Late to the Party...

Ok.

There are some times, well, often really that I'm just flat-out late to some big phenomena. There will be some national/global event that people are deeply-involved in that I just completely miss. It's either due to a laziness, apathy, or a mixture of both; although it's usually that I just don't care enough to put forth the effort. I want to, but I just don't. Although I will say that, sometimes, missing these events tends work out in my favor. Take, for example, "The Blair Witch Project."

Of course, I know exactly what the film's about and knew it even when it was out. However, I chose not to go to it because I didn't see why people got so enthralled with a movie that, at best, was a pseudo-documentary. I know it was "groundbreaking" in that it was a film made on somewhat lo-tech equipment for a paltry cost (something like 50 thousand dollars? I know it was a small amount). Of course, movies like this have been made since the dawn of movie cameras, it's just that they hadn't made it to mass distribution until "The Blair Witch."

For those unfamiliar, the story is a "documentary" in which a trio of folks heads into the woods to investigate the legend of a "witch" who lived in the woods. Turns out, the "witch" is actually some insane killer who slaughtered a few folks. The unfortunate aspect is that the three people who go seeking this legend are eventually killed and their equipment turns up later. So the overall idea is that you're seeing this hastily-constructed footage of their trip; interestingly, the "documentary" you are seeing is the documentary of a documentary being made. So that's three layers of fake documentary it would appear. And that's the start of this film's downhill slide.

Most of the film seems to be about the filmmakers' various oddities, which mostly consists of them taking an opportunity to say "fuck" all the time and little else. Frankly, I think the purpose of the dialogue is just to provide the actual "Blair Witch"producers to have people say "fuck" all the time. The dialogue is pretty sparse and attempts to mimic "real" interactions of real people. Sadly, no. It fails. I'll give it points for effort, I guess, since the "Blair Witch" filmmakers were trying to be innovative.

The one good part of the film is the attempt to make it look real. I applaud the fact that the producers essentially gave three people two cameras and audio equipment, turned them loose in the woods, and told them to come back in a couple weeks with a few thousand feet of footage. You can tell there's not a whole lot of polish to it and that's pretty much the point. Now, had they attempted to keep it in that vein, then it'd be great. However, the film goes off-course in its attempt to create a "creepy" vibe through the introduction of random props shaped like some strange person; these are "hastily" fashioned from available tree branches, but look too polished to be "crude." Of course, you also get far-away recorded audio of screams and random sounds meant to invoke something much darker than originally thought. Again, good idea, but it fails because it's an old plot device: random scream, investigation of random scream, find nothing. The movie ends up with the group (minus one person who has been killed, apparently) somehow finding this random cabin in the middle of the woods, which is where this "Witch" resided so long ago. The movie ends with the final two filmmakers running through the house and being somehow dispatched in the basement by some unknown force. The final shot is of the original leader of the trio being apparently attacked from behind and the camera hitting the floor. And that's it.

Honestly, I felt dumber for having watched this movie and, ultimately, happy I missed it when it first blew up. The idea is great, but it leaves so many open ends, which means that the people making it were praying that this low-budget "experiment" hit big enough to generate buzz for a high-value sequel, which never materialized. Of course, the film did well and grossed a major amount of money, but a sequel seems absolutely out of the question since most folks didn't care enough to want a follow-up to a movie about a witch/killer in which the witch/killer never makes an honest appearnce on screen. Frankly, with all the buzz, I expected more and it just fell flat. I think a better attempt was made with "Cloverfield," but that was also a big-budget "low budget" film, so it's not all that much better, but it is still better.

I know Blair Witch is fast-approaching it's tenth anniversary. Maybe something else will surface and add more to what could have been a good base to work from... however, I don't have much faith there. If there is, I may attempt to get into the buzz, but I don't have high hopes for it.