Article: Disaster Artistry - The Blair Witch Project

 

In October of 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary...A year later their footage was found.

The Blair Witch Project was once the highest-grossing film picked up at a film festival. Twenty-seven years later, the record was surpassed by shock hit Obsession. Curry Barker's breakthrough feature arrives at a moment when cinema's future is being mulled over by muttering cinephiles and film buffs. The fragmented state of modern media has posed heavy questions about cinema-going, and Obsession’s popularity has suggested that the kids are all right. Audiences still enjoy munching on popcorn in a darkened auditorium and glaring at the silver screen. But by outgrossing The Blair Witch Project, it feels like a baton is being passed. 

Movie hype has been with us since The Arrival of a Train, but Blair Witch’s marketing campaign defined movie promotion for years to come. In some ways, it set a precedent. Hollywood only came around to the idea that the worldwide interweb could sell movies after The Blair Witch website showed them the way. Before we knew the name and tools, The Blair Witch and its early internet space, rich with the film’s fictional mythology, created what we now know as virality. Reading the multitude of fan theories and extended lore of Obsession that litter social media only highlights the foundations built by The Blair Witch Project and its multimedia assault.

The tagline is perhaps the most succinct way to describe the film’s story. But to elaborate, Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard and Mike Williams head to the Maryland backwoods near Burkittsville to film a documentary about the notorious Blair Witch. They wander around the town and film some pithy interviews with some of the colourful characters before heading into the woods to film the rest of the documentary. Things go awry when the trio lose their bearings in the woods and find themselves stalked by an unseen presence. The collected footage was allegedly found, assembled chronologically and presented to the viewer as the last documented footage of the filmmakers.

The Blair Witch Project is not the first found-footage film. Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is noted as the forefather of the genre. However, it was banned in countries like the UK, and notoriety kept it in stasis. From a release perspective, The Last Broadcast (1998) pipped The Blair Witch to the post by a few months. Yet it remained a lesser-seen curiosity of video stores as the marketing hype attained elsewhere eclipsed anything that feature could provide. These earlier movies never marked the genre aesthetic the way Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez's film managed. No matter the genre, every Found Footage film from Cloverfield (2008) to Project X (2012) to Project Almanac (2015) seems to look to The Blair Witch Project as the main source. Notable successes like Paranormal Activity (2007) and Rec (2007) not only became popular franchises in their own right but also pushed the bar in what the genre could do. Yet as more of these films came about, the mechanics behind them became more “produced”. These later projects are entertaining (I absolutely adore Cloverfield), but all share a taste of the theatrical that affects the immersion The Blair Witch Project provides.

The seeming lack of artifice found in The Blair Witch Project, along with its unique placement in time, still makes the film stand out today. Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez took a distinctive guerrilla approach to filmmaking to get what they wanted for the production. The duo asked their trio of actors to improvise their performances through messages left for them each day. The two camps communicated via walkie-talkie while the actors filmed their footage each day. During the day, the actors were deprived of food.  At night, the filmmakers would unnerve the actors by disturbing them in their sleep. The combination of elements resulted in the cast becoming disoriented, distressed, and more susceptible to the fictional nightmare forming around them.

The blend of vérité-style filmmaking and improvisational boot camp set The Blair Witch apart from its predecessors. This experimental blend of elements makes it the best example of a student film gone wrong. Praise was heaped on the film as a great showcase of creating maximum tension with minimal material at their disposal. But the film owes so much to its cast, who suffer the director's unconventional treatment to become the disparate trio of youths thrown together into a wooded existentialist hell. From the start, the three characters already hold an open hostility towards each other. Mike, the baby of the bunch, is only on board the project as a favour to Josh, in that typical student style. Heather’s upbeat assertiveness is misinterpreted and soon attacked for directorial hubris. Josh comes across as the cool kid who thinks he knows it all.   Perhaps the most horrific aspect of the film is that Blair Witch doesn’t need to be seen or perform any wild spectacle on her victims.  The group lose their way unusually. Perhaps supernaturally led astray by unseen forces. Yet the group's charged egos do little to help matters. The film becomes an update of Sartre’s No Exit. The Witch may be manipulating the woods, but the trio don’t help themselves. They wear themselves down, allowing their bodies to be mentally tenderised for an unseen presence. Remove the supernatural element, and this is an accurate takedown of an amateur film disintegration. The things that go bump in the night are unsettling, but the ease with which these three emotionally tear each other down becomes equally disconcerting.

