RETRO REVIEW: THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
Artisan/Haxan
1999 Color/B&W
81 Mins.
Horror/Thriller
Heather Donahue, Michae C. Williams and Joshua Leonard star.
Written and Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez
Rated R for strong language, adult themes, terror and gore.

When Blair Witch project opened in the summer of 99 I remember standing in a line wrapped around the movie theater to see it. After an immense amount of buzz and an awareness that the film was a hoax, I entered the darkened, sold out theater. The movie came on and there was a hush that came over the audience. What followed was a lot of laughter from the film's first half. I remember thinking that it just wasn't scary at all. However when the film kicks into high gear the proceedings become so immersive it's hard not to feel like you're right there with these characters. The movie is still considered the biggest cinematic, financial success of all time. On a $60,000 budget the film grossed over a $140 million domestically and over $240 million worldwide. But the film didn't just score with audiences critics loved it with an 87% positive. 

To this day the film splits audiences, people love it as much as they loathe it. But regardless of how you feel it's hard to deny the impact it's had on the genre since the summer of 1999. Countless rip offs have followed both fortunate and unfortunately for us. For every first and second Paranormal Activity, every Rec  there is crap like  The Gallows, the VHS trilogy and most recently The Visit amongst countless others. It created a new sub genre of movies that captured an ultra realistic feel and had audiences begging for those immersive thrills time and time again. Truth be told the execution had run it's course and become a mockery of itself for quite some time now.  Still if done right it has an undeniable power. You know what the original film is about unless you've been living under a rock. The film centers on a group of young documentary filmmakers who find themselves being terrorized in the woods while lost trying to research a spooky legend about a witch. The film offers no real definitive proof but offers us something better. Yeah we get a lot edge of your seat scenes but the mystery of the proceedings is what ropes us in and gets our imaginations going. 

And because the history concerning the legend has been built up so massively in it's inspired marketing campaign and still continues to grow today. It makes the film that much more immersive and potent in it's execution. Was there a Blair Witch that was involved in their disappearance or was it something else? I;m not still not sure. hell I don't even know if all of it is fake. But it's that mystery that still keeps people tuned in and  talking. Now you may be in the opposite group and find all of this to be complete bullshit that's not scary at all. But love it or hate it, whether it scares you or not you can not deny the sheer impact the film has had on the genre or the imprint it has left on horror cinema in general. ****.5/5