Did The Blair Witch Project Ruin Horror Movies?

horrorfreaknews.com

     Given how the box office receipts look, it wouldn’t be surprising if you didn’t know that a new Blair Witch movie released this weekend. A direct sequel to the 1999 film (what’s a Book of Shadows, anyway?), this film followed the brother of Heather from the original and, well, pretty much copied the original to a tee. But it’s been seventeen years since the original, and horror has gone through quite a lot of changes, most of them inspired directly by the first film, so did this new film even have a chance of being successful?

     Horror has a very distinctive timeline that people need to understand in order to get why The Blair Witch Project hit as hard as it did. Slasher movies obviously dominated the 80’s, with movies like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th being the big moneymakers for the genre. After Jason Lives, the one where Jason is resurrected, 80’s horror began to take a sharp downward turn that paved the way for the “meta horror” film: Scream. Taking the tropes of horror and making fun of them, Wes Craven managed to create a unique type of film that was equal parts scary and funny, but this ultimately ran off a cliff after a few years. The Blair Witch Project debuted at the tail end of the 90’s, but another shift in the genre cut off the film's influence really before anyone could copy it. Two new types of horror, remakes of Asian horror (spearheaded by Gore Verbinski’s incredible The Ring) and torture porn (James Wan’s Saw), quickly became the big thing in the horror scene, but as with the others these subgenres dropped off relatively quickly. That’s when Paranormal Activity showed up and brought back the subgenre that The Blair Witch Project started: the found footage film.

     While it seems a little played out (okay, a LOT played out), back in 1999 the idea that a movie could be shot on a cheap camera for what was basically five dollars was an incredibly exciting one. Backed by a convincing marketing campaign, and the lack of a website like Snopes to dispel rumors, The Blair Witch Project successfully convinced a sizeable number of people that the plight of the characters was an actual documented event, and that the three actors in the film were real people that had gone missing. Couple that with the terrible camera footage that could pass for an actual amateur documentary, and people lined up to see it, earning the film a whopping $250 million (about 2000% more than the film’s meager budget). There is no denying that the film was a success, and a good lesson in marketing strategy, but what about its impact on horror? Was the advent of found footage a good thing or a bad thing? 

     The whole debate about whether this was good for film is obviously a subjective one, but it has absolutely led to a sizable change in quality. The problem with the success of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity was that it showed studios that cheaply made movies with a gimmick (usually the whole found footage idea mixed with whatever type of horror was being portrayed) could surmount any critical challenge and still be successful. Thus, you can have movies like The Lazarus Effect bombing on opening weekend, but still making a profit because it was made for ten dollars and some change. My archnemesis Jason Blum’s entire studio is built off of this principle, and has seen a great deal of success because of their devotion to efficiently cheap production. Given that horror movies tend to attract business year-round, Blum drops his garbage on the screen, people show up opening weekend, and he makes profit even if the movie only does a couple million dollars. Genius, isn’t it?

wikipedia.org

"Don't see it alone." How about don't see it at all, k?

     From a financial standpoint, what Blumhouse does is brilliant. Making these types of films is a guarantee of maximum reward with virtually no risk, but what does it do to the quality of horror films in general? Horror has always had its fair share of garbage (more often than not, actually), but great directors like Wes Craven and John Carpenter used to make truly great films that had craft and vision behind them. With found footage, where exactly are these things now? Sure, you occasionally get a Cloverfield or a Chronicle, but those are incredibly rare exceptions. Now any moron with a camera can go out and shoot one of these movies and make a crap ton of money off of a poorly acted, directed, edited, scored, etc. movie, only keeping the cottage industry of recycled crap moving along with no end in sight. But whose fault is that, at the end of the day?

     You can’t really blame The Blair Witch Project, since at the time it was an inspired idea and the creators had no control over what would come next. As much as I hate saying this, you can’t blame Jason Blum or his fellow carnival barkers in the industry who make this schlock, since they’re just businessmen following trends and making a bit of cash. So I suppose the blame falls on us then, doesn’t it? After all, we’re the ones who keep lining up to watch these movies, and thus lining the creators’ pockets with our hard-earned money. And if we keep voting with our dollars for crap, then what should we expect but more crap?

wikipedia.org

This is all your fault, audience!

     Horror movies are a special kind of genre because more than anything else they can elicit a real emotional reaction more than any other genre of film. People love being scared for some reason, and many horror films have been able to do this without devolving into such dumpster fires. John Carpenter's The Thing is great because it plays on true genuine suspense, making us question which one of the non-Kurt Russell members of that station was the alien and keeping things on edge for the entirety of the film. Ridley Scott's Alien is the exact same way, but it also adds the great character development for the crew members that makes us actually give a damn about what happens when the xenomorph shows up. Now let's compare that to some of the more recent found footage films.

     When did we really feel any suspense in Paranormal Activity? Does staring at a static shot of a bedroom for close to five minutes where NOTHING happens really count? How is this even close to something like The Thing or Alien? The "scares" in found footage movies these days aren't really meant to scare, guys, they're meant to startle. They're like those videos of that damn car driving around and something just randomly pops up at the end to freak you out. That's not real, that's a cheap ploy to catch you off guard, and that's what too many of these movies rely on these days as a substitute for real, legitimate terror. Add in a rotating series of unlikable characters and you have an experience that people go to to mostly look at their phones and talk to each other (my Blair Witch theater experience in a nutshell) and only pay attention during the "scary parts." It's a shame that one shot in a movie like Silence of the Lambs has more frightening imagery than anything in a Paranormal Activity film.

rogerebert.com

Yeah, if I was Clarice I'd have quit right about here.

     As much as I’d love to end this on a downer and a call to action of sorts, things are definitely starting to turn around. Indie hits like The Witch and The Babadook are opening up new avenues for directors with vision to return to the genre and be successful. Movies like It Follows are regularly referred to as some of the best horror movies of this century because of the level of quality they carry, and that only looks to increase in the next few years. Blair Witch, the only real found footage movie to come out this year, was a big bomb while more original and traditional horror films like Lights Out and Don’t Breathe made a good bit of cash. That’s a good sign, folks. A sign that we are finally moving out of the darkness and into a new dawn for horror movies, and one that I certainly hope the box office continues to back up. Because what do we get if we don’t support horror films that have actual creative merit?

Ouch.

Hey guys, wanted to give a heads-up on a special deal for my book: This week and this week only it'll be on sale for the Kindle at $0.99. That's right, a dollar for a book! Please take a moment to check it out here if you can. Thanks so much!