To understand what's driving the appeal of the little horror movie that the Internet made huge, all you have to do is log on.
"My pulse raced, my breathing became labored, and I felt weak. Damn, that was cool!" a 26-year-old computer science student nicknamed "Perfect Tommy" wrote after seeing the independent film phenomenon "The Blair Witch Project."
"If this doesn't scare you, then you're one of the walking dead clogging our shopping malls," wrote "Nordling," a 30-year-old court clerk, who described the mock documentary, which purports to be the discovered footage of three student filmmakers who have gone missing while searching for a witch in the Maryland woods, as a vision of terror "through the eyes of the terrified."
Another online user predicted: "It's going to do to the woods what 'Jaws' did for the ocean."
Every generation wants a movie of its own. Young people embraced "Easy Rider" in the '60s, "Saturday Night Fever" in the late '70s and "The Breakfast Club" in the '80s. Now the Internet generation has discovered "The Blair Witch Project," a microbudgeted independent horror film distributed by Artisan Entertainment that is swiftly becoming the cinematic sensation of the summer, if not the year. Already, its $26,500 average box office take per screen has set records, besting the $22,000 per-screen average of the vastly more expensive (and more hotly anticipated) "Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace."
As it spreads to 1,000 more theaters this weekend, doubling its presence across the nation, the $50,000 feature appears likely to gross at least $100 million, leaving several big-budget studio scare fests ("The Haunting" and "Deep Blue Sea," to name two) sputtering in its wake. Its success has put Hollywood on notice, proving that multimillion-dollar production budgets, name movie stars and huge television advertising campaigns are not necessarily essential; to some moviegoers, in fact, they're a turnoff.
Instead of sneering at the film's low-tech effects and lack of gore, children and young adults are grooving on its non-slick, gritty look. To them, the jittery hand-held camera work that may drive older viewers nuts feels fresh, they say, as does the bare-bones (some would say maddeningly ambiguous) storytelling.
"I liked what they didn't show," said Leo Imbert, a 26-year-old freelance editor who emerged from an 11 a.m. screening in West Hollywood this week vowing to see "Blair Witch" again. "It leaves more up to the imagination, which is more twisted than any special effect."
