A Horror Film Where Fear is The Real Monster

Rating: 8/10 (21 February 2016)

In the 1999 horror classic "The Blair Witch Project", we see three aspiring young filmmakers in 1994 set out on journey to do a documentary project based on a mysterious urban legend of the Blair Witch, who resides in a forest outside of a small town in Maryland. At first we're given the impression that this film was based off of their raw footage. The research going into the documentary is pretty shoddy in execution. The camera is purely out of focus and plus that Heather (Heather Donahue) repetitively utilizes "u-huhs and yeahs" when she's asking questions towards the residents in the area. The opening scenes will surely make you gnash your teeth in annoyance. In fact this whole movie within a movie can be contrived at times. But once the young students enter the woods in search of the Blair Witch, the annoyance becomes more paranoiac as the fears and the anxieties start to send chills down our spines.
Fortunately, the real filmmakers (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez) were not as inept as the student filmmakers. We get some believable settings as the determined crew makes their way into the Maryland forests, where they are lost and the more trapped they are in the labyrinth of tress and shrubs, the more the adrenaline level goes up rapidly as the fears and paranoia become overwhelming. The daytime scenes start off quite equivocal as just the sounds of twigs from tree or on the ground snap can surely garner scares where expect the unexpected becomes focal in our minds as much as theirs. The rock piles that bear a resemblance of grave markers epitomizes a sense of unsettling tension of the students as though their eyes are playing tricks on them. These supernatural elements that the threesome face would likely drive anyone insane.
The daytime fears seem pretty tame at first because the paranormal activity doesn't generate as much fear as the gang might shed some hope of finding their ways out of the woods, if they could trace back to where they begun their journey. When night comes and when things go bump in the night, the fear factor really gets the boost. The strange sounds nearby can be chillingly frightful and our brave but naive, unequipped students can do nothing but stick together. But nightfall the horror party finally gets tense and the audience watching this can feel this level of fear that anyone sneaking up behind them in the theaters can get someone a cardiac arrest. The forest is black, the theater is dark, everything is painted black during these scenes.
The main prop in this movie is the cheap first-person camcorder which eventually becomes a character in itself as we become a part of this movie courtesy of the camera as well as the terror the gang faces it lingers on us as well as we feel convinced that there might be a Blair Witch lurking in these forests. These camera traits show adults that it is normal that human beings are scared of the dark and nothing shameful about that.
The lack of preparation when entering the woods, the students have been faced in a sort of predicament they can't seem to get out of and the more they struggle the worst it gets. When Heather the booger- dripping leader of the team she confesses that it was her stubborn ways and determination to finding the truth she begs her cohorts Josh and Michael for forgiveness, we actually feel for her without the audience feeling manipulated.
"The Blair Witch Project" is utilized as a staple on why we're obligated to watch and let alone produce films. When the students start to get restless, hungry and feared, Heather decides that now's the time to close the camera. Finally, the more restrained Joshua takes her camera and retaliates by pointing it back at her and shouting back at her as though, the camera rules her life while it affects the other two characters caught in the middle of the mess she put them in. In some ways this movie helped spawn shows like "Ghost Hunters" and "Ghost Adventures" where paranormal experts go around the world in seek of the truth in that there is life beyond our mortal lives.