But questions arise out the hardcore horror community as they count down the days to the theatrical release of “TBWP” on July 16th, “Are we in for just another “Scream” clone, or is horror returning to its roots with a good scary movie?” On the web with all “TBWP” websites, in the press with articles in “ Premiere“, “ Entertainment Weekly“, “ Fangoria” and even in the most unlikely of places, MTV. You’ve seen the hype oozing out everywhere. Hyped as “one of the most anticipated horror films to come out in years”, TBWP is touted as the film destined to rejuvenate the genre. With those lost memories now lingering in your mind, let me tell you about “The Blair Witch Project” (TBWP).
As you tried to sleep, the campfire crackled out its eerie warning, but as you awoke to the early morning light, you knew that you had conquered all the demons that haunted your dreams …or had you? It was so scary because every sound you heard was the reminisce of all your greatest fears. Now that makes the blood run cold.You remember as a kid sitting around the campfire late at night, roasting marshmallows, and telling spooky stories. I say 'one-off', but it's rumoured that the makers have already been commissioned to make a prequel. On that level, The Blair Witch Project is a boldly economical one-off invention. The film might not bleach your hair, but you should feel a few unwelcome tingles. The climax in an old dark house doesn't quite deliver, although you may well screw up your eyes to peer into the dark, then argue for hours about what you thought you saw. Just how scary is it, though? The mass of publicity, revealing the film's contrivance, must surely defuse some of its terrors.
But much of the tension derives from the contrast between the supernatural subject and the verite-style execution this could be Hansel and Gretel shot according to Dogma 95 rules. The film has its share of conventional ghoulish touches, such as the warnings muttered at the start by various crazy coots.
The fact that it's all filmed by the cast gives the black-and-white footage a kinetic urgency. That's not to disparage the trio's (especially Donahue's) skill at giving vivid performances in the face of survival-course rigours. Like the actors, the characters too are called Heather, Michael and Josh, so every time someone apprehensively mutters 'Heather is that you?' in pitch darkness, there's a good chance that the fear is for real. Then, by night, the crew contrived to scare them witless. Three actors (Heather Donahue, Michael C Williams and Joshua Leonard) were dispatched into a forest with rough directions and fragments of script, strictly on a need-to-know basis. The film's making is already legendary, and is probably even now being copied at film schools worldwide. Meanwhile, strange things are happening all around them: voodoo fetishes materialise in the trees, a scrap of unspecified icky stuff (you don't like to look too closely) is delivered attached to a bundle of twigs. The trio start out blithely, but soon enough, fear, folly and downright incompetence get the better of them. What we see is purportedly forensic evidence the footage shot by three young film-makers who set out into the woods to make a documentary on the local Blair Witch myth and never returned. Their most daring idea is to confront the horror tradition with the mundane realism associated with camcorder culture. Showing little, suggesting everything, they keep us in the dark (literally, for much of the time), and chill us with nastily suggestive creeping shadows and things that go bump, or just quietly rustle, in the night. The answer may be simple strong story, enthusiastic word of mouth, and an ingeniously plotted website designed to lure the curious with ever more sinister background to the apocryphal Blair Witch legend.Īt the very least, directors Eduardo Sanchez and Dan Myrick deserve praise for reviving the nearly-forgotten genre art of doing it all with shadows, rather than gore, ghouls and digitals. Yet it has conquered the upper reaches of the US box-office chart, and become the subject of reports commissioned by studio chiefs, baffled as to how it was done. This low-to-no budget US independent horror flick uses only three actors and a few hand-held cameras. The Blair Witch Project is an object lesson in the art of making something out of nothing, or next to nothing.
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