The Blair Witch Project

Seen at the Bridge

Not even the marketing team behind "The Blair Witch Project" could have expected the payoff they received over the film's opening weekend.  Millions of dollars reaped from a mere 27 theaters scattered nationwide.  The number of visits to the blairwitch.com website has kept that server tauntingly slow, but gradually the site offers a number of tidbits to excite one's imagination (though after seeing the film, offer frustratingly little insight into what actually happens in the movie).  Most important is a wildfire word of mouth phenomenon spreading among the target market of teens and young adults.

One can't help postulating reasons for the buzz over this movie, and finds some comfort in the possible explanations.  Amidst the Hollywood-hyped sci-fi/ "American Pie" onslaught of special effects or gross-out sex, moviegoers uncovered a beauty of a story.  There are actually two stories that compose this movie's appeal.  The first is the plot of the film, the second is its making.  the premise of the movie, the discovered footage of three young filmmakers who disappeared in the woods while shooting a documentary about a witch.  Then there is the making of the movie is even more exciting: the two directors equipped the three actors with cameras and equipment, gave them sparse instructions, and sent them off into the woods.  Both the story and its making are fresh, creative, and at the same time economical; so against everything that Hollywood represents to us.  However, the flip-side to independent filmmaking is the roughshod product that we're often left to watch.

The use of super 8 film seems incipiently narrowing -- half of the wide screen is left unused.  The camerawork is excessively jittery -- intentionally, we are led to believe -- that the screen is not focused on anything half of the time.  When it is focused, we're often staring at tree branches, leaves on the ground or the black of night. The result is a massive and increasing sense of claustrophobia, at times chillingly effective, but relentless to the point of producing nausea.  The film's chief effect is not so much a growing sense of doom but of actual physical discomfort from the dizzying camerawork.  Long before the finale, and even before a genuine feeling of dread and fear for the characters materialized, I grew impatient for being made so woozy for so long with no let up.  I needed to take a walk around the block after the film, not because of any sense of lingering terror, but to get over my seasickness from the camerawork.  It follows that viewers accept the terms given by the film -- in this case, that the unstable shooting was an attempt at authentic amateurism -- and praise what it has achieved within its narrative (as well as economic) limitations.  At the same time, limitations are limitations; bad camerawork, no matter how one explains it, is still bad.  The film thus makes an intriguing pair of achievements: it is an exciting breakthrough in pseudo-documentary, and a new low in cinematography.

Whatever is lacking in the camerawork is compensated largely by the sound.  At times I found myself wondering if the story could have been done as a radio program: the mix of heavy breathing, twigs crackling under foot and the constant voices of the characters create an ambient wall that encloses us in the woods with the hapless filmmakers.  It is in the night scenes, when the screen is only black and one can only hear the kids shivering in the dark, tense, and listening for something, that the sound really stands out as the movie's star scaremaker.

The editing is abrupt, following suit that the movie was pieced together from discovered footage left in the woods.  Due to this editing style, we can only follow each character's descent into paranoia haphazardly; one minute one of them will be smiling, the next shot he's flipping out.  Motivations for certain actions aren't explained clearly (but then again, neither are a number of plot elements that are usually considered essential, such as what actually happened in the end).  As a result, the characters, though natural in their manner, remain flat; when terror descends on them, I fear for them collectively, not individually.  The Heather Donahue character is the only one who triggered complex feelings on my part: the two men's annoyance at Heather's misguided confidence echoed my own feelings, but at the same time I respected the fact that only she was trying to keep things on the ball.  There is also a brilliantly photographed monologue by Heather towards the finale.  Some of the best acting is seen in the early interviews with the townsfolk, each of whom are completely convincing in sharing what they know about the witch.  Collectively they offer a delightful atmosphere of small-town folksy charm, humor (decidedly parodic), and hushed, skeleton-closet intrigue. 

What is most precious about those early scenes is the raw energy that seems to burst out of the screen, both from the morning sunlight glinting through the hi 8 lens and the jocular air of the filmmakers as they spring into the forest.  The ecstasy of small-time filmmaking is as palpable as holding the camera in your own hands -- and then it's drowned in a sea of swirling camerawork.  Camerawork could be the only really bad thing about this movie -- too bad that it is a motion picture.  At last, we have a brilliantly conceived film that, perhaps inevitably, lost something in its execution, and finishes like an ordeal.  It's the idea of the movie that has driven our imagination and that now drives audiences to the box office.  What I worry about is that after watching the finished product, filmmakers are going to think that a good gimmick is the only thing they need to achieve this kind of success.  The success is enviable, but the product isn't: it is movie craftsmanship that may become something like the Blair Witch, a fleeting myth, lurking in the dark, to haunt them in their dreams.

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