The Blair Witch Project (1999): A+

Ten years before “Paranormal Activity,” there was the Blair Witch.

Like that current ultra low-budget smash, “The Blair Witch Project” reinvented the way films could be marketed. A hit at Sundance, “Blair Witch” utilized the internet in a way no one else had before- by playing the tale of three filmmakers out to make a documentary about a Maryland legend known as the Blair Witch as real, as the found footage of three students who got lost in the woods.

The film is the innovative work of writers-directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, who realize in this film that it’s the unseen that’s truly scary. The same lesson that was so effective in Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” in Spielberg’s “Jaws,” and in the 1942 classic “Cat People,” but is largely forgotten by most contemporary horror films.

But what makes “The Blair Witch Project” work so well isn’t the low-tech scares gotten out of sounds in the darkness, out of ancient symbols, and out of a rattling tent in the night, but the story. A ghost story presented as myth, legend, and as fact through creativity. The interviews at the beginning of the film with the townspeople of Burkittsville setup elements we’ll see pay off later in the film. The story of how the Blair Witch kills her victims. The interview with one Mary Brown, which sounds pretty crazy at times, but as events escalate as Heather (Heather Donahue), Mike (Michael Williams) and Josh (Joshua Leonard) find their situation increasingly dire.

True, when you think about the film rationally, it’s not hard to figure out it’s tricks. (Oooo, making noises in the dark. Oh no, one of the characters disappear.) They’re so seemingly simple it seems like anyone could do it. But could they? Sanchez and Myrick make more somethings out of basically nothing that some filmmakers can make out of everything and the kitchen sink. Because they put us deep in the woods with these characters, because it’s set up as a you-are-there documentary, as found footage of a botched documentary instead of a traditional film, we are in the rough with these characters, and we identify with these characters completely. I’ve done a lot of camping over the years because of Boy Scouts, but this would almost make me not want to do it again.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw this film. It was the Monday after its’ opening weekend at the Tara in Atlanta. I’d just gotten out of summer school at GSU. I figured it’d be pretty easy to get to an early afternoon show. The theatre was packed. The phenomenon had started. I was roughly five rows from the front watching this movie, and believe me when I say, I came out thinking I’d been put through the ringer. This was especially the case after the last half, when things are at their worst for Heather and Mike (Josh has already disappeared), and they find an abandoned house where the Blair Witch might have haunted. They each have a camera. They hear Josh’s voice, but can’t find him. We see them running, so hopeful of finding answers.

And then the cameras fall to the ground.

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