Halloween movie scene - The Blair Witch Project

My choice of most scary movie scene is the final scene in The Blair Witch Project. This scene really freaked me out when I saw the film. The whole movie is scary and must have scared the living daylights out of campers all over the World; it scared me.

For those who haven't seen it, the film tells the story of a group of film students who are researching a story about a witch that inhabits an old wood in an American backwater. The students go armed with tents and video cameras to make a movie/documentary about the said witch. The whole film is shot using hand held video cameras which were later discovered by Police in a house in the wood. The cameras were found but there was no evidence of the missing students, and they remain unnacounted for.

The Blair Witch Project created a storm when it was first released, mainly because of the way the film makers had used the internet to spread the word and create an air of expectation, fascination and anticipation for their work. It was an original way of promoting the movie and probably the first film to exploit the internet in this way.

Back to the scene. During their research into the Blair Witch myth, the film students interview many local people who live in the area near to the wood. We, the audience, see some of these interviews. Most of the local people are sceptical but a few believe there is some truth to the story of the witch. When I saw these interviews, I remember not paying much attention to them as I thought they were filler to the film and not relevant. But one of the little snippets of conversation was to become very important and key to the final horrifying scene. I'll just say here that it's not gruesome or anything like that. It just relies on the power of suggestion, simple imagery and a reliance on the audience to have put the pieces together and worked out what happens next. Oh, and they must have paid attention to the key interview earlier.

That last image is so powerful. When I saw it, I was suddenly transported back to the scene where I heard about what was in front of me on the screen and this realisation gave me a huge jolt. There is so much build up to the final scene (maybe too much), and then it's over as quick as a flash. It's a truly great climax, and unlike in some films when I feel cheated by an abrupt ending, I was cut dead in my tracks with only my imagination to decide what happened and what will happen next. I think that is the key to the importance of this scene. It relies on our imagination.

Imagination is fundamental to the horror genre, especially the haunted house theme. We can all imagine what it must feel like to be in a haunted house because we have all spent time laying awake at night, listening to our heavy breathing and hearing the house groan and the bumps in the night.

Like a lot of people who saw the Blair Witch Project, that final scene stuck with me for days later and haunted my dreams for a while.

Looking at the scene on its own now in the cold light of day, it doesn't have the same power as it did back when I saw the film for the first time. I think it may have to do with not seeing the whole film together; there are lots of other scary moments in the film. I guess I'll just have to watch it again, maybe on Halloween.