THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)

Studio:       Lionsgate
Director:    Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez
Writer:       Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez
Producer:  Robin Cowie, Gregg Hale
Stars:     Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael C. Williams

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Three young filmmakers become lost in the woods of Burkittsville, Maryland while making a documentary about a legendary witch.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Documentarian Heather and cameraman Josh pick up audio tech Mike to begin filming their documentary on the Blair Witch. Local townspeople reveal various aspects of the legend, including:

• Rustin Parr was a hermit who came into town one day in the winter of 1940 and announced, “I’m finally finished.” Police later discovered that he had murdered seven children in his mountain home. He would take them to his basement in twos, forcing one child to stand in a corner while he murdered the other child first.
• Two men disappeared while hunting near a cabin haunted by the witch.
• Mary Brown, the town crackpot, once saw a woman covered in black horsehair wearing a wool shawl in the woods.
• In the 1800’s, Robin Weaver disappeared in the woods and returned three days later babbling about an old woman whose feet never touched the ground.
• Grey vapor was seen rising out of the creek.
• At Coffin Rock, five men were found bound to each other with their intestines torn out and writing carved into their faces. When the man who found them returned with the authorities, the bodies were gone.

After interviewing the locals, the trio heads into the woods. Josh reports hearing cackling during their first night camping.

While searching for a cemetery in the woods, the two men begin to suspect Heather may not know where they are on their map. They then find seven carefully arranged rock piles while hiking. At night, Josh knocks one of them over.

Clacking sounds are heard during the third night. The following day, they cannot find their way back to the car. Later that night, the clacking sounds are heard again.

Three rock piles are found outside their tent the next morning. Still lost, Heather realizes that their map is now missing as well. Mike later reveals he threw the map away because it was useless. Frustration continues growing amongst the group. Eventually, they find a cluster of various cross formations made out of sticks and hanging from trees. In the night, baby cries are heard before something violently shakes their tent and causes them to run into the woods.

When they return to the campsite in daylight, Josh finds that his pack contents have been strewn about and his water canteen is covered in slime. Somehow, the three filmmakers end up at a landmark where they have been before, unable to determine how they walked in a circle. They continue to turn on each other.

Mike and Heather wake to find Josh missing. Josh is then heard screaming in the woods when they camp that night. The next morning, Heather opens a bundle of sticks left outside the tent and finds Josh’s teeth and hair inside, but she does not tell Mike.

During the final night, Heather records herself apologizing to everyone’s families for everything that happened. When Josh’s screams are heard again, Mike follows the sounds to an abandoned house. Heather chases after him. Strange writing and handprints are seen on the inside walls of the dilapidated house. Eventually, Mike follows the screams to the basement and is struck from behind by something unseen, dropping his camera. Heather arrives just behind him and sees Mike standing in the corner before she too is struck from behind and drops her camera.

---

Review:

Few films polarize horror fans as much as “The Blair Witch Project.”  When the groundswell of buzz made its way through Hollywood following the Sundance debut in 1999, more than one person who had seen a screener copy promised it would be the scariest movie I would ever see.  Perhaps my expectation bar was set too high then, when I lined up outside of the Nuart theater for the first showing on opening day of the Los Angeles run (before the film opened nationwide).  Even that early in the film’s debut, audiences were already splitting into two camps.  I distinctly recall two clearly frightened girls in front of me saying “get me out of here” as soon as the credits rolled while I sat there still wondering what all the fuss was about.

In the “found footage” formula, a main objective is to establish a cast with which the audience can empathize.  Blair Witch has a few brief bonding moments that include the sharing of scotch and an argument over a Gilligan’s Island moniker, but otherwise the characters are really not overly likeable.  Mike is almost never portrayed as particularly friendly, and “annoying” is Heather’s most easily identifiable trait.  Too often she repeats everything she says (“We’re outta here” would have been her personal record at five times in a row had it not been interspersed with a “Yes” between instances four and five).  And she is a terrible documentarian to boot.  Interviewees either cannot finish their sentences or cannot put two together without an interjection from Heather.  Her disbelieving addition of “really?” after several revelations is particularly distracting.

