The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Director: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez

Story: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez

Cast: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams and Joshua Leonard

Music: Antonio Cora

Time: 81 minutes

Bottom-line: Interesting idea, but hardly scary

Normally, I would avoid horror movies whose sole intent is to scare the viewer; I prefer “intelligent” horror films which make use of horror but have a mystery element to them. Yet, my friend convinced me that this would be a “different” type of horror film, and so we watched it. While it was indeed “different”, if you want a scare, The Blair Witch Project is not recommended.

October 1994: Three unnamed students (Heather, Williams and Leonard) decide to make a documentary about the Blair Witch fable, in Maryland. Locals confirm the myth of “a woman whose feet never touch the ground” and other spooky incidents in that area. The three of them find a site where five men were ritualistically murdered. As the three of them go deeper into the woods, they lose track of where they parked their car, and are stuck there longer than planned. At night, they hear mysterious sounds of twigs snapping, but can never find any source of the noise. As the friends are terrorised by other faceless forces, they start to lose their calm. When Josh suddenly disappears, they realise that they are in much deeper trouble than expected.

 

Heather 

The film’s narrative is called a “found footage” format. The entire story is basically the footage the students took in their adventure. The cinematography has all the flaws of a documentary format: shaky cam, bad lighting etc. but that is the intention here. The viewer can see and have the same experience as the students themselves. This film revolutionised this technique, even if it wasn’t the first one to use it. There is no background score as such; all the sounds you hear are stuff heard by the trio too.

 

Williams and Leonard

  (Spoiler alert) The story takes place over a few days, starting from the group enquiring about the myth, and exploring the place themselves, to the point where get mentally affected by the unknown force. That’s the main highlight of the film: the “evil force” or “witch” is never shown! It is only the mere presence of the spirit that drives the trio to the end of their wits. So, as a viewer, if you’re expecting jump scares or gory-looking monsters, you are not getting any. I, for one, wasn’t scared at all, but was pretty impressed by the portrayal of the idea that – as Roger Ebert puts it – “The noise in the dark is almost always scarier than what makes the noise in the dark”.

The acting is pretty bad by all three actors. While the idea might be to keep everything realistic, the acting wasn’t natural at all. After a point, it was just incoherent screaming injected with cuss words. Long story short, you can watch the film just for the feel of the found footage technique. The story is average, the acting is horrible, and it is certainly not scary.

My Rating: 2.5/5

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 86%