The cast regretted using their real names for the film. Despite the film becoming a huge hit, none of the actors broke into Hollywood. Their filmographies are scant, with Josh Leonard being the most successful of the three. Heather Donoughe quit acting, changed her name, and became a weed seller. The film was presented to people as a true story, with the film's marketing going through the roof with the idea that all three were missing, presumed dead. The marketing campaign drew a vast amount of critical attention towards the cast, who were both praised and derided in equal measure, while the cast picked up Razzies for perceived bad acting. Yet what makes The Blair Witch Project stand out from its counterparts is the unique rawness that stems from the performances. Although you can mimic the aesthetic easily, most imitators never dream up the same cocktail of chemistry and improvisation the ensemble served. Its cast, handpicked for their ability to improvise, were asked to rely on their wits while the crew of the film quite literally fucked with them in the dead of night. This bizarre mixture of elements hasn't been replicated nearly as well by other films, except perhaps REC. Also, with the thrall of hype and marketing now further removed, the performances are even stronger, despite some of the narrative's bizarre features. Such aspects are best written off as witchy manipulation.

Rewatching The Blair Witch Project in 2026 can have viewers seeing Heather as the original Skyler White (Breaking Bad). Original reviews labelled Heather as an egotistical bitch, whose self-serving personality was leading these poor, harmless boys to certain doom. In fact, Heather, for her faults, was derided for trying to preserve order. It is both fascinating and saddening to see Heather as a prototype for modern female creators now. Watching Heather now reminded me of director Anna Biller detailing her troubles making The Love Witch (2016). In interviews, Biller details the deep scrutiny that her filmmaking decisions faced. I found Heather to be under similar scrutiny. Plot revelations expose the unwanted pressure she was under. Josh and Mike’s obnoxiousness contrast fiercely with Heather’s self-conscious need for influence. From the start, the boys snipe and needle her over little things. They rattle Heather's cage even when the shit really begins to hit the fan. The film points towards the future in one telling moment, when Josh, at the end of his tether, makes a pointed statement about Heather’s love of being behind the camera:

“It's not quite reality. It's like a totally filtered reality. It's like you can pretend everything's not quite the way it is.”

It’s a moment that triggers both Heather and us now that we live in a world consistently filtered through cameras and screens.

The films muddying the waters of reality didn’t help matters. People saw this fictionalised version of Heather as the real person. The relationship between actress and audience became parasocial. For me, the animosity Heather managed to create exposes just how potent her performance is. At one point, she is berated for her desire to keep shooting despite clearly being stalked by an unknown entity. She screams that this is all she has left. It’s a moment that hits home since the rise of incident as media content. Now all we do is document everything that happens to us. Heather's desire to keep documenting the supernatural events around her is now riffed on in found-footage films for now and beyond. Famously, the character Hud, played by TJ Miller in the sci-fi found-footage film Cloverfield, also notably highlights his need to keep filming. A film that would not exist without The Blair Witch Project. And Hud is a far more annoying character than Heather ever was. However, he got none of the hate.

Heather Donahue decision to quit acting and reinvent herself was an unfortunate fallout from the film's release. Finding a female horror performance as powerful as Heather's turn is tough. Is this hyperbole? Well yes. But the infamous apology, where the young wannabe filmmaker's wide-eyed, teary visage faces the camera while grimly accepting accountability for this tragic chain of events, has been one of horror’s most iconic images for a quarter of a century now. And for good reason. Think of The Blair Witch Project, think of that scene. All the imperfect components make the moment so distinctive. The awkward composition, dripping snot and quivering voice make the scene. Every time I watch that monologue, I’m completely immersed. In that moment, I believed her. I feared for her.

But I feared for all the characters. This is thanks to the publicity, which did a great job of creating concern. Now that the media shenanigans have subsided, I still love the rawness of the performances and how well Myrick and Sánchez crafted a one-of-a-kind product of controlled chaos. My favourite example may be from the early vox-pop interviews the students hold with the Burkittsville townsfolk. The interview involving a mother and child (Susan Gooch and Ingrid EmGee) is a wonderfully unscripted moment of serendipity. As an infant, Ingrid actively tries to silence her gossipy mom from telling a scary story in a way that couldn’t be captured if “planned”.  Yet in simply deciding to keep an unknowing child's instinctive reaction becomes the perfect primer for the events that proceed later.

As more time has passed since its release, the film's contrivances are now more obvious. The cynical eye of the present would provide a higher level of scrutiny, especially of the marketing hype. The website and surrounding fake documentaries were unique when they were created. These days the marketing lore wouldn't look out of place on a creepypasta wiki, next to the likes of Slenderman, an internet legend that owes a lot to The Blair Witch. However, the “raw footage” that became The Blair Witch Project still holds water. The filmmakers' use of form sows deeply embedded seeds of doubt. The performances don’t feel “performed”. It's easy to get wrapped up in the fear and confusion on display. None of it works if anyone knew more than they did. Something that feels impossible to pull off now.

