By Brett Blake How a person will feel about BLAIR WITCH will likely be influenced in some way by how they feel about THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Briefly, my relationship with that film: as a 12-year-old who saw it in the summer of 1999, I was deeply underwhelmed by it. I had followed the hyperbolic reactions and reviews, which got me hyped up for “The Scariest Movie Of All Time.” Instead, the film just didn’t click for me. However, over time, my opinion of it has grown almost exponentially; as I’ve gotten more in touch with the things that frighten me on a personal level, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT has proven to have intense staying power. The notion of getting lost in an extremely remote forest and then being viciously tormented by unseen and cruel, malevolent forces (whether of the supernatural or - perhaps an even more unsettling prospect - human variety) is something which the now-29-year-old version of me finds truly scary. There are moments in that film - the giggling of children in the middle of the night... the distant screams of one of the lost filmmakers cutting through the forest as he’s being tortured off somewhere in the dark - that are as chilling (for me) as any moments in all of horror cinema. But you can’t just repeat that. You can’t just reuse the same tricks, the same gags, just as they were done in 1999. To do a sequel 17 years later which just rehashes the first movie would be a ridiculous and insulting proposition. Luckily, the filmmaking team behind BLAIR WITCH clearly understood that when they set out to make this movie. Yes, on a certain fundamental level, this new film does use the same formula of “young people terrorized in the woods,” but it tries to spin that out into new angles that both give this story its own flavor and also pay respects to the strengths of the first movie. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett (the duo behind YOU'RE NEXT and THE GUEST, two very good movies) are mostly successful at that, even if at the end of the day, BLAIR WITCH does ultimately feel like a louder and more extreme version of the same basic story with a few added wrinkles. The premise - which revolves around James (James Allen McCune), the younger brother of Heather, one of the missing students from the original film, assembling a group of friends to look for her after a mysterious video (which appears to show her alive) is discovered - is basically just an excuse to get us back into the woods, but that’s okay. What ensues is akin to a horror romp through the forest, complete with some wonderful scares and spooky setpieces, but also lacking that extra layer of genuine unease and disquieting fear that propelled THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. One of the biggest ways in which this new BLAIR WITCH differentiates itself from the original is on a technical level; the quality of the “found footage” is at a much higher, HD level this time around (in contrast to the grainy, ultra-low-budget feel of the first, which was shot on a combination of 16mm and video). Additionally, there are so many camera angles this time, so much coverage of the action, that when you cut between different perspectives, it feels more like an actual movie than the singular point-of-view aesthetic you most often get with found footage. We certainly get the POV stuff, but the copious angles give the film a very cinematic feel at points, which is a refreshing at a time where the found footage technique has started to be run into the ground. Unquestionably, the strongest element of the movie is its sound design, which is absolutely spectacular. Quite literally, this movie should be up for Oscars when that time rolls around, because the design and the mix are outstanding. There is great texture and ambience, as well as some quite haunting stuff buried in the mix. I’d go so far as to say the movie is worth seeing just for the sound alone, as it’s easily the most effective and eerie part of the film. A great sound mix is often key to establishing tone, and that’s very much the case here. I can't praise this sound design enough. Where the movie stumbles - and not insignificantly - is in the way it removes almost all of the ambiguity that is present in the first film and its surrounding ancillary mythology. No longer is there any question about what happened to the three kids who got lost in the woods. No longer can there be multiple possible theories regarding their fate. BLAIR WITCH makes it pretty clear what sort of forces were at work back then, and are still at work today. For some people, this will be a wonderful thing, but for others (myself among them), this nullifies and counteracts one of the elements of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT that made it so effective: the fear of the unknown. In my opinion, this movie goes just slightly too far, shows us just slightly too much, before culminating in an ill-conceived ending that most will probably find deeply unsatisfying. This is not as good a film as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and it is not as scary as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. That movie truly creates a mood of abject, hopeless terror that feels completely authentic, and it feels like something that could have really happened. This new BLAIR WITCH is fairly content to be a more conventional roller coaster ride, a ramped-up and heightened version of the basic premise. It is quite effective at what it sets out to do, and there are several moments that are unnerving, but it’s a film designed to jolt and shock the audience rather than truly frighten or unsettle them. To put it another way, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT made it easy to suspend disbelief and buy into the notion that it might have been real, but with BLAIR WITCH, we always know we’re just watching a (mostly) conventional horror movie. It’s a fun ride, and a lot of the jump scares got me, but it’s not a movie that’s going to stay with me (or follow me home, so to speak) in the same upsetting way that its predecessor did.
