Fifteen Years Later: Not Terrible for a 60K Budget

Rating: 7/10 (5 June 2014)

I'm not sure what it is about this film that makes it interesting. By all accounts, it should be quite dull: much of it is shot in motion or out of focus by hand-held cameras, the dialogue is petty and tedious, there's an absence of sexual tension between the main characters, and much of what is feared throughout the film, while eerie, is merely suggestive of horror. Perhaps I am spoiled by modern day horror and suspense films, which are less understated, follow an explicit plot, and don't leave me wanting in terms of visual access. The "agenda" of this film is still fear —we are to believe that even after one or two centuries, the so-called "Blair Witch" still lives in those woods and is still out to kill, as evidenced by the eerie ending.
An obscurity that doesn't ever quite seem resolved for me, and there is more than one, is what one man at the beginning of the "documentary" tells the filmmakers: that a man was found guilty of killing some children and confessed to the crime—are we to think that the witch possessed this killer? Or were these unrelated crimes that just happened to be occurring in the same geographical area?
It also seems to me that all of the folklore and mythology surrounding the Blair Witch deaths pertain to attacks on children—with the one exception of the men tortured on that rock whose bodies later mysteriously disappear—why would the witch go after children for so many years but then in the modern day attack these three grown adults? It is a possible statement that these three filmmakers were so consumed by naiveté and child-like curiosity for the macabre, or a rather dumb, stop-at-nothing passion for art, that they were mistaken for children by the witch, or at least considered to be one in the same. Because really, what thinking, rational adult would so discredit a history of serial killings—just for the reason that its roots were non- scientifically explained—to put themselves in what would potentially be harm's way? Aren't there a million other things to explore and about which to write and direct films? Ridiculous.
This is the second time I've seen this film, the first time being early in high school, for me about thirteen or fourteen years ago. I watched it the first time at night, at a friend's house, and when the movie was over and I had nearly peed myself in fear, never having seen any movie quite like it, she insisted we go to the local woodsy lake area to light some fireworks—naturally I was petrified, tried to convince everyone it was a bad idea, but ended up ignored, and went. That was the first night I forced myself, for my own sanity, to make a distinction between film-based fear projected onto reality, and reality itself. Why would a witch come out of the woods in the middle of Dallas, TX, where I was at the time, when the witch in this film haunts a forest in Maryland, I asked myself. And so I found my firmer footing. It is only now, thirteen years later, in revisiting the movie to see if I still found it as scary, that I have decided to reevaluate it.
I guess I could've done without the foul-mouthed protagonist—why on earth would I empathize with this woman who doesn't know how to speak without dropping an 'f-bomb' every other word? Not that I have a big problem with cursing to convey a certain amount of anger or frustration—but to hear it constantly, it was as if she were beating me over the head with it. Her male counterparts were far better behaved and easier to stomach as characters.
I think that what works about the film is the gradual decay in the lead characters' morale. They begin their adventure peppy, excited, naive, almost cocky—and by the end of the film disintegrate into panic, rage, fear, cynicism, and desperation. I still get a kick out of seeing that extreme close-up of the leading lady in her beanie, only half of her face visible, welling up with tears, whispering: "I'm afraid to close my eyes, I'm afraid to open them...." I think it's the first time in the movie one can really feel the film's trademark desperation and isolation these characters must have been internalizing as their project progressed.
The movie's not perfect; there are some things I would've done differently: fewer, but more focused, less scattered interviews with locals (when in doubt, simplify, don't obscure your characters' motivations), interspersing steady cam shots with the hand-held, blurry ones—purely for palatability to the audience (you are trying to achieve the effect of a realistic out-in-the- woods experience, but isn't filmmaking just as much about satisfying an audience as pleasing the filmmaker?); some more clues as to what happened to Josh; and maybe, if the steady cam shots were included, when Mike drops the camera at the end, there would be a way to show the climax of the film without the girl having to pick up the camera herself and film—it is simply not believable that, in this state of panic, after having formally apologized to her and her colleagues' parents for her stubborn will to make this film, she would still want to film what was at that point a very desperate and unpleasant situation. For a budget of $60,000, I think they did a great job, though.
Needless to say, I still won't be going on a hike in the unpaved, unmarked woods any time soon. In that regard, hats off to the writers and directors of this movie. Fifteen years later, and it still has that effect!