Sat 21 Aug '99
Fright Night

IF YOU'RE looking for the most hyped movie of 1999, forget "The Phantom Menace", forget "Eyes Wide Shut", it's The Blair Witch Project that everyone's talking about. Why? Shot for a mere $30,000 - $60,000 (depending on who you believe), "Blair Witch"'s box office takings are already well past the magic $100,000,000 mark in the US. A very good return for the producers, and an example of how cost effective the genre of mock documentaries ("mockumentaries") can be.

The mockumentary isn't a new phenomenon: "This Is Spinal Tap" is perhaps the finest example. But this year has however seen an upsurge with releases like Tony Markes' audacious Welcome To Hollywood set to turn the usual order of things upside-down.

Mind you, "The Blair Witch Project" hasn't succeeded just because of this. Even more spectacularly, it has rode in on the backs of three selling points: the desire for "scary" horror, the saturation of familiar box office stars and an impressive marketing campaign.

Undoubtably, audiences have been looking for more chills from their horror pics. The resurgence of the genre through post-modern, self-referential, "ironic" horror films like "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" has, in turn, rekindled an appetite for the darker, more psychological terror. Now that we have had our fill of humourous horror, we want to be truly frightened and a number of films this year -- both big budget and small -- are trying to do this. "The Haunting" uses effects to recreate the classic "house on the hill", "Deep Blue Sea" returns to the "Jaws" scenario, but adds parapsychology. "Blair Witch" chooses to ape the classic "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" by suggesting it is "based on a true story". All this adds to the atmosphere -- and the hype.

One problem of this summer has been the number of stars appearing in two pictures. A few years ago, it was usual for each star to release one blockbuster summer movie. Now, it's not just that the consolidation of summer releases has meant that stars do double time, it's that it's the same actors and actresses appearing in all the big films. This means that a handful of names dominate the screens over summer. By having complete unknowns, "Blair Witch" neatly sidesteps this, and gives people sick of Hugh Grant et al something else to watch.

Using unknown actors also means we don't carry any preconceptions about the actors. The filmmakers tried to make the film more "realistic" by actually putting their actors through the same ordeal that their characters suffered -- leaving them out in the woods, communicating instructions only by means of drop-offs consisting of food and sparse instructions telling them where to go that day. So when they look tired, hungry and scared, it's because they really are and the audience can sense this.

Not only have the filmmakers created a fake backstory for the film, they've built up an entire mythology. A look at the Blair Witch website lets us see photos of the characters "before" they went into the woods and allows us to peek, voyeuristically, into their lives. Creating a buzz through internet bulletin boards and chat rooms has succeeded in building up an anticipation amongst savvy moviegoers. To heighten this, very few details were released -- just those that backed up the mythology. Finally, when the release day came, it was only opened on a small number of screens creating a "must-see" tag simply by making it difficult to get into. Progressive scaling of the number of screens has taken it to a peak of number two in the US charts and propelled it to international fame.

It just goes to show that you don't need all the trappings of a big budget blockbuster to give both the major studios and the audience the fright of their lives.

Trinity