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By Brett Blake Some will write off SULLY as simple Oscar bait, another Clint Eastwood movie targeting, well, let’s say the more senior members of the audience. Those who take this attitude will find themselves missing out on a satisfying, feel-good tale, one marked by fine technical craftsmanship and a pair of very strong performances from Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart. Detailing one of the more miraculous real life events of the past 10 years, SULLY tells the tale of airline pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks), who - along with his co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) and the rest of the flight crew - pulled off a spectacular water landing on the Hudson River after their airplane suffered twin engine failure. Taking up only parts of the running time, this incident is the backdrop for a look at how Sully navigates his newfound fame and deals with a somewhat antagonist NTSB investigation into the incident. Clint Eastwood’s directorial style can be summed up (for me) with two words: extraordinary competence. That might sound like a backhanded compliment, but I really don’t mean it as such. Actual competence is not something that should be taken for granted when it comes to movies, and Eastwood’s films - some more flawed than others - are always well-made, handsome productions that have real thought and care put into them. SULLY is no different; it finds Eastwood tackling a more crowd-pleasing subject than normal for him, and the result is an optimistic and uplifting movie. Low-key, but very heartfelt and earnest. The film is a tribute to one man’s heroism, yes, but it’s also an ode to the idea that human beings - for all our flaws - are capable of courage and goodness in extreme circumstances. So often, it seems, that desperate situations bring out the very worst in people, but here we have a story about a dire event bringing out the very best in people, and on that level alone, SULLY really worked for me. I was genuinely moved by the quiet, everyman decency embodied by Hanks in his performance, and I was struck by how invested I was in the story’s outcome, even though I already knew the particulars. It’s a testament to Clint Eastwood’s acumen and talent that the movie never tips over into schmaltz but is always deeply connected to the underling emotions tied to the story. Coming after the blistering intensity of AMERICAN SNIPER, it’s wonderful to see Eastwood in a gentler - though no less effective - mode. The screenplay by Todd Komarnicki does some interesting things with the structure of the story; the movie picks up after the central incident has already happened, as Sully and Skiles are being investigated by the NTSB. Then, a sizable chunk of the middle of the movie is taken up by lengthy flashback sequences to the event, which we view from multiple points-of-view: the flight crew, the passengers, the people at Air Traffic Control, everyday New Yorkers catching sight of the plane’s descent towards the Hudson, the ferries which powered to the plane to rescue the stranded passengers... Taken as a singular section of film, this sequence is one of the strongest Eastwood has ever staged, highlighting both Sully’s incredible and singular accomplishment, and also the ways in which various New Yorkers banded together to help. In that sense, the film is actually a great New York movie, and a little bit of a love letter to the city and its inhabitants (Tom Stern’s cinematography presents the city in a very evocative and appealing way). As the titular Sully, Tom Hanks is every bit as wonderful as you’d hope he would be. He’s beautifully understated and extremely effective; he never feels like he’s ACTING, here, and he never delivers an inauthentic moment. Hanks’ interpretation of Sullenberger is that of an ultra-composed, humble professional, and he feels completely like a real human being, one who is not seeking recognition and is fulfilled by the knowledge that he did his job well and didn’t lose the life of a single passenger under his watch. One of the more surprising things about the movie is how good Aaron Eckhart is as Skiles; don’t get me wrong, I’ve always like Eckhart, but he’s really, really good in SULLY, complimenting Hanks’ work with a nice level of dry, restrained-but-sarcastic humor and a bit of simmering indignation over how the NTSB investigation is treating Sully. It’s the sort of supporting performance that doesn’t get nominated for awards, but it would be a very deserving one if it were to happen. One of SULLY’s biggest achievements is that it takes an event pretty much everybody has at least a passing knowledge of and makes it engrossing. It takes conversations in meeting rooms about that event and makes them compelling. It takes your standard “airplane crash sequence” tropes and makes them feel fresh and vital. It tells a story that, ultimately, sends the viewer out of the theater feeling good. In an age where so much of the news and media we consume is dark and upsetting, it’s nice to feel elevated and positive. SULLY did that for me. |
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