An Experiment in Fear

Rating: 10/10 (12 November 2009)

"As the characters run out of food, we started giving the actors less and less food..." "Besides the fact that we wanted to keep them safe, we wanted to push them as far as possible." Eduardo Sánchez,director
"They wanted us to be hungry and tired, so they did the sleep deprivation, and they stopped feeding us... which is a great way to create animosity, for future reference." Joshua Leonard, lead actor
"By applying the same physical and mental stresses to the actors - lack of food, lack of sleep, walking them around, f***ing with them at night -, we hoped by the time we really needed them to freak out, they would be able to tap into areas of their psyche they normally wouldn't be able to tap into." Gregg Hale, producer and former U.S. Special Army Forces linguist
"There was actually a clause on our contracts about mental health..." Heather Donahue, lead actress
"You're waking up out of an extreme tiredness... your mind isn't quite where it should be... I mean, you can feel the blood pumping out of your skin cause it's so eerie, the sounds and the noises." Michael C. Williams, lead actor
"We were given our instructions upon coming up to their campsite - no talking, walk quietly. We pressed on for about another minute, then finally you could see the light coloring of a tent off in the distance. Everyone took his or her places. We created a triangle around the tent but from way out. On queue - the guys hit play on the three tape players, out comes the high-pitched screech of a child - then laughter, then children talking. The actors are waking up - you could hear them talking. Then the guys begin to do footsteps in the leaves. Then, some of the guys go up and begin to violently shake the tent. The actors begin to scream and eventually run from the tent out into the woods. Their cameras rolling." From the journal of Stefanie DeCassan, film crew member
"...and the tent started shaking and we heard babies crying outside, and so I think that all of our first reaction was 'I'm not getting up... this is not happening...'" Joshua Leonard, lead actor
There's something about The Blair Witch Project most people fail to realize. This is not just a movie trying to pass as a documentary with great marketing outcomes. This is the one of the sickest, most daunting, barely legal human breaking experiments ever made in cinema.
Haxan and Artisan really went off their way trying to pass this as a true story until their premiere at the Sundance Festival. But co-directors Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick also pushed things to the limits while trying to give the acting and shooting a sense of creepy realism. For that purpose, they hired three inexperienced and unknown actors with high improvisational skills, gave them a crash course on the filming equipment, sent them to the woods in Seneca Creek State Park, Maryland, and directed them remotely, giving them no script dialogues and only a brief guideline of what was to come. The result is a genuinely terrifying experience which proves to be like no other, if you embrace it as it should be embraced. This is getting more and more difficult to achieve, as some parts of the movie have now been spoofed beyond maximum tolerance and without deserving that treatment. But giving it the proper personal investment, you will be dragged into the woods with three people. And you will feel confused, scared, exhausted, hunted, haunted, and on the verge of physical and mental collapse. All these were felt by the actors at some point. You stretch your physical and mental limits, and you will end up entering a different, unfamiliar reality, where nothing's certain or safe anymore. The most eerie and haunting fear of all is the fear of the unknown. If you end up being led by the darkest places of your imagination, you'll end up seeing the most frightening things under the dimmest light...
For all this, and because I can truly feel that when I can create the right conditions upon viewing of this film, The Blair Witch Project stands in my book as the ultimate horror experience, side by side with the cult classics that gave me true nightmares when I was younger.
Top notch.