• About
  • podcasts
  • Shop

Surgeons of Horror

~ Dissecting horror films

Surgeons of Horror

Category Archives: retrospective

Retrospective: The Blair Witch Project

25 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by surgeons of horror in retrospective

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Blair Witch, Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez, found footage, Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, michael c williams, the Blair Witch Project

Transport yourself back twenty years and cast yourself in an auditorium draped with red velvet curtains and matching carpet where the unwanted popcorn had stuck to the floor and would crunch beneath your feet.

This is where I found myself ahead of this massively hyped movie that had allegedly had audiences throwing up in the aisles.

Was this a reaction to the events in the movie or from the hand-held cinematography that the filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez were looking to achieve in order to capture the old documentary style filming you often saw in news reports etc.? What ever it was, Myrick and Sanchez had a lightning in the bottle moment that sent the Internet ablaze while it was still in its infancy, (no other film at this stage had created such a multimedia sensation) and in the process reawakened the found footage genre.

The twenty-year-old version of myself was determined not to buy into the insanity, but as I sat as the lights went down anticipating an awakening of my own. To be scared, thrilled, and gripped in fear at the events that would flow before me. This twenty-year-old was also incredibly stubborn. I beckoned, nay, willed the filmmakers to push my senses to the limit. Yes, I was disorientated, but not nearly to the degree that I had been led to believe, and I found my excitement transported to fury at these whining Americans that were lost in the woods.

To say that I was underwhelmed was a gross understatement.

And yet, something kept niggling away at me beneath the surface.

I was aware of the impact that this little movie had had on the horror industry, an industry that I loved so much. And numerous friends of mine would often talk about the impact that it had on them over the years. Was I wrong to have scoffed at the film so readily? Was there more to this movie than just your average run-of-the-mill found-footage horror?

Films of similar ilk like Paranormal Activity, or Cloverfield would come and go and not resonate as deeply, with the exception of Jaume Balagueró’s [Rec]. It was safe to say that I wasn’t a fan of this sub-genre.

It was only upon a few years back in preparation ahead of Adam Wingard’s sequel Blair Witch that I gathered the team together for a podcast on the franchise. It was during this time that I began to appreciate the making of this movie.

Listen to The Surgeons of Horror podcast:

The Blair Witch franchise


As The Blair Witch Project celebrates its 20th Anniversary, I’ve come to realize that it is a cracking example of experimental horror at its finest. The techniques that Myrick and Sanchez use in both production and marketing were exemplary, and should be applauded.

Whilst some could argue that it feels like a student film in places, (which let’s face it, it was) the direction would mark a new approach in film-making moving forward and open the door for similar stylized films.

With a 32-page screenplay and a trio of as-yet undiscovered actors (Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard) in their crew, (some having to double-up as camera crew) they ventured out into the wooded terrain in Maryland to carry out their vision.

The aim was to guide the actors through pre-decided marks throughout the woods, where they would improvise around the screenplay, whilst adapting to each action as it was given to them. The effect was a naturalistic piece of drama, which made the plight of our trio all the more gritty and realistic.

It essentially became a test of endurance on the three actors, as they were deprived of food and disorientated by lack of sleep.

Throw in the shock ending, which was initially asked to be reshot by Artisan Entertainment for its confusion, only to end up in the final cut. It’s a good job too, as the ending is both startling and unsettling leaving the viewer hollow inside. Any movie that can garner such a reaction from its audience will always be held highly in these writers’ eyes.

The final mark of brilliance though comes in the marketing. With so much back-story written, it became an online producer’s playing field to create and sell the ‘history’ and cement the believability further. In an age where the scope of the internets online marketing capability had yet to be explored, and the mythology behind the Blair Witch was catapulted into the mainstream, coupled with the mockumentary, Curse of the Blair Witch, and the book, The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier.

There’s plenty of good reason that The Blair Witch Project should and still be deemed a horror movie classic, and twenty years on, it is a testament to clever filmmaking, marketing, and that special lightning in bottle magic, that only comes around every so often.