The theme that stands out most in 90s American Horror is postmodernism. This ranges from Candyman's (1992) then-modernised commentary on race and class to the meta-winking references featured in Scream (1996). The Blair Witch Project lands at the decade's end as an exclamation point. Scream toyed with the idea that everyone was hip to cinematic lore. They knew what they were watching. Which was part of the fun. The Blair Witch Project shifted things into a different gear, pushing through the fourth wall and throwing everyone into a realm where no one is sure what is real or fake. It demolishes the media riffs of Scream or Urban Legend (1998) and rebuilds horror cinema into something uncannier: A mutated hybrid of urban legend, audience participation, and cinema verité.

The Blair Witch caused a storm on its release and looks very quaint now. Many scoffed at the time, and it is easy to dismiss now. Modern films operating in the same sphere have eclipsed what it did. Just look at Obsession or even the famous imitator Paranormal Activity. But undeniably, The Blair Witch changed the game. Even now, with the marketing removed, something about the film still lingers for fans like me.  The film worked on me as a 15-year-old on my first viewing. That time, I had walked to the cinema via a shortcut through the woods. The film ensured I got a lift home rather than walking back through the woods. But the most striking example of Blair Witch's effectiveness was in my third viewing. I was in college only 3 years after its original release. I was studying film and one of the few students (possibly the only one) who had seen it previously. These other students had heard of the film but had no idea what to expect. That frame of reference was missing. No marketing hype for these kids. The class watched the film on VHS on a tiny-screened, big-backed television. It was that long ago. The film finished, and the audience was silent. Once we left the lecture theatre and daylight hit our eyes, the group began chatting emphatically about what they just watched. For all the conversation Obsession has generated recently, let's hope it still holds the power to have film students debating so ardently in 2050, as my colleagues and I did 20 odd years ago.  

The Blair Witch Project can currently be found on various streaming channels

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Article: Disaster Artistry - Living In Oblivion

Creating art is hard. With that in mind, filmmaking is perhaps one of the most complicated artistic enterprises. Crafting a motion picture is an absolute ball-busting endeavour, often fuelled by chaos, with little fanfare upon completion. At the end of every Filmcast podcast episode, host David Chen remarks that, whether you enjoyed the main review or not, at the end of the day, it’s pretty impressive that a film was made. He’s not wrong. Media creation has become more accessible, but coming up with a feature film from scratch with a full cast and crew that appeals to an audience? There are still a lot of dreamers who pretend it’s easier than it is.

The film Living in Oblivion expertly depicts the frenzied bedlam of low-budget filmmaking. Steve Buscemi plays Nick, a long-haired, wide-eyed director who seems a hair's breadth away from a full-on manic episode. Such is independent filmmaking. As the low-budget project begins to crumble around him, Nick struggles with maintaining on-set equilibrium. The production is riddled with dilemmas that could hamstring a production. Nick valiantly fights to preserve his sanity against a creative world focused on losing the plot, both literally and figuratively.

Tom DiCillo, a filmmaker who studied alongside Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee, is the brainchild behind Living in Oblivion. While Jarmusch and Lee are household names among the dwellings of typical cinephiles, DiCillo had a quieter career. It’s not hard to see why, when DiCillo described making a film as “one of the most tedious, boring, painful experiences, and that just when something goes right.” This became the origin of Living in Oblivion, capturing the madness and anxiety of making a film. This is perhaps what makes the film so enjoyable. While many other fictional “filmmaking” movies have an air of notable smugness (are we surprised when they do so well at awards season?), Living in Oblivion captures the worst fears of making a movie, and does so with a charming, offbeat wit, smart direction and stellar performances. One must wonder if DiCillo dislikes the process because he knows how to nail it.

Living in Oblivion accurately pinpoints the calamitous pain of creating with no money. Its opening segment has two crew members debating the freshness of some milk that has been sitting outside for a week. The innocuous conversation kickstarts a series of predicaments that gradually increase in importance, while Nick tries to capture the emotional resonance of a pivotal scene. The scene in question involves an emotional conversation between mother and daughter, played by Nicole (Catherine Keener) and Cora (Rica Martens). Nick envisions one elegant long take drifting between the actors. The reality is very different. The sequence gets spoiled by various mishaps occurring around him. Lights get blown. Boom mics drop into shot. The shot itself falls out of focus. These events lead to both actresses fumbling lines that came to them so well at the beginning. Nick slowly loses his placidness with each slip-up, then suddenly, due to a small gesture of reassurance from Cora, Nicole finds the emotional crux in the scene. The crew are spellbound as the two actresses hit the scene straight out of the park…Only for everyone to realise that nothing was recorded because the cinematographer, Wolf (Dermot Mulroney), was puking his guts out in the bathroom. His illness? Caused by the week-old milk he put in his coffee. DiCillo’s film captures how easily tiny drops of misfortune swell into disastrous calamities on a no-money production.

