Hey guys. So this isn't going to be a formally written 3rd person review like my album reviews are, nor does it give a plot summary; it will merely be my thoughts on a movie that might go down as one of my favorites: The Blair Witch Project.
I'll admit that I'm not much of a movie goer. At all. I rarely ever go to the huge, 18 screen movie theater just 15 minutes up the street from my house, and out of all the "classic" movies across all genres, I've seen maybe one percent of them, probably less. Citizen Kane, Gone With the Wind, The Godfather trilogy, Casablanca; if you name it, chances are I haven't seen it. So, I'm obviously not too into movies, but being a metalhead, I have somewhat of an interest in horror films, to the surprise of no one. The dark, sometimes frightening character of extreme metal fits perfectly with a good horror film, and films such as The Exorcist and The Shining are prefect examples of this. Those films are truly and convincingly terrifying, as should be a good extreme metal album, and the lo-fi haunted forest thriller The Blair Witch Project is among those films. If The Shining is a film equivalent to a spooky art-metal album (Cult of Luna, maybe?) then Blair Witch is a film companion to black metal. The hazy black and white, bare-bones production, and overall rawness and intensity is reminiscent of a Darkthrone album, and the edge-of-your-seat intensity of certain parts could be related to the most extreme moments black metal has to offer. During the film's harrowing final scene, you can almost imagine harsh tremolo picking and feral blast beats being played in the background. Basically, the overall atmosphere is very metal.
What I love about this film it its overwhelming ambiguity. Throughout the entire film you don't really know for certain what's terrorizing the three film students. Is it something supernatural? Or is it a physical serial killer? Is it the witch herself? You don't know for certain, but to me things seemed to lean more toward the supernatural side. The "children in the woods" scene could be the work of the ghosts of the children killed by Rustin Parr, the serial killer mentioned at the beginning of the movie who claimed to be possessed by the Blair Witch. Very little is explained, leaving much of the movie to your imagination. For example, who crafted all those quasi-religious looking stick figures hanging from the trees? Or that bloody bundle of sticks left outside the group's tent? Who, or what, was really inside that house at the end? Was it really Josh? And furthermore, what exactly happened to the three students? By leaving things to your assumptions it makes the movie something to think about, letting you come to your own conclusions, and therefore making the movie engaging. If everything was plainly laid out, it wouldn't have been nearly as terrifying or even worth more than one view. And that's what the term "terror" means: fear of the unknown. And that type of fear is prevalent throughout the majority of this film.
In short, I dug this movie quite a bit and I'm looking forward to watching it again. But what do you guys think? It is truly a great film or was it overrated? Tell me below.
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