If you go out in the woods today, you'll get a BIG SURPRISE...

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2006)

"Blair Witch Project" has come under a lot of heavy criticism for its many shortcomings, for its over-hyped/overcooked viral marketing campaign, and for its length (some critics seem to think it would have been much better as a 30 minute short subject). Many of these criticisms have merit. However, once I saw it (on VHS, long after the hype had died down), I enjoyed it quite a bit.
The fact that I first saw it on VHS, on my living room television, may have had much to do with my positive reaction to it. Even though it is mostly set in the woods of Maryland, BWP's tiny cast and rough, grainy, under-lit feel lend it a curiously intimate quality, as of a ghost story told around a campfire at night...and I think this quality comes across better in a dark, silent living room than a large movie theater with dozens-to-hundreds of people in the place with you. I also think the grainy, cheap, hand-held feel translates better on the small screen. It's better than it deserves to be...you might think of it as one of those 'accidents' of film making like the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". In fact, I am pretty sure that the editors and the choices they made were what 'saved' this film from obscurity. Many slick film makers have tried to duplicate TCM, including its director, and no one has ever completely succeeded. I think the same is true here...the film makers got lucky and they knew it.
Mostly, I think I enjoy BWP because I have a understand the true impact of the phenomenon that rangers and outdoors-men refer to as 'woods shock' - the devastating impact of being REALLY LOST in the woods. Modern urban dwellers can easily underestimate this impact and dismiss it because we've never been truly 'lost' in our lives. But many fit, experienced hikers and campers actually given up, laid down, and died from the stress of being lost in the North American forests and mountain ranges, often less than a day's hike from civilization and with supplies and rations still in their packs. The original meaning of the term 'bewilder' is to take someone out in the woods and get them lost, and leave them there...and it was first coined hundreds of years ago, by people who were much more comfortable in forests than we are now.
So I think the basic story idea, of three callow film students going for a 'simple', ordinary overnight trip into the woods and stumbling into disaster makes for compelling viewing if it is handled right...and I feel that BWP use of the plot device of hand-held cameras (documenting their growing unease, bewilderment, and finally hopeless terror), is a brilliant stroke that sidesteps the issues of slick production work , professional sound work, 'good' acting, etc.
Yes, there are some contrived elements that don't hold up to serious examination (especially the 'editting' of the film found in the cameras, which is much more 'dramatically apt' than a simple presentation of what happened), but that's true of almost any ghost story or horror story told around a campfire at night ("And there, on the handle...was a HOOK!!!", etc. "Like, I am sooooo sure..."). But I found the casts' reactions to their growing predicament credible and enjoyed the way the plot kept turning the screws on them tighter and tighter. And while the payoff may have been annoyingly ambiguous, jumbled, and hard to decipher, it was plain that something Very Bad Indeed had happened to the film students. The glimpses provided of the walls of the house where everything comes to an end are the materials for good old fashioned nightmare fuel. What WERE those markings on the walls???
While the followup sequel was an unmitigated cinematic disaster, BWP succeeds as a nasty little ghost story and can be enjoyed on those terms.