Nyctophobia

Are you afraid of the dark? Even if you have nyctophobia you should be able to comfortably sit in a darkened movie theater. Just think of the movie screen as a huge night light.

A brief warning: this will not work if "The Blair Witch Project" is being shown.

Fear is a trick of the mind and this innovative micro-budget horror film is as tricky as things get. Often and without warning the camera jerks across the night sky or a barely illuminated patch of forest plunging the screen in the darkness -- a rarity in a medium where crisp illumination is the gold standard -- and upsetting the audiences' psychic apple cart.

Visually, and narratively, darkness leads to disorientation leads to desperation.

What you don't know can hurt you. And what you can't see can kill you.

Although it has been aggressively promoted by the mini-studio that purchased it at the Sundance Film Festival, the independently produced "Blair Witch Project" is the least well known of the summer's most anticipated films.

It's been called the art house "Star Wars" because of the heightened expectations for it and its film festival roots. Its Web site logged an amazing 30 million hits, about one thousand for each dollar of its $30,000 budget.

The visually grainy and muddy film is the cinematic equivalent of a garage band, a crude yet stunningly pure and elemental act of the imagination.

The story is about three student filmmakers who disappeared investigating a local legend. The film we are watching purports to be their documentary last will and testament -- an account of what happened to them filmed by them and recovered after their deaths. It is without narration, music or linear structure.

It begins pleasantly enough with the three-person crew chatting up locals about a witch who cursed the town 200 years ago and the disappearances that followed over the years.

However, the crew's bemused and skeptical tone and Gen-X camaraderie corrodes during a badly planned trip into the woods. What starts as a lark ends up a vulture. Lost, wet and blaming each other for their predicament, their fear escalates as it becomes clear they are being stalked.

Something unseen is following them. Rocks and twigs stacked and bound ritualistically are left outside their tent. They chase noises in the night, the woods illuminated by the light of their camera but revealing little. Day finds them at each others throats trying to get their bearings but straying further from civilization, panic returning as nightfall approaches.

It is an absurdly yet elegantly simple story that may disappoint and bewilder some for its lack of action. But it will tweak at the neck hairs of those willing to suspend disbelief.

The more panicked the crew -- director Heather Donahue, cameraman Joshua Leonard and sound guy Micheal Williams -- becomes the more the ad-libbed dialogue deteriorates into shrieked expletives and screams. There is a bloodless, blurred, half-seen, head scratching payoff but as the pattern repeats itself on the third night in the woods, it is clear that the story has stalled and the slim premise and modest resources have been stretched as far as possible.

But its power is in its stripped down, first-person presentation -- from the crew's point of view to your cerebral cortex, undiluted by dramatic and visual pretense. The actors actually wielded the cameras. The result is so realistic that some confuse it with fact. It's no help that the characters have the names of the actors playing them. The film was actually written, directed and edited by Orlando, Fla.-based filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez.

As an act of the imagination "The Blair Witch Project" is only rivaled by the marketing chutzpah that turned this modestly mounted campfire tale into the summer's next big thing.

The Blair Witch Project * * *

Cast: Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael Williams.

Behind the Scenes: Produced by Greg Hale, Robin Cowie. Written and directed by David Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez.

Rated: R; language, adult theme.

Copyright 1999
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