Terror & Torture

The Blair Witch Project is awfully scary; Loss Of Sexual Innocence just awful.

by Phil Campbell

haven't been this scared from a movie since that girl spun her head around and grabbed that crucifix in The Exorcist.

The premise of The Blair Witch Project is so original that anybody who tries to emulate it is bound to be branded not a rip-off "artist" but an unimaginative plagiarist: Three college students set out to make a documentary about a witch who's rumored to haunt a nearby wood. They are never heard from again. The only evidence of what happened to them is found a year later -- the film footage they shot over the course of a few fateful days.

As the discovered footage is shown, we get to know the other students through actress Heather Donahue, who is ostensibly taping a "making of" documentary in addition to the larger project. The students -- Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams -- pile into a car and go shopping for provisions. They interview locals in a small Maryland town about the legend of the Blair Witch. They tramp through the forest. They get lost. They start to get on each other's nerves. They run out of cigarettes. The group's lively banter is soon replaced by fear, hunger, and desperation. They get even more lost. The last two minutes of the film are pretty scary, but it's the discomfort and helplessness we feel along the way that make this 87-minute movie click.

There are a number of reasons why Blair Witch, co-written and co-directed by Dan Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, is so terrifying. First, we know going into it that none of the three characters will make it to the final reel. In conventional horror flicks like Poltergeist, Alien, or any of the Nightmare on Elm Streets, we hold onto the belief that at least one character is going to escape the house, kill the monster, or stave off the evil freak, though the resolution is vague enough to leave the door open for a sequel.

But what are you supposed to expect from Blair Witch? The trio certainly aren't magically transported to a primitive island, where the natives mistake them for gods and treat them as such for the rest of their contented lives.

Second, the camera style is compelling. The viewer has to pay close attention to follow the jiggly motion of Donahue's "amateur" camera work. That's juxtaposed with the steadier, 16-mm footage Leonard shoots for the documentary. After the whole thing is over, it's clear that we are shown just what we need to see to move this movie along. We don't see raw, cutting-room-floor material. I half-expected the sort of beginning found in James Cameron's Titanic, with a character in the present referring to events in the past. In this case, it could have been cops or forensic scientists, somebody who's obviously trying to piece together the mystery of the students' disappearance. Nope. The footage is already edited for us, with no superfluous characters introduced.

Lastly, the horror of Blair Witch is implied rather than shown. Without a big budget, this movie bases all its terror potential on the monster-under-the-bed principle. Is something really lurking out there? As the characters hike through the Maryland woods, the clues accumulate, adding up to something not right. Odd piles of stones, weird noises at night, and unusual arrangements of sticks and twigs all portend that either someone is playing screwy mind games or that something far darker and more sinister is nearby.

The Blair Witch Project is a fine psychological horror movie. I have no intention of seeing it again, though, because I don't need to lose that much sleep. -- Phil Campbell

It's rare that an art film reaches mega-plex audiences, so when one does it should be a treat. But The Loss of Sexual Innocence, currently popping up on big-theatre marquees alongside popular fare such as The Runaway Bride, gives good art films a bad name. A cinematic Rubik's Cube packaged as a meditation on temptation, the film has been the pet project of director and writer Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) for 17 years -- and a waste of roughly two hours that will lead audiences to go "huh?" through the closing credits.

According to Figgis, for every sexual pleasure there is a gross human experience, consisting of sticky fluids and psychosis, sure to follow. Through various intersecting stories, Loss follows three sets of characters -- an unhappy husband and wife, a moody heterosexual couple, and two groping teenagers. Julian Sands, wooden as usual, portrays Nic, one-half of the unhappy marriage and the cause of riffs between the moody couple. His character apparently has no connection to the teens, a story line which seems thrown in because a movie about the loss of innocence needs a token virgin.

Sands is called on to carry the movie by cringing during childhood flashbacks and his present-day adult porno daydreaming. The result is a string of pretentious scenes in which Sands pauses, tenses up as if constipated, and remains silent for whole minutes at a time. He's busy, you see, thinking about his own complexity. Figgis composed somber music for such scenes, complementing the actor's molasses pace. But silence is the director's chosen soundtrack. And, if you prefer subtitles when a foreign language dominates a scene, forget it. The director sees no need to let you in on certain conversations.

If you haven't left the theatre to sneak into Blair Witch by the 30-minute mark, then you're too forgiving. What's in store is perhaps the most heinous art-film torture of them all, a biblical allegory. Two actors who remain nude throughout the film, gobbling berries and showing each other their bodies like toddlers in the tub, are modern-day versions of Adam and Eve. This story line is somehow related to Nic's life. If you can figure out how, advance to level number eight and rescue the princess.

Hanne Klintoe (Eve) and Femi Ogumbanjo (Adam) deserve praise for their lack of inhibition. With a better script and, oh, say, a few lines of dialogue, they might prove themselves well-rounded actors. But their scenes are little more than a Calvin Klein television ad airing at 2 a.m. in Spain; they're trying so very hard to be deep and sensual but only end up looking goofy and forced.

Disappointments aside, Loss isn't without a few striking moments. Cinematography of a rippling lake is used as a transition between scenes, and the tone is occasionally altered evocatively.

The film's sexiest scene, however, comes not from a couple in flagrante delicto. Figgis' theories on sexual instinct and its consequences are finally made clear in a scene where Italian actor Stefano Dionisi notices a woman at a train station while waiting for his girlfriend. The two exchange intense looks, and, while walking with his girlfriend, he passes his phone number to the woman. Sure, that makes him a dog, but you want him to do it anyway. You get caught up in the riskiness of it.

It's too bad Figgis got caught up in making a film for himself rather than one his audience could at least partially understand. Instead he's responsible for the failure of a potentially beautiful film. --Ashley Fantz