Their performances are perfect - no one shows a hint of artifice or fakery. The trio of actors - Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard (they use their real names) - aren't merely good, they're excellent. Also, this seemingly haphazard and "unprofessional" approach gives the audience a "you are there" feeling that draws them into the experience, making everything that transpires more shocking and immediate that it would seem in a conventional format. It's not hard to understand why these segments work so well - they rely on the imagination to fill in the pictures, and what our minds conjure up is always more horrifying than anything the filmmakers can put on screen (even with today's special effects technology). At other times, the action depicted is chaotic and difficult to piece together, often because the person doing the filming is running or unsure what to capture. There are instances when the screen is black and all we have to rely on is the audio - the near-panicked voices of the protagonists in the foreground and strange, unearthly noises in the background. Some of the most chilling sequences occur at night, when the darkness foils the video. The transitions are unexpected and often jarring - the kind of thing that would result from turning the camera off at one point, then turning it back on later. Every scene is a point-of-view shot, shown exactly as one might expect from someone carrying around a video camera. The element that makes The Blair Witch Project unusually compelling is the atypical manner in which it is presented. They become lost and are never seen again, but their surviving video and film footage tells of their nerve-wracking and horrifying experiences with the supernatural, and of the tension that grows among them as they blame each other for their predicament. After that, they enter the forest, tracking the legend. From there, they travel to the town of Burkittsville to interview several residents about the Blair Witch, including one who claims to have seen the apparition. Next, they proceed to a cemetery where they film the opening scene - a monologue by Heather recounting part of the legend.
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They mug for the camera, crack jokes, and go food shopping. The first images we see are of a group of seemingly normal college students getting ready for a few days in the woods. In addition to making a 16 mm black-and-white film, Heather is capturing virtually everything on High 8 video with the intention of assembling a behind-the-scenes look at how her movie, "The Blair Witch Project," was made. Accompanying Heather are camera man Joshua Leonard and sound operator Michael Williams. Aspiring director Heather Donahue, a film student at Montgomery College, has decided to chronicle the legend of the supposed "Blair Witch" - a mythical figure that has supposedly haunted Maryland's Black Hills Forest since the late 18th century and is credited for numerous, heinous murders. The Blair Witch Project is presented as a documentary within a documentary. In one corner of my mind, I knew this was all fictional, but the verisimilitude is impressive, and results in an experience that is as fascinating as it is involving and creepy. (Some will argue that something this experimental and unusual would not have come from an established director, and there's ample evidence to back up such a statement.) Watching this film is a harrowing experience because we accept the characters as completely real and become engaged in their ordeal.
The Blair Witch Project is, in a word, brilliant - and is even more impressive considering that it's the debut effort from filmmakers Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick.
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It's a horror movie that lives up to its name, and does so with only one brief scene of mild gore. And, while The Blair Witch Project belongs in the same loosely defined category, it's another kind of film altogether.
Titles like Dadetown, Unmade Beds, Forgotten Silver, and 20 Dates have toyed with the line between fiction and reality in often interesting ways. Recent years have seen a dramatic upturn in the number of so-called "meta-documentaries" (or "mockumentaries"): real-seeming fakes in the mold of Orson Welles' infamous "War of the Worlds" radio play.
Word-of-mouth was so strong that a special screening had to be scheduled in the 1300-seat Eccles theater, and it was packed. The Blair Witch Project caused a major stir with Sundance, and for good reason - it was perhaps the most offbeat, energetic, and eye-opening motion picture to screen there. It's an effective and startling hook to open a film, and the product that follows delivers on the promise of this unusual premise. A year later their footage was found." With this ominous pronouncement on a title card, The Blair Witch Project begins. "In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary.
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