`Blair Witch Project': A Fake, But It Clicks

Movie review XXX "The Blair Witch Project," with Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, Joshua Leonard, Bob Griffith, Jim King. Directed and written by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez. 87 minutes. Neptune. "R" - Restricted because of language.

"It's a fake!" shouted a spoilsport at a preview screening of "The Blair Witch Project" a couple of days ago.

Well, yes. But it's an awfully ingenious fake: a "documentary" that doubles as a horror film, as three young filmmakers head off to Maryland's Black Hills Forest to investigate a local legend about a demonic apparition. We're told at the outset that they disappeared in 1994, leaving only this haunting footage of their experiences.

Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, the co-directors of this elaborate hoax, took the audience by surprise at the Sundance Film Festival last January, when many reportedly bought the premise and swallowed the story whole. Even at Seattle test screenings a few weeks ago, audiences were still spooked.

But Myrick and Sanchez may have outwitted themselves by creating such a well-oiled promotional machine that the movie's big secret can no longer be kept. Earlier this week, they probably compounded their problems by presenting an hour-long television special, "Curse of the Blair Witch," that also presented this whopper with a straight face. It may have been too much.

"The result is a mind game made by skilled hands," wrote Laura Fries in Variety. "Sanchez and company have broken the rules with this TV special and with their movie, but to give away too much would spoil the fun."

Some of the fun may already be spoiled, as that heckler demonstrated. There's evidently a Blair Witch Backlash movement that sees the picture as little more than self-induced hysteria. In a sense they're right, but isn't that what all horror movies are?

As a piece of filmmaking, "The Blair Witch Project" deserves respect. Using the most modest means, Sanchez and Myrick manage to tell a compelling story, create recognizable characters and hold our attention even when there's literally nothing on the screen.

Parts of the picture resemble a radio play that's designed to raise goose pimples. Effective as the hand-held camera work often is, it's the soundtrack (and the conviction of the actors) that truly distinguishes this film. We can't help wondering, along with the "doomed" filmmakers huddled inside their tent, who's out there, apparently stalking them.

Heather Donahue makes the strongest impression as the documentary's take-charge director, who keeps shooting footage even when her sound man (Michael Williams) and her cameraman (Joshua Leonard) think they have other priorities. Utterly lost in the woods, they scream insults at each other, blame each other for their predicament, and begin to feel that they're really in danger.

At first the arguments are petty and amusing (one debate involves memories of "Gilligan's Island"). But then their fears appear to be confirmed by sightings of peculiar twig formations and organized rock piles, and by sinister noises in the night. It all ends badly, though not quite in the way you'd expect.

The final images are so chaotic and inexplicable that you find yourself trying to piece together the end of the story, as you would if you really did find such footage. This is calculated, manipulative low-budget filmmaking at its most creative.

Suspension of disbelief may be a problem in the context of the hype surrounding this movie.

But seen by itself, without the media overkill, "The Blair Witch Project" works.