Spooky Month is about to get real, folks.
A movie like The Blair Witch Project could still scare you in the days before Google, Youtube and omnipresent irony. I remember reading bits and pieces about a supposed found-film piece of cinema that ended poorly. Being from a small town with barely functioning internet access, I only knew the essentials - college kids go wandering off in the woods, something bad finds them, they don't make it back. Only thing was, this time it wasn't so safe and fictional. The kids had been reported lost for quite some time. Their home made, hand-held shot movie was rumored to be melting faces and stopping hearts in art-house cinemas all over the country. I was totally intrigued. Then the cat got out of the bag.
The Blair Witch Project has become something of a punchline or shorthand for a common understanding of DIY aesthetic. That's really being too dismissive of a revolutionary thing, though. The truth of the matter is, even knowing that this movie was (spoilers, you dummy) a work of ingenious fiction, it was still damn scary. That seems to be the big secret that no one wants to acknowledge. We're all too cool and jaded and self-aware to be genuinely unnerved or swindled by any kind of momentum or legitimate feeling of connection. Instead we dismiss and say "Oh, that thing? Yeah, what a lame fake movie, right? Who ever bought into it?" Well, I totally did.
I only saw the bleak, doomed cinema verite affair after the fact. The summer it saw wide release was one full of movies you had to see as a teenager - South Park, The Sixth Sense, I think there was an American Pie in there, too. Maybe not. Sometimes those years blend together a bit. Anyway, the movie came and went in the theaters and I still hadn't seen it. So our local Blockbuster (back when that was a thing) had it on sale in the bargain bin (cat being out of the bag) I picked it up for less than five bones. I took the VHS (yeah, I know) home to my parent's new home in the woods, where I watched it all alone on a Sunday night, lights off, house lights outside reflecting off of the bare tree limbs of late October. I got my business thoroughly freaked out.
It may not be the coolest, most bad-ass thing to say, but I'll stand behind this weird little indie horror flick. It has this air of doom and despair permeating it. You knew going into it that the three plucky teenagers (no matter how obnoxious they could be) weren't going to come home. Something unseen was stalking them, to great affect for a solitary audience. The only way it could have gotten scarier for me was if I had to go orienteering alone in the woods that night. The manner in which the 'show-don't-tell' philosophy is employed here puts it in the same realm as Alien or Jaws. We are so much more terrified by the imagined, unperceived threat than a CGI money shot. Noises in the night stop the blood cold. Snarling beasts leaping at the screen, not so much. The cold air of fall and the empty trees create an unmistakable ambiance, the likes of which I haven't seen in any other horror flick since.
The Blair Witch Project brought us one step farther into our modern age of in-media-res production and (ugh) "reality" TV. That's the unfortunate legacy of a game changer. This movie was a refreshing novelty, one that deserves a better reputation than we've bestowed it. Turn the lights off and pick a quiet, solitary night. Watch this ground-breaking found-footage horror movie and tell me you're not the least bit affected by it. I'll be waiting in the heart of the metropolitan area with the lights on, far from the woods.
A movie like The Blair Witch Project could still scare you in the days before Google, Youtube and omnipresent irony. I remember reading bits and pieces about a supposed found-film piece of cinema that ended poorly. Being from a small town with barely functioning internet access, I only knew the essentials - college kids go wandering off in the woods, something bad finds them, they don't make it back. Only thing was, this time it wasn't so safe and fictional. The kids had been reported lost for quite some time. Their home made, hand-held shot movie was rumored to be melting faces and stopping hearts in art-house cinemas all over the country. I was totally intrigued. Then the cat got out of the bag.
