$ 7.18
This is a film comes with some baggage: the whole “true story” marketing campaign and the insinuation that the events unfolding were not just a film recreation, but actual found footage. The same thing that helped make it a smash hit was probably to blame for the backlash against it. People probably felt duped and there is little else that makes people angrier than feeling like a fool. Other films have used this technique; The Coen Bros Fargo or Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, neither of which were later hated for the use of it, though neither of those films tried to present their movie as actual footage either.I didn’t get to have the experience of thinking it was real; I had heard about it months before the release from other horror fans on the internet who were already blasting as a rip off of The Last Broadcast and Cannibal Holocaust before they had even seen it. I didn’t have high hopes for it.I did see it several times in the theater though, with several different groups of people. Initially I was reluctant but by the time I saw it near the end of its run, at a matinee where only myself and one friend were the total audience, I was a very willing viewer.Some people complained about the shaky camera. It never bothered me. Most people I went with were True Believers. They just knew it was a true story and the footage was real, no matter how much I tried to convince them otherwise. I’m not sure if they were truly fooled or fooled themselves because they wanted it to be true. I’m not sure which is more disturbing: the film, or the people that wanted to believe these three people in the film were actually dead. Personally I would have been much less interested in seeing a snuff film. I wouldn’t have gone to see that.I can’t understand anyone who was angry at the fact that what they had thought was three dead people cringing in terror during the final days of their lives, turned out to be fiction. Seriously, you don’t think these kids families would have had something to say about their children deaths being turned in a money-making entertainment? Come on.But enough of all that, what about the film? For me it’s a great nod to films like The Haunting (1963) and the school of horror where the implied is king and your imagination does the job on you. I’m not going to argue with those who hate implied horror or think its cheap. I’m also not going to accuse them of having no imagination. Everyone has their own taste. Whatever.But I would even include such films as the Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre within the sphere of implied horror. For every shock the Exorcist throws at you, it offers another subtle implied threat. One you have to think about to fully experience. With Chainsaw it’s the fact that very little blood or gore is shown, the film lets your imagination do most of the heavy lifting.Unlike those two films though, Blair Witch does not even share time with more direct horror. It wants to be a mind fueled shadow play through and through, and I applaud it for having the courage to do so…and for me, it works.Its three main characters are distinct, fleshed out, and most importantly sympathetic. The best horror asks you to empathize with its characters. The characters here are not cardboard cut-outs that the filmmakers can brutalize for the pleasure of the crowd. Some people didn’t like Heather, but I saw her more “objectionable” behavior as a coping mechanism, hiding behind her camera and insulting the other characters at times as an understandable attempt to keep the fear underneath at bay.A lot of their acting is subtle and not shoved into your face. In a normal movie this would not be the case. Character moments would be underscored with music and typical film language which would lead the viewer into what to think. Blair Witch is not interested in leading you by the nose in such a way. They respect their audience enough to allow them to think for themselves.These characters do bicker a lot, especially as the stress of their situation begins to take its toll. Their situation strips away the façade of civilization. It’s not heroic or romantic. It’s what happens to real people. Not that it’s all pessimism. Once acceptance has come, it allows for truth to come out in a way it rarely does (Heather’s confession), and towards the end Mike shows courage as he single-mindedly seeks to find their missing comrade. The best horror lifts the façade of the false goodness of the “civilized” person (with its conditional nature of doing for others only as a means to gain for oneself) and shows humanity’s base selfish, frightened animal side. But perhaps buried under that can be found true goodness, or at least some authenticity.The filmmakers present a rich back story in a short period of time. They pull this trick off by sprinkling bits of information throughout the film from various sources of uncertain dependability. They leave you to fill in the blanks, simulating how such legends grow and spread in the real world. They offer many possible sources for the events in the film, never truly settling on any definitive answer. Observant viewers will notice the tales relevance to the story as it unfolds. (the seven missing children from the Justin Parr story coinciding with the characters finding seven piles of rock cairns in the cemetery later on, for instance)Despite the supernatural overtones in the film, there are no definitive supernatural events. Nothing that could not be explained away rationally. Even their returning back the their point of origin after walking for an entire day could be explained away by a faulty compass and the very real phenomenon of human beings tendency to walk in circles when lost.Unlike most films, we can’t explain anything away through hallucinations. The nature of the film being that everything is being picked up on camera, we are not allowed the luxury of that. So, something is definitely out there. Something that sounds like small children playing at times. A bit hard to explain that one away, unless there really is a cult living out there in the woods. Could be. Could be ghosts. Could be human agents. Could be the Blair Witch. It largely lets you fill in your own answer, which serves those of the more supernatural bent and those that favor a more rationale answer. Some people don’t like question marks in their films, so I guess it loses out with that crowd but otherwise it’s great the way the filmmakers have managed to allow the film to have its cake and eat it too.