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Review by Susan Granger
3 stars out of 4
On October 21, 1994, three young film-makers hiked into the
Black Hills Forest of Maryland to shoot a documentary about the local
legend of the Blair Witch. They were never seen or heard from
again. One year later, their footage was found. This film is their
legacy, we're told, documenting what happened in the woods. Heather
Donahue sets the stage by interviewing residents about the spooky
folktale that involves mysterious disappearances and evidence of
gruesome torture. Her two male companions, Joshua Leonard and Michael
Williams, trudge along. Terror strikes on the second night when they
hear snapping twigs and branches that sound like people circling their
tent - and then they find a hank of hair ritualistically tied with
blood and human tooth. "I'm scared to close my eyes. I'm scared to
open them," she says, as the fear builds. While the twisted conclusion
is not as horrific as you might expect, it's ambiguous enough to keep
you talking after the show's over. The story behind this low-budget,
counterfeit chiller is: writer-director-editors Daniel Myrick and
Eduardo Sanchez hired three actors and sent them into the woods for
eight days to improvise the picture. Certain destination points and
encounters were scripted, others definitely weren't. Therefore, the
images you see on the screen are often crude and jiggly - due to the
hand-held camera. Nevertheless, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10,
"The Blair Witch Project" is a goose-bumply, spine-tingling, scary
7. This creepy, clever, edge-of-your-seat thriller succeeds because it
plays on your imagination, your fear of the dark and the unknown and
the unseen, as opposed to showing graphic displays of violence and
brutality. What you create in your mind is far more terrifying than
anything someone can do with special effects.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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out of 4
