An innovation in film making and the first in the realism by the handheld camera genre, Blair Witch sparked films such as Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, and Quarantine. Besides that, it is a really well made film. Drawing on old Hollywood's technique of building suspense without showing the ghost in the closet or
the scary monster under the bed, Blair Witch leaves much up to the imagination. Three filmmakers, two are friendly, one is an outsider. As they become lost in the vast woods, running low on supplies and turning on one another for a scapegoat, they also come into contact with a series of strange events, including footsteps all around their campsite, piles of rocks, and bundles of twigs that were not there when they arrived. Blair addresses all the audience's concerns by answering the questions of: Why are you still filming even though there's a witch after you? Where's the confrontation towards your new member? Everything that you're expecting to poke holes in is covered, and so it's a character study in a way. As the terror builds, the truth comes out amongst them: we may die. Not of starvation, but by the hands of this thing that's hunting us. The drive in the witch is fueled by Joshua's disturbance of a scared cairn, and in doing so is her principle target, getting slimed and chased through the woods. This ghost is furious, all powerful, and unstoppable, exemplifying the best kind of fear. The only reason I couldn't get into it fully was because I know none of it is real, this isn't 1999 when the sensationalism was building for this film, and Paranormal Activity scared the pants off me years later with its payoff. Still, a true gem of horror film making.
July 29, 2010
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