The Blair Witch Project
E and I’s Spooktober movie tradition landed us on The Blair Witch Project last Saturday, which was a first watch for E and first in a couple decades for myself. My memory of this movie was that it was one of the scariest horror films I’d ever seen, but I didn’t promote it that way to E. Upon starting our Spooktober tradition, E has been on quite a roller coaster herself in the horror realm, going from cannot watch them due to fear to discovering that there is actually very little that truly scares her. Hereditary had me fearsome of the dark for a few nights, but E just shrugged it off as “not realistic.” Thus far, the Descent is really the only film that had her shook, and somewhat regretting the watch, but with The Blair Witch Project, we can add another movie to that list. Even after 25 years, the Blair Witch Project still delivers on fear. Part of the timelessness of it, of course, is the found footage documentary format, and when you couple that with the naturalness of the acting it makes it feel so real and that really prevents your brain from telling itself that “it’s just a movie”, and you therefore cannot relax. As the fear of the characters builds, so too does yours, and that tension is really just brilliantly done. The re-watch was not as scary for me as the first time through, but even though I knew how it ended, my unease and anxiety were much too high for my liking for the better part of this film. E was looking over her shoulder, or afraid to look over her shoulder, for about 24 hours post-watch, and I was maligned for not pre-warning her of the fear levels we were dealing with. But, spoiler alert, Spooktober would continue, so it was but a small roadbump in the end. This was a difficult film to rate, as the execution of the concept, acting, dialogue are all like 10/10 masterpiece-level, but in terms of enjoyment, this falls down a bit for me personally. It doesn’t have the re-watchability of other horror favorites, and it’s quite possibly TOO scary, thus the 8.5 rating from me.
-Z
