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The Blair Witch Project Review by David Luty
The Blair Witch Project offers no such safety nets. It dedicates itself, with every fiber of its being, to convincing you that it is most definitely not a movie, at all. That what you are watching is the real, first-person film and videotape footage recovered from these three twenty-something filmmakers who started shooting a documentary, got lost in the deep forest, and came across something unfathomably frightening. What makes the film such a stunning success is that whether you think you're watching reality or staged reality, its knock-out premise is executed so thoroughly well, with such naturalistic conviction, that it effectively removes you from the creature comforts of conventional movie-watching and puts you around the campfire, only to snuff out the flame and leave you in the deeply frightening dark.
During the more playful, relaxed moments, The Blair Witch Project has a similar
feel and texture as MTV's The Real World, but Blair feels truer. These three actors
are so impressively at ease being natural that they are easily more convincing than the
"real" people who get the air of trumped up self-importance that comes from
having cameras recording their day to day existence. Contents | Features | Reviews
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Anyone who's
spent time out in the woods with friends, at night, knows that what makes campfire stories
so unsettlingly creepy has much less to do with the content of the tale than it does with
the campfire itself. It is the setting that matters, it is being out in the woods alone,
in the dark, where every creaking branch, every small animal's leaf-crushing footstep,
every whistling breath of wind hits your senses with the heightened force that comes from
just having been reminded you how vulnerable, helpless, and isolated you actually are.
Naturally, movies aren't ideally suited to recreating this sense of dread -- it's
difficult to attack an audience in this way when they're sitting in plush chairs
surrounded by a group of folks munching on their favorite theater snacks. It's also
difficult to put audiences in that frame of mind when the story is populated with
recognizable stars, artificial lighting, flamboyant music, and other devices that serve to
comfortably remind the viewers that all they're really experiencing is light flickering
onto a flat screen. 
Before the darkness,
Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams (played by Heather Donahue, Joshua
Leonard, and Michael Williams) gather together their camping and film gear and make their
way to Burkitsville (formerly Blair), Maryland, to begin their documentary film on the
myth, or reality, of the Blair Witch. They interview disbelieving and believing
townspeople, some of whom know the old folktales about the murderous witch, and then trek
into the woods to film some of the locations and landmarks that make up the legend. Never
once wavering from the premise, what we see at all times is the handheld footage shot from
the two cameras this trio carries (someone has obviously edited the footage from the two
cameras together after it was recovered from the woods). Heather is the producer, who
directs the crew and carries around a small Hi-8 video camera to shoot behind the scenes,
Michael is the cameraman, who shoots the black and white 16mm film footage that will make
up the documentary, and Josh is the sound man. 
Additionally, everything we see here is through the
eyes of one of the three main characters, whichever one is operating a camera at a given
point in time. This is the key to the experience of The Blair Witch Project, with a
strong underline on "experience." Because we are always seeing things from a
first-person point of view, we become intimately connected to the experiences of the
characters. We see things through their eyes. We walk their steps. We run their flights
from danger. We feel their fear. As their (our) lost trek through the seemingly endless
woods brings them (us) closer to danger, the three characters go through a slow, gradual,
and very convincing psychological breakdown, and the film comes up with an intriguing,
effective way of justifying its most potentially implausible element. Why do they keep
shooting? Why, when they get to the point of fearing for their lives, do they continue to
hold the camera to their face and look at the world through an eyepiece? We already know
why. It's a buffer from the reality, from their fear. It's to possibly preserve that part
of their consciousness that can remind them, during the darkest moments, that it's only a
movie. Think it loud enough and often enough while you watch The Blair Witch Project,
and you just might be able to remind yourself of that as well. 