Teenagers have always loved scary movies. Like some sort of cinematic Rorschach test, as we watch this movie, we are each scared by whatever lurks in our subconscious. The filmmakers made a virtue of having no budget for special effects and left everything to the audience's grisly imagination. Directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick drew from canny filmmakers such as Val Lewton and Alfred Hitchcock: People are much more scared by what they don't see than by what they do see. This horror film is more conceptual art and marketing phenomenon than movie. Frequent use of "f-k." In one scene, characters act drunk while drinking beer and scotch in a hotel room. Some of the imagery, particularly at the end, is especially terrifying. There is a scene in which a bloody shirt, along with what appears to be a severed tongue and teeth, comes into view of one of the cameras, much to the horror of one of the characters filming. Groundbreaking for its time - its use of handheld cameras "found" one year after the disappearance of the filmmakers caused quite a buzz upon its initial release - the movie relies less on the outright blood, gore, and violence of so many horror movies and more on a psychological horror and tension that is slowly ratcheted up with each passing day and night of the characters' descent into the eerie terror that awaits them. By shooting in a chill season, by dampening the color palette, the movie makes the woods look unfriendly and desolate nature is seen as a hiding place for dread secrets.Parents need to know that The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 "found-footage" horror movie in which three film students attempt to film a documentary about the strange and terrifying murders that have taken place in some woods in rural Maryland. But the visuals are not just a technique. Much has been said about the realistic cinematography-how every shot looks like it was taken by a hand-held camera in the woods (as it was). These crude objects are scarier than more elaborate effects they look like they were created by a being who haunts the woods, not by someone playing a practical joke. Nature itself begins to seem oppressive and dead. Once they get into the woods, the situation gradually turns ominous. ![]() But the movie wisely doesn't present this information as if it can be trusted it's gossip, legend and lore, passed along half-jokingly by local people, and Heather, Josh and Mike view it as good footage, not a warning. Many have vaguely heard of the Blair Witch and other ominous legends one says, "I think I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel or something." We hear that children have been killed in the woods, that bodies have disappeared, that strange things happened at Coffin Rock. Heather and her crew arrive in the small town of Burkittsville ("formerly Blair") and interview locals. The buried structure of the film, which was written and directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, is insidious in the way it introduces information without seeming to. ![]() All three carry backpacks, and are prepared for two or three nights of sleeping in tents in the woods. black and white camera, operated by the cameraman, Josh ( Joshua Leonard). All of the footage in the film was shot by two cameras-a color video camcorder operated by the director, Heather ( Heather Donahue), and a 16-mm. ![]() The characters have the same names as the actors. ![]() We learn from the opening titles that in 1994 three young filmmakers went into a wooded area in search of a legendary witch: "A year later, their footage was found." The film's style and even its production strategy enhance the illusion that it's a real documentary. It's presented in the form of a documentary. The movie is like a celebration of rock-bottom production values-of how it doesn't take bells and whistles to scare us.
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