| Sculpt |
07-31-2013 01:29 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by metternich1815
(Post 953837)
That is a pretty good ending, but, to be honest, I really enjoy the current ending. It still creeps me out. Actually, this film, despite having seen it 15 times still terrifies me.
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You're a gentleman, Mett. = )
I did a little digging, and found this explanation of why the Blair Witch Project was highly appreciated. It makes good sense to me. Is this basically what you and Gigan thought as well?
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Source
The Blair Witch Project, the Mindjob, and the Ending Explained
***This write-up contains spoilers.*** If you haven’t seen this movie yet, do NOT read any further. I am TOTALLY not kidding about this.
The last scene of The Blair Witch Project is, in my opinion, the most ingeniously terrifying and psychologically traumatic scene in the history of cinema, and possibly won’t ever be, and in fact probably cannot be, equaled. The last minute of the film consists of Heather running through the witch’s house and down into the basement, where she sees either 1) the witch, 2) her friend Mike standing in the corner with his face to the wall, or 3) probably both (what she sees is never confirmed, but the camera catches a view for several seconds of Mike in the corner, so we could assume that she atleast saw this). Her screams are quickly silenced, and the camera she’s carrying drops immediately to the floor and records for several more seconds before stopping.
Now, the last ten seconds are something that I will hereafter refer politely to as the cinematic mindjob, if you prefer. The last scene is the culmination and meaning of the entire movie. Nothing that occurs prior to the ending is particularly important (or scary, for that matter, in my opinion), save for one scene at the beginning of the movie that is required for the mindjob to work properly. While it’s interesting to watch the mental deterioration of the characters for the other ninety minutes, the point of this film is ultimately the proverbial kick in the head it gives the viewer at the end. Here’s how it works:
The last scene reveals Mike standing in the corner of the basement with his face to the wall. Why was he standing there? The answer is: because the Blair Witch told him to. No, he wasn’t under her spell. Nor was he stunned, dead, or hanging from the ceiling. He stood in the corner because he was told to by the Blair Witch. Any other explanation causes the failure of the mindjob to occur and, thus, destroys the entire meaning of the film, making the ending about as scary as a doorknob.
Understanding Mike’s behaviour is the key to the mindjob working. At the beginning of the movie, the characters are told a story about a serial killer named Rustin Parr who, decades ago, presumably under the influence of the Blair Witch, murdered a number of children. Parr would bring the children into his basement in groups of two to kill them. According to the story, he could not bear to have the children’s eyes on him while he killed, so he would tell one child to stand in the corner while he killed the first; he would then kill the child he made stand in the corner.
A young child would likely be very easy to order to stand in a corner by a knife-wielding, witch-possessed madman. A grown man, especially one who had heard the Rustin Parr story, would be nigh-impossible to convince. And yet, there Mike stands in the corner.
Enter the mindjob: what could *possibly* be so horrifying that it would cause a grown man to obediently stand in a corner and wait for his turn to be killed? When the viewer sees Mike doing this very thing and pieces this together with the Rustin Parr story from the beginning, the film forces the viewer to ask themselves this question. The viewer’s mind searches frantically for an answer to fill in this missing piece of information, but is unable to find a satisfactory answer. There IS nothing that is so horrifying that Mike would obey its command to stand and wait for death. And yet, there Mike stands; we can see him there waiting to die. The Blair Witch, who, naturally, cannot be displayed on screen, is something so horrible that it defies any sort of description, or even definition. That is the mindjob, the paradox: seeing Mike in the corner, instantly understanding the reason he’s doing so, and then being forced by the film to, in order to make sense of the scene, imagine something that ultimately the mind is incapable of defining.
Because of the nature of this event, it can only work once, and it must work on the viewer’s initial viewing. Comprehension of the meaning of the scene and all its implications must be done within a period of seconds.
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