What's Out There?

Film Enthusiasts who enjoy a good scare will look forward to seeing the much-hyped new horror film, The Blair Witch Project, currently showing at selected cinemas. This terrifying movie - effectively the story of a witch-hunt against the "forces of conservatism" so vilified by British Premier Tony Blair - is probably the first movie ever made about the day-to-day life of a ruling government administration - but don't let that put you off: it is a genuinely scary experience.

The film taps deep into the fears within our imaginations, particularly our fear of what Tony Blair has called the "small `c' conservatives" (the big Cs are not half as scary) who are suspicious of change and who resent it. The story opens on a relatively light-hearted note in a sunlit valley, with Tony and his Cabinet members delivering a series of homilies on goodness and ambition.

Meanwhile, in the background, we learn that they are planning to make a documentary about a local legend, the "Blair Witch", a sinister lord of darkness living in Sherwood Forest and who is, according to myth, responsible for the hideous misleading of people young and old in modern Britain.

"So far, so mundane", as our own film critic has pointed out - "and these expository sequences are relatively boring, lulling the viewer into a state of complacency - which is soon to be shattered."

Using a shaky hand-held camera for the sake of authenticity, Tony himself plays one of three amateur politicians setting off to track the terrifying forces of conservativism through the country at night. The "actors", who were fed with morsels of clues all along the way, had no idea of where the narrative was leading, and by all accounts still haven't.

The deeper the bright young politicians venture into the woods, the edgier the mood of the movie turns, and gradually they are gripped by a sense of mutual dread. Eerie noises begin to be heard from outside the tent, and at this point they get lost and start to blame each other for their misfortunes. Tony tries to rally his friends with a forceful talk about a "culture of excuses" which tolerates low ambitions, rejects excellence and treats poverty as an excuse for failure, but even this fails to put them to sleep.

Little by little the sense of horror mounts. Tony, supposedly the "leader" of the little woodland group, gets himself and his two companions hopelessly and unforgivably lost. Their forlorn cries for help are heard by no-one but the unseen denizens of the woods. There is not a spin-doctor in sight. Each night, in their tent, they freak out at the sounds of howling and cackling from unseen predators. Each morning, outside their tent, they freak out at the sight of Kabbalistic images in the trees.

The three principals give sickeningly convincing performances as the three scared, overgrown child-politicians, screaming mutual recriminations and descending into inarticulate panic and horror as they realise their end is nigh and the voters are all safely at home in bed. Slowly, ever so slowly, it dawns on them that their fate is sealed, and the horror is worse for Tony when he finally discovers who the grotesque Blair Witch actually is, and what she stands for.

The really inspired touch is that the three politician-actors simply cannot believe that all their modernity - their "newness" and their technology - are of no use whatsoever in the face of hostile nature. They whine that such things surely cannot happen in modern Britain, and sing Rule Brittania as they stagger round the godforsaken wilderness, unable to grasp or accept that within the fabulous civilisation of this ultramodern society they are mired in a dark continent, a tiny, hideous nursery of evil and unreason.

There is much left unexplained in the movie, which is perhaps the way it should be, though that's not what Tony thinks, as he works away confidently at first on his two-week project to transform British woodland, then, a little less confidently, on his one-week project, and eventually, entirely frantic, on his 20-minute project, which is rather horrifyingly interrupted. There is very little in The Blair Witch Project by way of graphic horror or full-frontal violence, but as any Hitchcock fan knows, what is powerfully suggested is more likely to frighten audiences than buckets of blood and gore.

Brendan Glacken can be contacted at bglacken@irish-times.ie