As a movie about three people gradually descending into stir crazy madness while their situation grows more hopeless, “The Blair Witch Project” works.  As a “scary movie,” the film is less successful.  The underlying issue is that the scares are based on an inconsistent mythology to the point where something intended to be frightening plays more as confusing. 

The actual legend of the Blair Witch is very cloudy.  During the initial interviews with assorted townspeople and crackpots, we are presented with a smattering of seemingly unconnected tales. 

Speaking about the glut of children laid to rest in the cemetery during the 1940’s, Heather notes, “no one in the town seems to recall anything unusual about this time.”  This is about one minute before two different locals recall a hermit who killed seven children in his mountain home during that period.  Seems pretty unusual to me.  He is also reported to have murdered the children in pairs, as one was forced to stand in a corner while the other was killed first.  Yet somehow he murdered an odd number of children.

In addition to the child-killing mass murderer, we also hear about a grey vapor rising out of the water, five men with strange carvings on their faces murdered at Coffin Rock, and separate accounts of the witch that include her being covered in horsehair and her feet never touching the ground.  For some, it could be that this collective ambiguity aids in the depiction of the filmmakers’ growing desperation and sanity loss.  Without clear answers, the imagination is left to run wild from fear of the unknown.  But for someone trying to make sense of the entire affair and its purpose, the lack of a cohesive story is primarily frustrating.

Show/Hide Spoilers

Aside from strange noises in the night, the first visible instance of horror befalling the group is the discovery of three rock piles outside of their tent. Yet the significance of this is not obvious. The trio had previously discovered seven rock piles while hiking, presumably meant to signify the seven children murdered by Rustin Parr, the child murderer from the 1940’s. But had there been something explicit in the legend that stated a rock cairn was a precursor to death or a curse, maybe a more distinct feeling of dread would have accompanied the visual. As it was, it was just a pile of rocks.

Similarly, the hanging crosses made from sticks provide for some interesting imagery, but without context, they fail as a scare. A mention of these crosses’ significance anywhere else in the story would have gone a long way towards instilling more meaning in the scene. The same can be said of the slime found on Josh’s canteen. Other than just being disgusting, what was its relationship to the Blair Witch legend?

Some may be satisfied by the mystery of who placed these things in the woods. Suspense comes from not knowing how the rocks came to be outside their tent or who/what hanged crosses in the trees. Unless I have a more conclusive indication that it is supernatural though, there is no reason to interpret any of it as sinister. I could just accept it as such based solely on the film’s premise, but really it is up to the filmmakers to convince me through what is conveyed onscreen.

There is a moment while running away from their tent in the night when Heather madly shrieks, “Oh my God! What the f*ck is that?! What the f*ck is that?!” Not only is there never any indication what “that” might be, but no one even mentions it in subsequent dialogue, even though it clearly sent Heather over the edge.

And I’m still not entirely certain what was in the bundle of sticks that Heather opened following Josh’s disappearance. I know there were teeth and some hair, but was that a tongue? Even on the big screen, this was a confusing blood clump. I couldn’t take time to be frightened because I was too distracted with trying to figure out what it was I should be seeing.

The final image of the movie with Mike standing in the corner of the basement is genuinely eerie. However, standing victims in the corner was something done by Rustin Parr in the 1940’s. Since the three filmmakers are presumably plagued by a ghostly witch from the 18th century, I have no idea why she would be using the same M.O. as Parr.

These disjointed aspects of the legend make the story muddled, not mysterious.  The history is not fleshed out or consistent enough to be truly frightening.  Definitive answers are not required, but more clarity would have elevated scenes of sticks and rocks from being exactly that: scenes of sticks and rocks.

While not the first of its kind, “The Blair Witch Project” is the “found footage” figurehead by which all other films in the genre are inevitably compared.  However, while it may be a gauge for the “found footage” formula and relative success of the resulting film, it should not be the genre’s benchmark for quality in execution.

Review Score:  50

---