Blair With Me

As I've mentioned, I've recently been in the midst of trying to remake my personal "Top 100 Movies" list. As I've been doing this, I've come across a number of movies that I just don't remember as well as I'd like. I have a memory of liking them, a sort of warm glow when I think about the movie, but I can't remember enough specifics to know where to rank them.

The Blair Witch Project is sort of one of those movies. Actually, I remembered the movie rather well. But when I built my Top 100 list for the first time around 7 or 8 years ago, I actually ranked the movie near the top of the heap -- at #6. Beginning my new list by taking stock of the old one, I thought to myself, "there's no way I truly thought this movie was that good, is there?" I decided to revisit the movie and see for myself.

It has become a bit of a thing to join in the backlash against The Blair Witch Project. And it's understandable. This is basically the forefather of the modern "it's real, man!" movies, and paved the way for a lot of later crap that wasn't nearly as well done. I say that can't be held against the original.

But I also have to acknowledge that my original love for the movie was absolutely colored by the circumstances in which I saw it. It might be hard to believe now that anyone was ever gullible enough to think this might be actual found documentary footage, but I'll be honest with you: for a short window leading up to the release, I did. This was part of the masterful marketing campaign leading up to the release of the film. Sure, by the time it had actually arrived and I was getting to really see the film, I knew the truth... and yet that little seed had already been planted. "What if it is true? I mean, of course it's not. But what if it was? How cool would that be?"

What's more, I saw The Blair Witch Project for the first time while I was on the road at a summer game convention, working for Decipher. I banded together with a bunch of co-workers and volunteers to scour the city for a theater actually showing the movie -- it was still in limited release at the time. It had the atmosphere of a "film they don't want you to see," and that made you feel even cooler about finding a way to see it.

Basically, everything I have just described was attempted again just a couple years ago with Paranormal Activity, and far less effectively. It certainly informs why I liked the movie so much the first time around. But can the movie now stand on its own today?

I say yes, it can. I will readily acknowledge that the film isn't without flaws. Some of the character behavior buckles under scrutiny. (Mike kicked the map in the creek? Seriously? Heather decides to go back and unwrap the creepy twig bundle bound with strips of her missing friend's shirt? Seriously?!) Also, while I firmly maintain that "less is usually more" in a horror movie, I do think there are moments where that principle is taken just a bit too far in this movie. (When Heather is running through the woods and shrieks "What's that!!!!", the camera whips to the left to capture... absolutely nothing. Not even a flicker of movement.)

But despite these few blemishes, I still find the movie chock full of good stuff. It's pull your feet up onto the couch, don't go to bed right after the movie's over fun. Josh's disappearance is a chilling highlight, and his tortured moaning from the forest on the next night even more so. (Is it a ghost? Has his tongue been ripped out?) And I still love the ending, in the basement of the crumbling house. It's perfectly set up in the interviews at the top of the film, in that it's just one detail among many that you don't ascribe great importance to when you first hear it. It's a stark visual image that still makes my hair stand up when I see it.

Yet I don't want to pretend that even these moments are triumphs of savvy writing. The fact that the film works at all is a testament to the three actors who portray the doomed filmmakers -- Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams. The "script" for this movie was really just a sequence of events that the actors improvised around. I mentioned earlier that I may question some of their behavior, but I never question their emotion. The exhaustion, the hopelessness, and most of all the panic and fear -- I believe every minute of it. Heather Donahue is especially good in her role, ratcheting up the tension a little more in every new scene.

I should probably also briefly acknowledge two stories from my past that definitely "prime the pump" for me to love this movie.

Once, at age 14, I became lost in the woods at night while on a hiking trip. Alright, to be fair, I was only "lost" for about 30 seconds, and I was within earshot of about 20 people who could have come to my aid if I'd decided to go into full panic mode. So you'd be well within your rights to claim that this doesn't count. But I can still easily access the intense feeling of total panic I felt in those few moments, and this movie can too.

Secondly, at a much younger age, I once had a misadventure in an empty house. I won't bore you with the particulars of the story. (That's code for: "I'm too embarrassed to tell you.") But once again, it's a memory that brings up some raw emotions, and the abandoned house climax of this film reaches that feeling too.

So, wrap that all up in one (creepy, twig bundle) package, and I rate the movie an A- today. I still love it, even though I can now more readily acknowledge it has some flaws. That does kick the movie off the lofty perch it held on my old top 100 list, though I'm fairly certain it will still retain a spot somewhere on the new list once (if ever) I complete it.