I was surprised at how much this felt... genuine, even now. The acting is superb -- the kids really feel like kids, in the same sort of over-the-top stilted way that the kids in Texas Chainsaw Massacre are, and if you know me you know how much TCM means to me. It's extremely high praise.
So much of the horror in here is in the audio, in the tension implied by the audio. The woods remind me of the house in TCM -- forever and nowhere all at once. Also similar to TCM is the tension between the natural and the constructed.
"You going to write us a happy ending, Heather?"
Horror movies are in many ways an interactive experience between the viewer and the film. I'm not the first one to say that, obviously, but there are some horror movies that take that to another level, and this is one of them, I think.
If the conditions are right, you become part of the movie too -- you are hunting through the static film, you are searching through the blurry woods, you are listening to every slight sound in the soundtrack. You are looking for the constructed among the natural.
a lot of this movie feels like it's fixated on the idea of why the movie existed. there's an in-built question there, because this is "found footage", thus someone "found" it. But Heather is filming because she has to film. All the kids are filming because they have to film. They have to. Even as they're slowly losing their mind, being tortured by everything around you, being tortured by the endless woods.
"All I thought was -- I had to get it. I had to get it on 16."
Because why? Because we need to see more. Because we need to see what else there is. Because they are kids who are trying to find something horrific, and that has an inherent voyeuristic thrill attached to it. I think this movie is trying to communicate that you too are voyeuristic, that you too want to be thrilled.
You become just as much a participant in the hunt for the Blair Witch as any of the kids are. You are also hunting and being hunted. You are both terrified and obsessed with seeing something that you can put a finger on and say "yes, this was definitely constructed."
You want to see the blood, you want to see if there really is something at the center of all the tension. You want to see, even now, if maybe it is real, or maybe at least it's real enough to freak you out.
Not particularly timely, but I reread Dante's review after watching The Blair With Project myself and found myself nodding vigorously along. His insight that the lack of overt horror draws the viewer into becoming a participant in nervously searching for…