverly as to invoke the tunnel vision that we get when we look through the eyes of, say, one or three characters who have no understanding of their crazy situation, with no flashbacks or b-plots to give the audience extra context in-between the action. You see things exactly as they "saw" them, leaving wide gaps for its viewers to fill in on their own, while challenging them to think outside the box in order to come up with new and interesting interpretations of the events that we are privy to.

The performances here are somewhat divisive, as they've been said to cause 'unintentional comedy' but I just can't see it, speaking for myself. In my opinion, they're totally believable, adding much to the authentic feel of the film, but even saying that doesn't quite do justice to the scope of their contribution to the project. Sure, the crew behind the camera created the framework and are owed their own round of applause, but our three leads are ultimately most responsible for the quality of the film. There was no script, this is almost all improv, and it works. Few other found-footage films have ever been able to achieve something so believable before or since, and those three ought to be getting most of the acclaim. The non-professional, local actors are pretty uneven and weird, but luckily all that stuff is right at the beginning of the film and is easily forgotten about later when things get good.

I like the detail that the crew bring along both a consumer camcorder and a 16mm camera that they shoot high-quality insert shots with, giving this film a charming indie look despite its super low-budget and general reliance on video. The visuals serve their purpose wonderfully, but there is room left for art, given that these kids come off as art school dropouts, and there's never any shortage of iconic images sprinkled throughout the film. 

Sound is mostly done in-camera so to speak, but much of it is shockingly good. I like that when Josh's voice is (presumably) being mimicked by the witch, it doesn't sound like Josh because its a recording of the actor over a boombox, despite the incoherent screaming the night before sounding genuine, because the actor was actually present on set that day to scream off-camera. Lots of little happy accidents like that, along with a skilled cast of improv actors, created something that is the very definition of lightning in a bottle, and which deserves its place in the annals of horror.

The Blair Witch Project is both an early and exemplary example of the found-footage genre, and those who can understand why the premise of being trapped in the woods by something, something that can manipulate all of your modern conveniences and render you helpless and exhausted before pouncing would be scary (and why solutions like "just climb a tree" or "what if they had a drone?" are dumb and most likely wouldn't work in this fictional situation) are advised to give it a fair shake. I'm not guaranteeing you'll love it, but I do guarantee you'll remember it long after its final images pass through your cerebrum.