The Blair Witch Project
reviewed by Ben Parrish
Towards the end of the evening, when the cosmopolitans and the Absolut Mandarin had taken effect, we all sat around in the basement until the host said those five famous words that eventually get said at pretty much any party that ends up taking place in a basement: "I've got a Ouija board."
What followed was a spirited (pun?) discussion of the possibilities of the supernatural, and different ways that we, in the "real world" coexist and converse with those ghostly spirits from beyond. At one point the question was posed of me, "Ben, don't you believe that there's... that there's something else out there, and that when the time is right, that it or they can contact us and communicate with us, or interact with us, or... do things to us?"
I considered the question thoughtfully, having been given pause by the significance of what I had been asked. I turned slowly, and gave my reasoned answer:
"No, idiot."
The party broke up pretty quickly after that, but my point was, there are crazy people who believe in this sort of thing, in ghosts and goblins and spectres and other goofy things like this. And this is why I waited so long to watch The Blair Witch Project. Because all I ever heard was, "Dude, it is so creepy man, it like, totally weirded me out for days after I saw it! Dude!" and I knew that these were the same people who were afraid to play with the Ouija board because the fucking Parker Brothers had figured out how to tap into the mysterious beyond with a sheet of cardboard and a piece of plastic. Dopes.
But I got a DVD player now, which obligates me to watch all the movies I missed over the last two years, because now I can watch them all the way through, and not even have to rewind!! So I checked it out.
Though it pains me to admit it now, The Blair Witch Project is a great movie, and the first horror movie since Jaws that I remember that had the true power to get right into your mushy innards and twist them around in a meaningful, lasting way.
It's a tenuous tightrope that the movie walks, too. If you're going to do a mockumentary with a video camera and a bunch of young kids, the young kids have to be extremely good at acting like they're not acting. I was seriously impressed with these guys. I can remember one, maybe two times where I could just about tell they were acting, but none of these incidents came close to breaking the fragile veneer of reality.
So what makes it so creepy? It's really quite simple. You don't have to believe in witches and ghosts and ancient curses. But you do have to believe in the woods. Having the experience of camping in the middle of a Maryland forest in the winter does help identify with the three doomed filmmakers, but just about any camping experience will do. Anyone who's woken up in the middle of the night in a tent in the middle of nowhere and heard... something... will sit spellbound and terrified as the characters take turns asking each other, "What the fuck was that?"
Because you're saying it right along with them. And that is the true nature of horror.
The unknown.
Back when I was in Portland, I went to a party with everyone I worked with. The party took place at a big house where one of them lived. It was actually his parents' house, but they were out of town, so it was time to get down.
Special Hint for budding review writers: If you can end your review with a two-word paragraph, as above, it will make your review seem really important and deep.
COPYRIGHT 2001 BY BEN PARRISH