scary movie spoilers inside

I had a hard time sleeping last night.  Come to think of it, I was sort of tossing and turning the night before.  I was afraid, you see.

I am terrified of the Blair Witch Project.

If you aren’t familiar with the film, it concerns three film students who went into the woods to do a school project on the famed Blair Witch and were never seen again.  One year later they found this footage.  I’ve been really spooked out by it lately, and last night I watched the Sci Fi channel’s documentary on the film, Curse of the Blair Witch.  Eric had read in Ain’t It Cool News that the documentary did not contain any spoilers for the film, so we watched it.   It started off with the mythology of the Blair Witch.  Then there were clips from the film, interviews with the family, and then the uncovering of the student’s footage.  It was found in a place where it would have been impossible for someone to plant.  There were no signs of tampering, just film and tapes buried beneath a house.

[scripty]
PAMIE
Hey, isn’t it weird that they are showing this thing on the Sci Fi channel?  I mean, doesn’t that make it seem like a hoax?

ERIC
Shh.  It’s scary.
[/scripty]

They showed footage of local television shows reporting on the missing students, details on the search, a woman who believed that the Blair Witch had kidnapped the students.

[scripty]
ERIC
Why did they get a crazy woman to play the crazy woman?

PAMIE
There’s a crazy in every town.
[/scripty]

The footage from the film is quite scary.  Quick moving, jarring, screams off screen– it reminded me of when I saw the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

When the film was over and the credits were running, Eric asked me, “So, do you think it’s a hoax?”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know.  It seems odd to me that a family would let their child’s last days be turned into a horror movie.  It’s not like it would make any leads.  Oh, look at that.”  I pointed at the screen.  “It says ‘cast.’”

“So?”

“Usually in a documentary, you don’t call the participants a ‘cast.’  You say, ‘The director would like to thank, blah, blah, blah.’  And look, right there, someone was in charge of still photography.  There’s another credit for a makeup artist.  That sounds like a hoax.  These are credits for a film.”

“No, I’m sure it’s real.  I don’t know.  You’re right.  It’s a hoax.”

“Yeah?”

“No.  It’s real.  I’m just scared, so I want to say it’s a hoax.”

And I went to sleep, having dreams of running through a forest being chased by killer dogs.  The video game we are playing has you running from killer dogs and zombie nurses and all sorts of stuff like that.  Once my copy of Hannibal gets here, then I can just sit around and scare the tar out of myself all day long.

This morning Eric left to do a commercial shoot really early in the morning, so I was sitting all by myself in the bed when I got that creepy too-many-scary-movies feeling that I haven’t had since I was a kid.  Is it possible that I found a scary movie that could scare me in a way that hasn’t happened since The Exorcist, Halloween, or The Dark Crystal?  I ran to the shower, jumped in and kept my razor near my hand.  I jumped back out of the shower and felt a little silly for doing the scaredy-hop all around my empty apartment.

Why do I like to scare myself?   Is it not enough to put my heart through panic attacks before going on stage, I have to do it to myself when I’m not performing as well?  What is it about the fear high that keeps me trying to recreate it?  Why do I love thrill rides?  Why do I convince myself there’s someone in the other room hiding behind a door?  Why do I read scary books and watch scary movies?

I don’t know.  I think I like how you feel like you’re alive when you’re scared.  Not real scared, but the fabricated kind.  I like the kind of scared where you ask yourself, “What if this was real?  Can you imagine how friggin’ scary it would be then?”  That’s how the show is.  I’m not really in danger of hurting myself when I get on stage, but I scare myself into thinking the worst things are going to happen to me.

I go to Haunted Houses to remind myself that in the actual face of fear I would probably be terrible.  Those places make me cower and scream and I end up paying six bucks to run as fast as I can into dark corners and hide from people paid to dress like a monster.

I made it to work this morning still thinking about the Blair Witch.  I used to read about witchcraft when I was younger.  How come I had never heard of this before?  Eric’s brother was going to school in Maryland right around the time of the disappearances… I know my mom freaked about Austin and the Tower Massacre was thirty years before.

I opened my e-mail and found a note and a link from Cathy.  Yesterday I had in passing showed her the very scary splash page for the documentary on the film, and she apparently spent the rest of the day reading things on the Blair Witch Project page.  The link was for a Blair Witch Project site that tells a lot about the movie.  It told more than I wanted to know.  It had several spoilers about the movie in it.  Don’t look unless you want to know.  What she sent me was this.

After reading that, I found this, this, and this.

And here’s what I feel about it:

At first, I was really disappointed. I couldn’t believe that I had been had. But then I started thinking about it. How exciting it was that a film made me that jumpy and nervous! That hasn’t happened in a long time. I had read that for authenticity they had dropped these actors off in the woods for six days and then “scared the shit out of them” so for the most part, the feelings in this film are real and true. Then again, that could be another myth. I don’t care. I can’t wait to see the movie because I know it’s going to be pretty scary and fun and that’s all I want in my horror movies.

I don’t know how Eric didn’t know it was a hoax. It says right on his Aint-it-cool-news article that he had read that it was fictional. He must have breezed right over that part. Or he was playing along, and didn’t want to ruin my fun. Because I wasn’t sure, because I doubted my gut instinct, I’m excited about the Blair Witch Project.

The Aint-It-Cool-News article also discusses the phenomena behind this film. Harry mentions that he hasn’t seen people go so crazy over a film like this since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

I would have to agree.

I can’t wait to see it, because I know it’s going to scare the crap out of me.

Oh, and you want to know the eeriest thing?  I had finally cleaned up my links page, since whenever I add someone they stop writing their journal, when I said to myself, “Might as well erase xeney.com.”  I took it off, and guess who’s back?  I guess when they drop off my links page they start up again as well.  My links page controls you.

“You sure do get obsessive about things, huh?”

Blair Witch Project info and links courtesy of the above linked sites, as well as here, here, and here.  Oh, and here’s a parody— the Blair Warner Project.