Blair Witch Project (1999)

I’ve actually been following “Blair Witch Project  since February when it  was making the film festival circuit and doing very well.  That said, even I’m surprised at how  far the film has come since then.  It was made with a $60,000 budget and earned $28 million on its first weekend, despite showing on  only 1000 screens.  For the longest time, I was thinking I’d end up seeing it at an “Art” movie theatre this  summer.  Thankfully that was not the case.

My reflections on the film are somewhat mixed.  It would have been perfect seeing it at a  film festival film.  It isn’t a polished film though and didn’t feel quite right being shown  in a sold-out theatre.  As a result, the film  actually seemed much longer than 90 minutes.

The movie didn’t really get momentum going until it was half over, but that last half did have some  great moments of tension.  The use of low light to fill a black screen with only eerie sound was  brilliant and created some nice chills.  However, the audience was a bit dazed by  the rather abrupt ending

During the credits, we were left to debate many questions:  Was the villain in the  film supposed to be a supernatural witch/killer or was the mastermind of the scares really  a group member who disappeared early in the film?  Making the bad guy a former group member would be the much cooler choice.  Rather than having a random psycho, having one of their own friends lead them into the woods to then knock them off would have been much more realistic and scarier.

However, we are still trying to determine who was standing in the corner at the end.  If it  was the missing group member, that nullifies my theory.  If it was the second guy in the  group (the bigger guy), we wondered how he got in the corner after being hit on the head only  seconds earlier.  Movie Magic?

In other news, I need to  see “Iron Giant” this weekend.  The reviews have been insanely good, blazes new trails  for animation and ignores the typical Disney formula (stupid sidekick,  bad songs, etc.