Movie junkie Jessie Robbins picks a fright flick for a Saturday night.
When I was about ten or eleven my best friend Amanda and I spent almost every weekend together. Amanda adored horror movies too, and whenever we hung out, we would either write our own scary stories, or watch horror movies (ok maybe I was a weird kid, shut up). One weekend however, we got a little ahead of ourselves and rented THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999).
Directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT stars Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams and Joshua Leonard as documentary filmmakers in the small town of Burkittsville, Maryland investigating the local legend of a witch hidden somewhere deep in the woods. Advertisement for the film featured missing person signs with the actors pictures on them, and actually led people to believe that the footage on the film was real, and that the filmmakers were really gone. Adults thought that. Imagine what that does to two ten year-olds watching it alone in a house in the countryside
For the most part we fared pretty well, although sufficiently freaked out during the nighttime camping scenes, we held our ground and giggled every time they said fuck (which was 154 times). It wasnt until the end scene that things started to get a little unbearable. We sat crunched up beside each other on the futon, feet up off of the ground (obviously, a frickin’ WITCH could be under there) staring at the screen in silence. We sat there trying to decide what the better option was, getting up off the safe couch to turn the lights on, or continue to sit on the couch and try not to be freaked out by the darkness. Eventually one of us threw ourselves off of the couch and hurtled toward the light switch, luckily just in time for the witch to crawl back into the darkness under the futon, defeated by our wits and access to electricity.
I dont care what anybody says, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is still one of the scariest things I have ever seen. Call it childhood nostalgia, call it naivety, but for a brief moment in my mind there really was a Blair Witch in Burkittsville, Maryland, these people really did go missing, and magic was real. This film was so scary that it left two ten year-olds too afraid to get off of the couch for fear of being corner-murdered by a fictional creature that never even appears on screen!
It is precisely the absence of any kind of visual on the antagonist (man vs. man and man vs. nature aside) that makes THE BLAIR WITCH so damn good. It is a technique that is hardly used in film today, films like MAMA (2013) and SINISTER (2012) show too much of the main villain, making him/her extremely un-scary. Im not saying SINISTER wasnt scary by the way, it was terrifying; but Mr. Boogie certainly was NOT.
What THE BLAIR WITCH had that newer found footage films just dont is the art of subtlety. It was raw, the reactions were realistic because for parts of the film, the actors were not sure what was about to happen to them. The night time camping scene, where childrens voices can be heard and the tent began to shake, was not run by the actors beforehand, their reactions were genuine. But this is all old news, I just think that a little bit of credit needs to be given to the film that gave birth to the found footage revolution (CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST may be the pioneer, but BLAIR WITCH refined and popularized the subgenre).
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is a staple in historical horror cinema and in its simplicity and innovation should stand the test of time. Therefore, clean cut, straightforward, and subtle is the theme for this weeks Fright Flick kiddies. Go yonder to your high backed, boxed bottom couches, turn off all of the lights, scoot close to your bestie, travel back in time and watch this film again with childish wonder.
Enjoy!
(On a side note, in my research for this article, I became aware of a teen fiction series based on the aftermath of the film, Heather Donahues cousin (and author of the series Cade Merrill) investigates the filmmakers disappearance and becomes immersed in the mystery of the Blair Witch And now Im going to spend the next few weeks curled up with even MORE teen fiction novels.)
