Review of The Blair Witch Project (1999) by Dillinger P — 03 Feb 2014

15 years ago, if you had told me this was going to be one of the next decades defining horror movies, lets just say you wouldn't be met to a favorable reaction. However for anyone, it was hard to believe that not only did this film create a style that would be used countless times but would also be timeless and scare the shit out of you all by doing 3 things right.

1) taking a simple and effective way of filming something and allow your audience to paint the picture. 2) Drag your actors through hell to get results and 3) Create a hype machine that would be used still to this day AND DELIVER! For those of you that haven't seen it, Blair Witch is a found footage film (One of the first, successful ones of its kind) based around 3 student film makers who go hiking into the woods for a weekend with some film kit, sound kit and a tent.

Needless to say things don't go at all the way they planned and before time they find themselves "Cold, hungry and hunted!". Its a risky thing to have 3 actors walk about a pre-determined mine field of scares and chills, with very little directorial power or control over the camera positions or even scripting.

But here it just works, you feel like a 4th member of the party, you feel like you know these people inside and out. You sympathise with them, you fear with them and you worry for their well being. Tell me how many films in the last 15 years in this genre have done this completely successfully? The other 2 master strokes of this film are choosing not to have a monster, witch, killer, or any ghoul on screen at any time, this allows us as the viewer to make up in our heads what is out there, making up in our heads what it looks like and not confining us with any barricades.

Add into the fact that near the end it also gives you the heightened tension that you are inevitably about to see something jump out... instead all you get is a back to the wall (An image I still shiver over).

The final master stroke is the hype, this film created the viral campaign, making us believe as much as possible that these actors were real people, websites were produced to add intrigue and allure. The film makers even made many featurettes, some documentaries on their fictional witch, in all her incarnations.

This only triples the fear factor. This film gives your mind what it needs to scare the hell out yourself and lets you do the rest. Granted that people who wish to be spoon fed their scares will no doubt despise this outing and people who are not fond of films like REC and V/H/S will have very little interest in this movie what so ever and that's fine.

For me however this film has been and for the forseeable future will still be in my top 10 horror films of all time.