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The time for talking will come - after your friends have also seen The Blair Witch Project. But until then, please don't try to tell them how chillingly effective this spine-tingler is. It will spoil the fun of being terrified.
By STEVE PERSALL Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 30, 1999
Everything you've heard and read about The Blair Witch Project is true. Now it's crucial to the effectiveness of this very scary film to avoid knowing anything else until you see it for yourself.
Nine weeks have passed since my first Blair Witch sighting, and it has been a mixed pleasure withholding specific details from friends and readers. A film treasure this simple can be spoiled by too much information. Attention has focused on the movie's ingenious premise and the risky way it was created by five University of Central Florida film school graduates.
My vow of selective silence will continue with this review. But it will be a relief finally to meet others who have seen The Blair Witch Project and can discuss its chilling touches. Out of earshot of the uninitiated, of course.
Informing readers of what The Blair Witch Project isn't would be more beneficial than revealing what it is. This is not horror on a grand filmmaking scale, with blood-gushing special effects and musical cues inciting the audience to jump. Co-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez have crafted 82 minutes of delicate terror, with the most primal elements of fear -- darkness, the unknown, and deprivation of basic physical needs -- taking center stage.
There are no howling cats jumping out of closets, or point-of-view camera angles to allow us a maniac's perspective of carnage. There's no violence, and only a flash of blood. Some moviegoers will be disappointed by The Blair Witch Project because it isn't the same old slash-and-burn routine that trained them to confuse gross-outs with style. There has never been another horror movie like this one, and its inevitable imitators probably won't do it this well again.
Above all, there are no explanations for what supposedly happens to three student filmmakers venturing into a Maryland forest to make a documentary about an occult legend. When you watch The Haunting or The Exorcist, there are reasonably fantastic answers to every question, usually delivered in scenes heavy with explanatory dialogue. Nobody has time to dissect the deadly crisis in The Blair Witch Project because Myrick and Sanchez concocted a brilliant conceit that makes the drama feel immediate and the open-endedness of the story completely plausible.
An introductory title card announces that those three students disappeared in the woods in 1994 and were never seen again. The only evidence recovered by investigators were several reels of film and video shot by the trio. Haxan Films claims to have edited the footage into The Blair Witch Project. The movie begins when it should, with jovial filmmakers trying out their rented equipment and continues to a stunningly logical end. It's a home movie heavily laden with dread.
Alfred Hitchcock's theory that suspense stems from letting the audience know things the characters don't realize is stripped to its essence. That foreshadowing title card makes us smarter than the eventual victims, so each hopeful statement is tinged with aching fatalism or gallows humor. Each cryptic omen they discover becomes more confusing to them and creepier for the audience.
The Blair Witch Project reportedly cost only $20,000 to make and wisely makes that relative amateurism an intrinsic part of the terror. The jittery hand-held camera work and off-kilter framing of many shots are a product of the characters and their panic, not just the cheapness of the production. There is nothing slick about this movie, from the mostly improvised dialogue to Tony Cora's bare-bones musical score.
In fact, the most hair-raising moments in the movie take place when we can't tell what's happening at all. Especially times when we see nothing except a pitch-black screen and hear frightened whispers or gloriously subtle sound effects. When a flashlight beam pierces the darkness, we squint toward the faint light, hoping something, anything can be seen. Other movies try to put a face on terror, but The Blair Witch Project keeps it anonymous to everything except our imagination.
The level of realism is enhanced by the fact that these three actors -- Heather Donohue, Michael C. Williams and Joshua Leonard -- use their own names and exclusively operate the camera and sound equipment. Myrick and Sanchez made them stay in the woods for eight days, using a global positioning satellite receiver to direct them to the next location and some unknown, scary stimuli. When they say they're hungry, cold and shocked by what's happening, they mean it.
The film's brisk pace allows us to ignore the fact that we don't learn much about Heather, Mike and Josh. Their fates are question marks. All we need to know is that they're good people who don't deserve what probably happened to them. That's enough to make a scene like Heather's apologetic monologue near the end of the film one of the most emotionally wrenching scenes I've ever experienced at the movies.
Sorry. I almost got carried away with details there. The Blair Witch Project is the kind of movie that tempts a viewer to spill the beans, then regret having spoiled a unique film for someone else. Buy a ticket and hold your tongue. Then go back and see it again, just to observe how first-timers react. Horror movies haven't possessed this much sinister fun in a long, long time.
Directors: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanche
Cast: Heather Donohue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard
Screenplay: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez
Rating: R; profanity, intensity