Real Terror on a Shoestring Budget

Rating: 10/10 (24 October 2010)

Alfred Hitchcock may well have been the first filmmaker to demonstrate (with 1960's PSYCHO) that one could make a truly scary horror film for very little money and without throwing a lot of special effects at the screen. Few directors have learned the lesson Hitchcock taught; Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING is perhaps the best example.
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, a true original, takes the lessons of PSYCHO and milks them for all they are worth. Writer/directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, showing a real grasp of the concept that less is more, put virtually nothing on the screen and yet in the process scared the hell out of audiences all across the country, myself included.
By now, probably the whole world knows the plot: three college students disappeared in the woods surrounding a town called Blair while doing a documentary film about the legend of the Blair Witch. Their film was discovered, though they were never found. What follows is a jerky, often repetitive, deliberately amateurish-looking film, made completely with hand-held cameras, which documents the three kids' adventure in the woods.
Woods are scary places by nature. After all, how many of the fairy tales that we heard as kids involved getting lost in the woods? Which is exactly what happens to Our Three Heroes.
The genius of this film, and the thing that connects it most strongly to Wise's THE HAUNTING, is that almost nothing is actually shown on the screen, and what little is, is either in the corner of the shot, or the camera moves away before the mind can take in what it has seen. Like Wise and Hitchcock, the filmmakers here created a work of perfect audience manipulation. The camera work, which with its jerks and tilts threatens to make one seasick, adds to a feeling that everything is off balance.
The three young actors deliver serviceable performances. That is to say, they are perfect for this film. It does not demand greatness; in fact, the cheesiness of the production values and the okay-but-not-great acting in a way add to the impact of this film.
I went to see this when it first came out. I went alone. It left me with a case of the creeps that took me weeks to shake. There were moments during the film when I realized I was absolutely terrified yet nothing was actually going on on the screen. I cannot explain the visceral reaction that this movie invokes; it has to be experienced.
TBWP will be on my top ten list of great horror movies for a long time to come.