Indie Classics: The Blair Witch Project
[Quoted from the film's poster, left] “In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary… A year later their footage was found.”
I’m probably one of the biggest chickens to bring with you to see a scary movie. Especially one about wooded areas and being lost in a forest, because this is the scenery surrounding my childhood home. I scream, I hide, I squeeze the heck out of anything I can grab, and I am petrified to leave my seat after the film. The Blair Witch Project happens to be one of those such movies which I’m terrible at watching, so this experience was quite thrilling one for me.
As a horror film, it did an excellent job showing reduced blood and guts, and using only character’s breathing patterns and noises. The Blair Witch Project used several good tactics of its bag of tricks.
During all the terror, all the misery and all of the screams, the characters work horribly out of their way to get into trouble with the Blair Witch. They continually ran from their belongings and tent, as the ghost of the witch followed them and created indian type burial headstones for each of them around their tent. However, unlike the other horror movies which are produced currently, there was no soundtrack, no eerie music just to creep the audience further. There were only breaths, sighs, screams and shrieks, sounds to make all the creepy crawlies in your skin come alive.
The film begins detailing the trip three teenagers decide to take over a weekend in Burkittsville, Maryland. They document the experience on what they call “the 16″ (refering to 16 mm film I assume) which is a black and white camera usually operated by Josh Leonard, and on a color camera held by Heather Donahue. Equipped with little more than the two cameras and minimal hiking gear, the three students drive out to the forest and venture out, soon to be lost, and off their map of the forested area. As the film continues, Josh is separated from the Heather and Mike Williams, and it isn’t until his remains are discovered by Heather that the situation’s grimness sets in on everyone.
While you are totally and completely petrified (as I was at the finale of the film), you still want to know exactly what happened to the main characters, even if the truth of dismembered bodies is greusome for a tender stomach. But imagination only makes your mind create different senarios. As we’re told at the beginning of the film, those in the film disappeared, never to be found again, but we learned at least the fate of their friend Josh’s internal organs fragments.
While this film is not exactly one in which I enjoyed, horror films aren’t my cup of tea, this is one of my favorite horror films. I had never heard of it before, and thus never seen it. Comparing it to the mainstream Hollywood horror flicks I have been dragged to, kicking and screaming, The Blair Witch Project is in fact the greatest horror film.
Tags: Daniel Myrick, horror films, Lizzy Kirkham, The Blair Witch Project