Finally we reach the end of this series. This week I review two "classics": Nosferatu and the Blair Witch Project. One is one of the iconic vampire movies of all time. The other helped create the genre of found footage. One amazes me for its freshness of vision after almost a century while the other makes me wonder why I find so many "protagonists" utterly unlikeable.
Warning: lots of spoilers!!
So let's start with the obvious. This black and white silent movie is essentially Bram Stroker's Dracula with the serial numbers filed off. Set in 1838 instead of the 1890s, in Wisbourg instead of London, it follows the couple Ellen and Hutter instead of Mina and Harker as they battle Count Orlock, our not-Dracula.
Mostly the film follows the storyline of Dracula though pared down of most of the characters. Our Van Helsing analogue has very little to do.
Harker's employer is the freaky looking Knock who combines the parts of Renfield and Hawkins into a real estate dealer who helps sell Count Orlock a home in Wisbourg then goes mad. Even before he loses his mind, Knock is looks mad and the image of him puzzling over Orlock's mad scribblings invites thoughts of madness inducing tomes.
Hutter seems ludicrously naive compared to his sleep walking wife. I know the original film was done in German, but the translations come off as particularly hilarious.
Count Orlock plays up the disease, specifically the Black Death, imagery with infestations of rats and sickening locals. It's an interesting contrast to the modern romantic tack on the monster.
I found the use of animals in the film be fairly interesting with wolves, spiders and other creatures (even a Venus flytrap) featuring prominently in a way that I rarely see in modern films (though Spring comes to mind).
Getting back to the strange writing theme, Hutter and his wife get many clues (and warnings) about the Nosferatu from a curious book, Hutter finds in his travels that details the monsters powers and predilections. It makes me wonder if perhaps Orlock was summoned up by the stories of his existence.
There also seems to be a psychic connection between Hutter and Ellen, such that Ellen begins walking in her sleep and reacting to Hutter's interactions with Orlock. It almost seems like Orlock can reach through Hutter to her.
Another oddity is that while writing a letter to Ellen at the castle during a day, Hutter comments about two mosquitoes biting him on the neck. In the film it looks like he though they were recent (and not due to a vampire feeding on him during the night). The alternative is that Orlock was invisibly feeding on Hutter in broad daylight.
I also wonder how much Orlock's fast but jumpy movement is the effect of the technology of the time and how much it was intended.
A final odd thought comes from the beach scene, where Ellen waits for Hutter's return. The dunes are festooned with crosses which makes me wonder if they are for drowned sailors or a border defense against vampires. just an idea.
Our finale is reached when the book reveals to Ellen that she must allow Orlock to drink from her so that he ignores the arrival of dawn. She does so and thus he is caught in the first light of day, vanishing into a smoking pile.
So overall this film is good, especially when one takes the age of the film. As an alternate take on Dracula is it invaluable, contrasting so much with the "standard" version that we more often receive.
Gaming Thoughts
Where to start? Nosferatu both gives us many of the iconic vampire abilities and weaknesses (like sunlight) and is festooned with so many discarded ideas.
The beach scene sounds like an awesome idea for a world at war with vampires, like some
Vampire Hunter D based game of monster hunters verses the hordes of the dead.
Psychic manipulation through our links to loved ones sounds like an awesome chaining of sympathetic magic for
Mage: the Awakening.
Then you have the whole notion that this is just a story acting itself out in the real world, if we take the strange book as the cause of Orlock's appearance and destruction. Imagine that power placed on other books? Sounds like a great hook for
Changeling, Mage, or perhaps
Beast.
I've long considered this a gap in my horror watching history. I tend to be dismissive of hype when a movie comes out and can be contrary about seeing such things. After finally watching the Blair Witch Project however, I don’t regret that decision in the least.
The premise is that three college students head out into the woods to make a documentary on the Blair Witch, a local legend. They are never seen again but their footage is found sometime later. As one of the early examples of found footage film, the quality (jerkiness and so forth) isn't all that bad.
We start with a number of complications for our film students: none of them really know each other, they’ve borrowed the department camera without asking, and only one of them has any experience in the woods. None of them have any clue how to navigate as we soon learn. Basically if there wasn't supernatural going on, they would probably have been found weeks later having died of exposure in the woods.
I want to make it clear what makes this film not work for me is that I don't like the characters. They are dumb, they have no business doing anything outside of adult supervision and they are unlikeable. Our leader, Heather, is a control freak. Mike the sound guy does little except complain. Josh, the camera man, is perhaps the most likeable but is incapable of taking charge of this messy situation. Essentially if any of them was less wishy-washy, more cooperative or just smarter this movie wouldn't exist.
The first part of the movie focuses on collecting local legends and is the most enjoyable part to me. None of the legends really tie together. We have stories of a weird mist rising from a river, seven missing children from the 40s, the legend of Coffin Rock with its stitched together disemboweled men, and the sighting of a hairy woman in the woods. Very little exists that suggests a single central force at work.
Once in the woods, the mistrust between the team sets in. Heather is convinced she knows the right way despite obviously veering off wildly. After a night in the woods, they finally find the ‘graveyard’: seven piles of stones. The main filming done, they try to return to their car but get hopelessly lost. As they camp at night, they hear odd things in the woods. The initial sounds don't seem that strange, at least from what I recall of my own camping experiences. They also find three new stone piles around their tent in the morning.
Days later, still lost, they encounter strange stick figures. The sounds get stranger and more threatening. Then Josh goes missing. A bundle of sticks appears wrapped in strips of his clothes, bloody with bits of flesh. They begin to hear Josh in the night. The sounds lead them to a house in the woods. Mike races to find Josh and ends up staring into a corner like the victims in on the tales they heard. Heather is knocked out and the film ends.
So let us ignore the lost map, their inability to read a compass (perhaps the ghost altered it), and the characters' mutual distrust. Why did it never occur to them to follow the stream out of the forest? Streams lead to rivers and rivers lead to people. When I was a kid, growing up in the middle of suburbia and not near anything close to wilderness, we all got some training on surviving in the woods. Did none of them go into scouts or have friends who were? Or read just a little on how to survive in the wilderness before spending what at a minimum was going to be two nights in the woods?
Also there are some simple goofs. None of the characters actually appear that dirty even after several days in the woods. The abandoned house consists of brick and wood construction and is unlikely to have been built that far into the woods. My wife claims she could see lights from neighboring homes in one camera pan.
Normally I'm willing to give a lot of leeway with horror films. but that leeway only comes if the film presents people who are at least somewhat intelligent. I'm not going to fear a supernatural evil whose actions are the equivalent of a terrified vulture. These kids are so dumb I suspect getting through college alive would have been hard.
Gaming Thoughts
I don't really have much to say here. When you see actions this dumb in a game, it is not usually because the players are dumb but because some aspect of the situation or setting was not communicated properly. Like not understanding that they will be several days walk away from any civilization or that they have a survival guide in their pack. When players propose stupid actions, make sure that they understand the full situation.