Rarely has there been such a sorry excuse for a movie as The Black Witch Project. It goes without saying that it exists solely to exploit the popularity of The Blair Witch Project, but it’s so inept that it doesn’t even parody that film. It doesn’t involve “found footage,” there’s no trademark handheld camerawork, there’s no close-up of someone crying as in the famous “I am so scared” scene (despite what the cover art implies), and oh yeah, THERE’S NO $%&!$@ WITCH!
Instead, this is a standard (make that sub-standard) slasher with a generic faceless killer. It’s painfully evident that the idiots responsible for this film (most notably writer/director Velli) just stumbled upon a camera and started filming with no script, no technical savvy, no acting experience and no brain to speak of. If this is a student film, then these people should be sent to detention. And then shot.
The story — if that’s what you want to call it — finds some distinctly un-military types on some sort of military exercise (it’s never explained what they’re doing or why none of their camouflage matches). A killer shows up but never succeeds in killing anyone. The end. The scenes in BWP are incoherent (due to piss-poor sound and the fact that everyone talks over one another) and illogical. First, the soldiers are cooped up in a cabin, scared to death that there’s a killer outside, and then all of a sudden, they’re taking a stroll through the woods. And no one tries to leave, phone for help or, I dunno, use their guns.
The killer, meanwhile, is less than intimidating, dressed in black from head to toe like a broke-ass ninja. There’s no gore whatsoever, the attempts at scares are truly pitiful, and overly dramatic music blares at wildly inappropriate times. The Black Witch Project is so incompetent, it doesn’t even last long enough to be a feature-length movie. It runs barely 50 minutes long, and that’s with 15 minutes of credits! (The credits, incidentally, may have a stronger plot than the film itself.)
It’s painfully clear that someone came up with this “clever” title and then decided to build a movie around it. If this film cost more than $1,000, I’d be surprised. And if it did, they overpaid by $999. I never thought I’d say this, but The Black Witch Project belongs in the same, rarified air as the lowest of the low, Ax ‘Em. At least Ax ‘Em tried to have a bit of a plot, and there was some gore and makeup required — not just someone renting a Snake Eyes costume from the local party store. It’s jackasses like the people behind BWP — who don’t respect the horror genre, let alone the craft of film — that make the rest of us so damn homicidal.
