Ohmygawd...it’s...it’s...A PILE OF STONES...RUN!!!!

“The Blair Witch Project,” released in 1999 (the year before the final “Scream”), was one of the most explosive films to ever hit theaters. Made for a paltry $22,000 and largely improvised (the unknown cast members played themselves), the film went on to gross more than $240 Million. It is currently a Guinness World Record holder for the largest movie budget-Box office ratio, grossing almost $11,000 for each dollar spent during production (Guinness). It is also probably the most widely debated horror film of all time. Depending on your school of thought, it is either completely silly and a waste of time, or the most nerve-wracking film ever. There is no one I’ve come across who is lukewarm about the movie. I’m in the latter group, so I can talk with confidence about why it works (for those of us who feel that it did, of course).

“...Blair Witch” is ninety minutes of videotape shot by three young filmmakers in search of the Blair Witch in Burkittesville, Maryland. Their trek takes them into the woods, where they apparently encounter something supernatural, evil and deadly. The set up is that the tapes that comprise the movie were found a year after the filmmakers disappeared. It is fiction presented confidently (and believably) as fact.

“Blair Witch” works precisely because it avoids all of the cliches of those films that came before it (although, some would argue, it created new cliches all its own). By either design or budgetary reasons, the movie hints at horrifying events while revealing nothing to its viewers. Psychologically, it is a harrowing experience because it is all buildup with no release of tension. At its conclusion, I was fairly ambivalent about the film; by the next night, I was sleeping with my bedroom light on, something I have never done, even after watching “The Exorcist” alone at 3 A.M. when I was ten. This is the kind of film that triggers one’s imagination, a place that, King would agree, can be the scariest place of all.

This kind of cinema verité, presented as a documentary, is not entirely new. “Blair Witch” was preceded by “Cannibal Holocaust” in 1980, in which disturbing footage is discovered of a missing documentary film crew. “Blair Witch” was, however, the most successful film of its type; because of this remarkably different style of storytelling, it is essentially copy-proofed. No one, for the next fifteen years at least, can make another film like it without it being an obvious knock-off and summarily dismissed (even the sequel to “The Blair Witch Project” is a more “traditional” horror movie). It is a benchmark film and, as such, should age well.

...and so it goes...

One welcome residual effect of “...Blair Witch” is that horror movies since its release have been more about plot and suspense than gore (although gore certainly does play a role). Films such as “Cabin Fever” and “The Ring” pay homage to the genre while carving their own niche. Not all of these films are respectful; “Freddy VS. Jason” is just as moronic as its title suggests, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, to toss out a cliche of my own.

Critics, unfortunately, are no longer sure what horror is. Films like “Freddy VS Jason” are rightfully rebuked, but then so are the more serious, horrific films. I was disheartened to see critics berate the 2003 remake of the 1974 horror classic "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" because it is (in the words of critic Roger Ebert) "vile, ugly and brutal" and causes feelings of "disgust and hopelessness." “Texas Chainsaw...” is a true horror movie in every sense of the word and, if our definition of art as it relates to horror cinema is correct (to refresh your memory: Audiences consume these films in order to feel something different and out of the ordinary, and to immerse them in the story’s world and make them feel uncomfortable for being there), then “Texas...” meets our criteria and Ebert’s rebukes are precisely the reasons the film should be lauded. Yes, it uses familiar plot devices (teenagers are stalked, the car won't start when they need to flee the killer), but this doesn't matter; the film's slowly tightening grip is relentless and these all work to create tension. When it was over, like Ebert, I felt less than human, but I knew that was really the point.

Why, then, do critics berate horror? Critics balk because they are expected to, because horror isn’t a respectable genre. Think about it: What was the last horror film nominated for an Academy Award? What was the last one even marketed to adults? If you answered “The Silence of the Lambs,” you’re wrong, sort of. “...Lambs” certainly meets the criteria for a horror film: It has a female protagonist running in fear of (and then after) a murderer who likes to skin his victims alive, then sew those skins into a new suit for himself; yet it was marketed as a “suspense thriller.” (NOTE: This is oddly similar to the aforementioned film “Maniac,” in which the killer hangs those skins on several mannequins in his room. Both “Maniac” and “...Lambs” are presumably based loosely on real-life deviant Ed Gein, as were “Psycho” and “The Texas Chainsaw MAssacre.") Apparently, film studios feel horror films are beneath adult moviegoers. It is this same logic that dictates that “Panic Room” (“A mother is trapped in a steel closet with her dying daughter as killers try to get them both!”) and “Deliverence” (“Backwoods inbreds terrorize innocent businessmen by raping and killing them for no good reason at all!”) are not horror films but thrillers, even though those plot synopses I have just provided certainly sound like they’re the former.

Into the Dark...

What will the future of horror cinema bring? Well, remakes are popular right now, as the aforementioned “Texas Chainsaw...” can attest. Another recent version of an classic, “Dawn of the Dead,” did very well at the box office, although it can safely be labeled an action-comedy rather than a horror film. Remakes of foreign films are popular right now, too. The American version of “The Ring” has already spawned a sequel in the States to be released later this fall, and other films such as “Dark Water” (a creepy ghost story) by the same director, Hideo Nakata, are being recreated for Americans. Even Tom Cruise has gotten into the business; he has purchased the rights to an excellent Japanese horror film called “The Eye” and plans to produce the American version, due in 2005 (Guardian Review).

Hopefully, whatever the future brings, cinematic horror will remember to be about story and atmosphere first, and splatter effects last. In a perfect future, they will pay their respects to those who came before them, while remaining true to themselves. One or two genre cliches will be accepted (even encouraged, if done with knowing smile), as long as they can show us something new, someplace we’d never visit outside our imaginations.