Listen to The Surgeons of Horror podcast:

Director Eduardo Sanchez interview

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Saw – 15 years on

19 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by surgeons of horror in retrospective

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cary Elwes, James Wan, Jigsaw, Leigh Whannell, Lionsgate, psychological thriller, Saw, Sundance Film Festival, Tobin Bell, Twisted Pictures

Strip away all the torture devices and wash away all the blood-soaked, gore-infested mayhem that the franchise has become synonymous for and some of you maybe questioning what’s left? But with James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s original film that kick-started the whole Jigsaw frenzy the audience were treated to an exercise in constrained drama, flickered with tense, psychological elements that quite rightly projected the writer and director partnership into the Hollywood limelight as a result.

Part of Saw’s brilliance comes from the low-budget constraints that were placed on the making of the movie. Once the creative duo realised that the cheapest way to shoot a movie would be to have two actors in one room, this germ of an idea developed into the final product and the birth of Jigsaw and his twisted vision of justice.

Apparently the Jigsaw character began when Whannell feared that he had a brain tumour and pondered the notion of what he would do or need to do if he were only to have a year or two to live. This was the leaping point into the dark recesses of Jigsaws’ mind.

It’s this tightly shot, well structured movie that allowed Wan to develop his technique for manipulating lights and shadow to trick and deceive the audiences’ eye. He would harness this skill further with his sophomore film Dead Silence before working on his masterpiece, The Conjuring.

It wasn’t that easy getting budget for the movie though. With no luck gaining interest from their homeland in Australia, Wan and Whannell tried to taut their project in Los Angeles, but even then had to shoot a short feature to provide a proof of concept before getting any decent interest.
You have to applaud their bravado to. So intent were they in getting their vision made, they insisted on having both directing and acting duties respectively. In the end it took newly formed production outfit, Twisted Pictures to give them their desires and have been behind every Saw movie since.

So with one half of the acting team already cast in Whannell as the photographer with a complex past, the team needed a decent actor opposite him as Dr. Lawrence Gordon, a Doctor with an equally dubious past. In steps Cary Elwes, normally associated with his comical roles but proved worthwhile in this serious performance, more than holding his own and providing gravitas to the scenario.

The masterstroke comes with the casting of Tobin Bell as Jigsaw aka John Kramer, who simply owns his role and has propelled himself into horror movie history with his performance as the disturbed yet brilliant mind behind the various traps and tortuous devices throughout all the Saw movies.

So with the narrative played out with Adam and Dr. Lawrence wake up in a bathroom, chained to the floor with nothing but a corpse, a revolver, and a tape recorder to guide them on a journey that will test their metal and push them to the very limits of their intellect and perception.

Saw would be released in front of a Sundance audience for its initial premiere where Lionsgate picked up the distribution rights and the rest is history.

Since then, Wan has established a firm career in the director’s chair to the point hat he has been given the chance to give DC movies some decent crowd with Aquaman, and Whannell more recently carved his own success with Upgrade.

So for those who may have been apprehensive about checking out the origins of Jigsaw, before the bloodbath began, I’d recommend going back to the original source as you maybe pleasantly surprised by this outing with a clever, psychological thriller that is an example of how to shoot a low-budget movie with a lot of smarts and a decent narrative to keep the audience hooked.

It still stands strong 15 years on and my bet is that this will still be the case in another 15 years.

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016

Categories

  • A Night of Horror Film Festival
  • Alien franchise
  • Australian Horror
  • Best Movies and Shows
  • Competition
  • Flashback Fridays
  • Friday the 13th Franchise
  • Full Moon Sessions
  • Halloween franchise
  • Interview
  • japanese film festival
  • John Carpenter
  • killer pigs
  • midwest weirdfest
  • MidWest WierdFest
  • MonsterFest
  • movie of the week
  • Movie review
  • News article
  • press release
  • retrospective
  • Ring Franchise
  • series review
  • Spanish horror
  • Sydney Underground Film Festival
  • The Blair Witch Franchise
  • The Exorcist
  • The Howling franchise
  • Uncategorized
  • Universal Horror
  • Wes Craven

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.