Groundbreaking Film mortally hurt by excessive hype

Rating: 10/10 (28 December 1999)

A spit in every major Hollywood studio's face, to say the least, and the second film this summer to learn a lesson from MTV's atrocious programming and put it to superior, even revolutionary use. With "Run Lola Run" it was the relentless pace and non-dependence on dialogue which created a sublime effect, a near return to the silent era. "Blair Witch" took the channel's utterly false reality of home-video footage and documentary-style acting, transforming it into perhaps the most realistic falseness to ever grace the silver screen. The enormous buzz that surrounds this amazing horror movie (which never aspires to be more than a cheeky genre entry) has already started an undeserved yet equally strong backlash, mostly by jealous film-students at first, then by the spoiled masses which could not comprehend anything beyond Will Smith's special effects-ridden vehicles. Misunderstood both by the critics who hailed it as the next cineamtic movement and the audiences bombasted by the hype, "Blair Witch" should be taken at face value; although currently that is practically impossible to do. The degree of scariness in the exploits of three young idiots (types all too familliar to everyone who attended college) doomed to perish in the haunted Maryland woods will largely correspond to one's own level of sensitivity, but regardless of how frightened the film makes you, it amounts to an experience of gleeful delight,(akin to the great "Evil Dead" series minus the cartoonish gore), of taking part in something new and refreshing. Of course the overall execution is not totally original, deriving mainly from "The Real World" and an obscure 80's Vietnam flick called "84 Charlie Mopic", but what does it matter? Nothing, repeat NOTHING spurts out of the blue - (a classic case in point would be Tarantino inspired by Goddard and Melville inspired by Carol Reed and John Huston inspired by the 20's expressionist cinema and "Public Enemy"). "Blair Witch", while not transcending its genre, still has a share of pure visual artistry, some probably unintentional. A certain beauty lies in the shots of Heather Donahue's white shape jetting through the dark forest, the ominous rays of sun glittering in the evening trees. The amateur feel the directors generate is but an expertly-crafted illusion and therein lies the film's ultimate pleasure.