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Directors: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez Screenplay: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez Starring: Heather Thomas, Michael Williams, Joshua Leonard Running Time: 87 minutes Studio: Haxan Films/Artisan Entertainment MPAA Rating: R |
What follows will not be a traditional review of the spooky mockumentary, The Blair Witch Project. (Like, when does this website provide traditional reviews? you may well ask. Hush up, that's not the point.) Instead, this will be a discussion about hype, buzz, and expectations concerning the film.
By now, you're aware of the setup. "In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found." These three students are played by Heather Thomas, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard, real actors using their real names, which adds to the versimilitude. Yes, the movie is a work of fiction, a mockumentary in a mockumentary. Writer-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez sent the actors into the woods for seven days with cameras and sound equipment and provided small clues along the way to lead them to the next step in the story. What resulted was over 90 hours of raw footage that the directors distilled down into an hour and a half that will make your neckhairs stand on end.
No explicit gore and grue here; most of the terror is left up to your imagination. This element is the movie's greatest strength... and greatest weakness. If you know too much of the backstory -- and I'm talking actual production backstory, not the Blair Witch story -- then the movie may not be as effective as it should. If you don't know any more production details than what I've just told you, you'll be totally creeped out by the nightly sound effects show and the mysterious objects that appear around the actors' tents.
Artisan Entertainment and Haxan Films may have created too much buzz, though. Building an audience for an odd, $25,000 experiment takes this kind of media hype to avoid being buried during the summer blockbuster season (opening opposite Eyes Wide Shut would be enough to throw anyone), but Myrick and Sanchez have diluted the power of Blair Witch by being too forthcoming -- they've granted interviews and revealed complete production details to nearly every outlet that's available. As I was watching the film, I kept thinking, "These are merely actors in a movie." I was too distanced from the material to fully experience the scares, though I kept trying to project myself into the scene.
