Over the River and Through the Woods
The Blair Witch Project
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It all started off so innocently: three intrepid moviegoers daring to brave the unknown, venturing into the multiplex at the new mall to see the much-anticipated and talked-about movie The Blair Witch Project. Oh, they had heard the rumors - the crowds were huge, the movie was sold out weeks in advance, the terror of the experience (attempting to buy the tickets, that is) had caused several people to have sleepless nights.... But we were not afraid. We had technology on our side; we lived in a big city with plenty of movie theaters. Surely there would not be any difficulty.We were warned.
Even the sight of the line of hundreds of people, snaking back and forth to fill the cavernous depths of the box office did not deter us - after all, there were two showings of Blair Witch, and twenty-two other movies to divert the teeming hordes. So we took our place in line, secure in the knowledge that we had arrived well before the movie start time. Ages passed, then suddenly we heard strange, vague noises echoing over our heads, noises that were not part of the sounds of the crowd or the bad music being played by a local band on the lower level of the mall. Mouths dry with fear, we demanded of each other: "What was that?" "Did you understand what they said?" "I couldn't understand anything!" But soon the horrible truth was revealed: the movie was sold out for that time!
We decided to wait for the second showing, at about 10:45pm. So we stayed in line....
The heat and the waiting began to wear on our nerves. With more-than-human stubbornness we remained, determined now to see the movie. But a sense of foreboding crept into our minds; were we in fact just the playthings of dangerous forces determined to keep us from seeing this movie, about which so much notoriety had spread? We were not to be dissuaded; we had the credit cards and the cash, and this was America, where we had a right to expect the movie we wanted to see to be available! But we were destined never to see the 10:45 showing. More vague, almost inhuman noises were soon deciphered to say that the movie had sold out for that time also.
By that time we had run out of our iced-coffee drinks and were driven to suck on the ice-cubes. The temperature felt as if it had risen to 150 degrees, and it was as humid as a sauna. The crowd just kept growing, and we feared that if we gave up now we would never find out if the stories were true or not, would never discover the secret of the Blair Witch Experience....
A last showing was available, once after midnight. On our last dregs of strength we saw that the way to the box-office was clear, we were next - we staggered to the window, proffered our various methods of payment with trembling hands, we obtained our tickets...........
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Oh, about the movie: of course nothing could have satisfied me after having to stand for more than an hour in the steaming heat and then having to endure bad reggae in an "Australian"-themed bar with a waiter that took about five months to bring us a three drinks (one just ice water) and one tiny quesadilla. Also, I do not scare very easily. But I have experienced disquiet after some films or tv-shows; this film did not cause any such disquiet. In fact, I laughed at several scenes....It was actually quite well-done, though: it really did look like an amateur video shot by three people out in the woods. Which, of course, it was - cinema verite lives! I came away from this movie feeling that the filmakers real intentions were to parody MTV's The Real World - and that they hated the characters on that show as much as I did. This movie is what people like me want to see happen to the cast of any of the obnoxious Real Worlds. The characters in Blair Witch bitched and moaned and whined so much and did so many stupid things (didn't blaze a trail in the pathless woods, threw out their only map, panicked and went apeshit whenever the weird sounds started up, split up when they were supposed to stay together, went into the creepy abandoned house in the dark...) that well into the movie I was praying for the Blair Witch (or whatever) to get them. The final scene was the only one that had any authentic subliminal-terror effect. The shaky hand-held camera technique made me nauseous, and they were intersperesed with many nice, restful periods of absolute darkness, during which I was tempted to take naps. I was probably the wrong person to see this movie - after all, I laughed out loud at The Exorcist.
Copyright 1999 by Andrea Harris
If this film had a deep profound impact on your life (hah!) you should probably get a life - no! I mean go here.
If, like me, you really regret the meal that your $6.75 could have purchased, then here are a couple of sites for you:
The Anti-Blair Witch Project
The Blair Bitch Project
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