Score one for 'shaky' cam

Rating: Null/10 (8 November 1999)

Score one for "shaky" cam
Picture this: You are in a darkened movie theatre, surrounded by the usual suspects. There behind you, in his usual place, is the idiot kicking your chair. The giggling teens are down in front, just where they should be. And the couple next to you is noisily plundering their giant barrel of popcorn with metronomic efficiency. But it doesn't matter. Because soon, safe in the hands of a reasonably competent filmmaker, you expect to be magically transported to a beautiful, surreal world in which an interesting story unfolds. But suddenly, instead, something pops on the screen, which has the look and feel of your uncle Bob's vacation video. I mean, it's all there: the shaky image, the lens's flares, the jagged transitions.

Well, welcome to the new age of cinema. Because now, thanks to the Blair Witch Project, the bar has been sufficiently lowered so that virtually ANYONE can make a movie. In fact, as long as one is willing to disregard certain cinematic standards - or, standards in general - all one needs is a camcorder and, well, not much else. Because here's the deal: that crappy video is supposed to make us think this is real. Get it?

So class, what do we learn from this latest attempt at cinema verite?
Well, the first thing is you obviously don't need special effects to fill the seats The second thing TBWP proves is that you don't need actors either. Just three typical twenty-somethings will suffice, who look, act and talk - by and large - pretty stupid.
In fairness though, that's also one of the good points of this goofy tribute to bad video (a fair amount of the time, the screen is actually blank.): the dialogue and behavior of these three young people is authentic and believable. And so is the group's gradual descent into a kind of Lord Of The Flies morale-crisis - especially when the trio of 2 young men and their ballsy female leader begins to realize they are lost.
Despite being occasionally effective however, you'll find the story itself to be barebones. Basically, here's the setup: these three aforementioned yokels go into the woods to do a documentary on the Blair Witch, a subject of some fairly scary local folklore. By the middle of the film, it appears as if they really do find something dangerous. In fact, aided by intentionally inferior production values, the film generates a creepy frisson throughout so that finally every tree in the forest looks suspicious.
But trust me, the scariest thing about this rip off is how boring it is. Indeed, as we are drawn toward the inevitable cop-out ending, all I eventually wanted was to see these 3 lamebrains get killed - hopefully in the most horrible and disgusting manner possible. That's how annoying they - and this movie - become.
Actually, I lied about the scariest thing in TBWP. The ultimately frightening horror of this movie is the way major reviewers are fawning over it, comparing it to Psycho and other classics.
But I digress. You really should still see this baby - hopefully in a theatre That way if anyone asks you if the Blair Witch actually 'gets' anyone, you can show them your ticket stub and say, "Yup. She got me - for $5.00."
As for the producers of the inevitable rip-offs which will follow, 3 words of advice: DIGITAL IMAGE STABILIZATION.