71. A Forest &...

Lyrics

Come closer and see
See into the trees
Find the girl
If you can
Come closer and see
See into the dark
Just follow your eyes
Just follow your eyes

I hear her voice
Calling my name
The sound is deep
In the dark
I hear her voice
And start to run
Into the trees
Into the trees

Into the trees
Suddenly I stop
But I know it's too late
I'm lost in a forest
All alone
The girl was never there
It's always the same
I'm running towards nothing
Again and again and again and again

I am not very familiar with the music of The Cure. Until relatively shortly I thought they were a band writing exclusively heavy metal songs. That's obviously not the case and I quite like this song about getting lost in the forest. It also gave me the chance to discuss a horror movie here, a genre that I overlook, both on this blog and in my film viewings.

The Movie: The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez, 1999)

I watched this movie in stereotypically perfect circumstances. I was home alone during a dark, stormy night. And yet, nothing! Not once did this movie really frighten me and that night I slept calmly through the morning! Joking aside, I actually liked the movie more than I expected, but am quite surprised that it has gotten so popular. This is basically an experimental movie that's not very interested in frightening you. I was not surprised to find that Myrick and Sanchez were film students as this basically feels like a project for a class in which they were asked to cinematically explore some film and media theories. It does succeed as that. 

As I said I liked this movie more than I thought, but it is important to note that my expectations were not very high. I am probably one of the last people my age who haven't seen it and that is partly due to the fact that I don't really seek out horror movies. There is not a really rational reason for this, as I've actually liked a lot the relatively few horror pictures I have seen. But I was also predisposed against this movie, because of its stupid marketing campaign. I think even in 1999/2000 I had heard about how this is some real footage of some real kids who went out in the Maryland woods and never got back. I obviously did not believe this and found it a really dumb way to market the movie. The fact that many people were fooled I found even more stupid and flabbergasting. Besides that, if you as a an audience member do believe that this is really some found footage, it is kind of sick to go to the movie anyway. Besides that the simple fact that it was a found footage movie (that had spawned and popularized the found footage genre) annoyed me. In my entry about Bloody Sunday I wrote about my dislike of Paul Greengrass' aesthetic, so you can imagine my dislike of the found footage aesthetic,  which is basically the extreme version of Greengrass' aesthetic. I believe it gives horrid filmmakers an 'artistic' license to remain horrid filmmakers and to not give a shit about a point of view, coherence, story, smart shots, and dialogue. Besides that it is simply stupid to pretend something is found footage when both you and your audience knows you're lying. I genuinely don't see the point of something like Cloverfield. Lastly most of these found footage movies don't even manage to use its aesthetic in a consistent way and at certain points randomly throw in shots and scenes that completely ignore the premise of the found footage. 

The Blair Witch Project actually has valid reasons for using both the aesthetic of found footage and for marketing itself in the way I disliked. This is partly a movie about the creation and power of myths and legends. Or about the power of narratives in general. The three main characters (director Heather, cameraman Josh and sound man Mike) here go into the woods to film a documentary about the legend of the Blair Witch. The nearby townspeople all know about the legend and while many of them are skeptical they are also not very willing to risk their chances going alone in the woods. They have never seen the witch, but heard the stories about. Obviously our documentary crew soon gets lost in the woods and they cannot get out. It is to this movie's great credit that nothing supernatural ever occurs to the characters. In fact, until they lose Josh, nothing that happens to the characters would frighten them under ordinary circumstances. What they see and hear is only terrifying due to their knowledge of the Blair witch myth. Through the marketing campaign the movie creates the same myth/narrative for its (gullible) audience and that is how it frightens them. Once Mike and Heather lose Josh and are sent bloody chopped off fingers the danger gets is no longer myth, but reality. I did find that a bit disappointing. I would have liked the movie much more if it continued until the end with scaring the main characters through mere suggestion. 

Lastly The Blair Witch Project uses the found footage aesthetic to raise questions about what it means to film and to be filmed. Whomever has the camera here has the power. The dynamic of the characters depends on who has the camera and who is filmed. And we learn their characters through what they do when they film and when they are being filmed. Myrick and Sanchez also discuss here the idea of the camera as a filter of reality, a question they probably had (either directly or indirectly) to deal with in every other class while doing film studies. Does seeing reality through the camera make them more comfortable and less afraid of the Blair witch? These ideas would have been much harder to discuss with a conventional filming technique. The handheld camera (and what is being done with it) is vital for what The Blair Witch Project aims to do. And the same can be said for the marketing.