If Nick isn't dealing with vomiting cinematographers, then he's contending with self-centred leading men. Living in Oblivion's second segment has brash lead actor Chad stumble into proceedings. The intention of Chad? To hog every bit of the limelight at the expense of everyone else. Chad is wildly obnoxious, creatively reckless, and a stunningly accurate representation of the types of creatives who litter the lower end of the humanities. The female crew adore him, but unknown to them, Chad sleeps with co-lead actress Nicole, who bluntly cools things down before they go to work. In retaliation, Chad begins to suggest a series of useless improvisation ideas to Nick. These are not only designed to diminish Nicole's on-screen presence but also inflate Chad's ego.  Quite simply, the guy is an ignorant prig, played wonderfully by James LeGros. Chad's character was assumed to be based on Brad Pitt, who DiCillo had worked with on his troubled debut Johnny Suede (1991). However, DiCillo squashed those rumours, stating an emergency junket for the film Legends of the Fall (1994) stopped Pitt from taking up the role of Chad. While it’s easy to see why people see Chad as a send-up of the future A-lister, LeGros’ performance is more of a composite of spiteful clowns who invade creative projects and make it all about themselves.

Hell is other people. And filmmaking is something that usually pulls in quite a few people for a product to exist. Living in Oblivion enjoys pointing out that while the film should be the end goal for everything, the quirks and agendas which lie in the recesses of each crew member will gladly hamper that objective. Steve Buscemi has stated that Nick is one of his favourite roles, and that’s understandable. In a career full of memorable performances, this hapless indie director is a role Buscemi shares an affinity with as a performer and director. Seen here as often bemused, bewildered or sarcastic, this is the actor at his best. He revels in a role that has him constantly frustrated by those around him. Be it Wolf’s ego and fraternising, which stops the cinematographer from framing the damn film, or Nicole’s bleakly insecure acting. The performer's anxiety is only being accelerated by the needless gossipy chirps which she hears off set. If you’ve ever tried to put on a production of any sort, none of this should surprise you. What makes the film so entertaining is how keenly observed DiCillo captures everything.  It’s funny because you’ve been there.

As a film about a production going awry, Living in Oblivion strikes a perfect tonal balance. It manages to be both laugh-out-loud funny and painfully honest about the multitude of predicaments that fall upon Nick's production. To top things off, DiCillo even wraps much of the film in dream sequences. Filtering the indie film world through the subconscious mind of those who live it is an amusing nod to the liberal use of dream logic as a crutch in movies. DiCillo uses a unique conceit on dream logic, with the film narrative fragmenting into the dreams of those who inhabit the world. Dreams are a well-used cinematic trope, and here it becomes a subversive fuel which drives each person on set in one way or another. DiCillo plays this all out Run Lola Run style. Amusingly, the final act is one of a dream sequence being shot. This segment is the movie Nick is trying to make. What came before it? Anxiety nightmares of what could have happened? Future apprehensions of what may happen? DiCillo never lets us in fully. The film that Nick is making? The audience is never given a full description. Nevertheless, Living in Oblivion understands the filmmaking process so well that it does not matter. You only need to know that the crew is so tied to what's being made that you are invested.

We don’t know how good we have it now. Filmmaking is so ubiquitous that influencers are shilling guides to how easy it is to make a film on your own, without a crew. You can bring something together in about a month and probably find an audience soon after. Living in Oblivion is a smart, witty reminder that filmmaking, at one point, is more like herding cats. Creating art is hard, and for many, filmmaking is still an endeavour for the ultra-loopy. But to paraphrase David Chen, as I did earlier, it’s pretty impressive to make a cinematic project that all comes together. It seems it’s even more satisfying when said project is about the absolute madness of filmmaking.

Living In Oblivion can currently be found on YouTube

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Article: Belly will leave you starved

Trying to find the right way to start this revisit of Hype Williams’ gangster rap drama Belly, is difficult. Partly because the film itself has one of the slickest openings for a crime movie of that era. Belly’s opening club heist is an arduous and intimidating piece of filmmaking. Set in the bowels of a New York City strip club, the scene is drenched in glowing, inferred lights and dramatic slow-motion. It is more than just eye-catching. R&B and Hip-Hop culture is fully digested into Belly. One of the more striking examples is its use of Soul 2 Soul’s album version of Back to Life, sung in acapella by Caron Wheeler.  This becomes the sonic backing to what soon becomes a violent holdup. 28 years later, the Mubi Film Podcast notes its use of music as the perfect soundbed for the sequence. They are right. The scene feels like the ultimate primer. Something that’s going to strap the viewer in for an incredible ride.

Unfortunately, once the film’s opening scenes play out, