THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
I think people forget how scary The Blair Witch Project really is. Kickstarting an oversaturated found footage subgenre (a technique I’m well worn out on…) Blair Witch was lightning in the bottle, extremely original and unsettling.
Watching it last night, I was reminded of just how well it works: believable group in-fighting, the fight to “just put the camera down”, a measured build of dread, the gift of not showing us anything supernatural and forcing us to listen to those disembodied cries from the woods. It’s weird that fifteen years later, the Blair Witch‘s successors have made all these beats cliche — all except one: the use of our imagination has been replaced with shocking visual effects. That’s not a slight, some of the effects are great, but nothing beats wondering what the hell was actually hunting those kids in the woods of Burkittsville.
But that may not be the point. It’s called The Blair Witch Project, not “The Blair Witch”. The real monster is and always will be Heather and her ego. Like Landis with his Twilight Zone tragedy and now Randal Miller and the Midnight Rider death, The Blair Witch Project serves as a reminder to anyone who has dreamed of filmmaking that the Movie Gods sometimes demand a heavy price for pushing your vision. Heather played fast and loose with her crew’s lives; she was ill-prepared, flippant and dishonest — an extremely bad combination when ambition and drive are at odd’s with other people’s safety.
