The Blair Witch Project

AMG Plot: Combining Hi-8 video with black and white 16mm film, this film presents a raw look at what can happen when college students forego common sense and enter the world of voodoo and witchcraft. Presented as a straight-forward documentary, the film opens with a title card explaining that in 1994, three students went into the Maryland back woods to do a film project on the Blair Witch incidents. These kids were never seen again, and the film you are about to see is from their recovered equipment, found in the woods a year later. The entire movie documents their adventures leading up to their final minutes. The Blair Witch incident, as we initially learn from the local town elders, is an old legend about a group of witches who tortured and killed several children many years ago. Everyone in town knows the story and they're all sketchy on the details. Out in the woods and away from their parked car (and civilization), what starts as a school exercise turns into a nightmare when the three kids lose their map. Forced to spend extra days finding their way out, the kids then start to hear horrific sounds outside their tents in the pitch-black middle of night. They also find strange artifacts from (what can only be) the Blair Witch, still living in the woods. Frightened, they desperately try to find their way out of the woods, with no luck. Slowly these students start to unravel, worried that people will not realize they are missing and knowing they have no way of getting out, no food, and it's getting cold. Each night they are confronted with shrieking and sounds so haunting that they are convinced someone is following them, and they quickly begin to fear for their lives. The film premiered in the midnight movie section at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. — Chris Gore

AMG Review: If you've ever been camping in the woods, you know that a campfire's light doesn't reach more than a few feet into the darkness, but someone in that darkness can see you for a mile. Taking this creepy concept to its extreme, a couple of Florida film school grads turned $50,000 into more than $100 million — proving to Hollywood that you don't always have to spend money to make money. Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez dropped their three "actors" (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams) in the woods with video cameras, providing them with instructions and supplies. By the end of the film, it's easy to forget that these people aren't actually in mortal danger: we really do believe they're terrified. The Blair Witch Project is extraordinarily successful at dissolving the boundaries between film and viewer, fiction and reality. Reaction to the film is often highly mixed, with some viewers finding little suspense in the student-project concept. Donahue's character does become a little grating, and those prone to motion sickness should be forewarned: there is no respite from the jerky camerawork. But even if you don't feel The Blair Witch Project lives up to its considerable hype, it's worth seeing simply for its creative achievement — one that proves that less can indeed be more. — Matthew Doberman