But now the popularity of “The Blair Witch Project” has entered its doldrums. Those involved with its creation have nothing big on the horizon. You might be hard pressed to find many people who are still willing to give “Blair Witch” an unqualified recommendation. The piece itself is not without its shortcomings: to pad the movie out to 87 minutes, the sometimes amateurish cast engages in a few too many yelling matches about being lost, about looking at the map, and we detect a thread of silliness that intermittently runs through the whole exercise. The presence of a cell phone could have helped. Instead of having to yell about the map so much, for the sake of variety someone could have yelled out “are you getting a signal now?!”
The occasional overacting can be explained away by the fact that many real people do become a little overwrought and artificial when their friends point video cameras at them. Poor Heather Donahue won the Razzie for Worst Actress, which is a little unfair. Not every actor is courageous enough to stick a camera up her nose for a confession, a sequence that has been parodied beyond number. Part of the criticism leveled against her is probably the result of her being good-looking for a normal person, but not up to the supermodel standard to which horror fans have become accustomed.
I suspect the “Blair Witch” backlash is the result of several factors not having to do with the film itself. It is in part due to audiences who are now ashamed of how effective these stunningly simple techniques worked on them 6 years ago. Other audiences, who saw through the movie’s trickery and realized it was going to mostly be three loudmouths jumping at nothing between bouts of top-of-the-lung screaming, don’t want to appreciate all the craft and ingenuity involved. I fear this group might be comprised largely of aspiring filmmakers who are ashamed that they didn’t think of it first.
But mostly I get the feeling that if someone rejects “The Blair Witch Project” it’s probably because it has become so over-hyped. It simply became too popular, too intensely, too quickly, too easy to parody. It was talked about too much on TV and in chat rooms, where fanboys wove complex theories early into the morning. When the filmmakers came out with “Book of Shadows,” a big budget and reportedly crummy sequel (unseen by me), the public threw up its hands and declared it had had enough of all things Blair. People turn on that which they once loved when the pop culture machine kicks into overdrive. It happens all the time with rock musicians and it can even happen with movies. Just try finding someone who’s still as wild about “Titanic” as everyone was 8 years ago. I’m hoping it will happen to “Lord of the Rings” pretty soon. But, in “Blair Witch’s” defense, it’s probably the best over-rated, over-hyped pop culture phenomenon of recent years. Or maybe “Memento” is.
Finished Sunday, April 24th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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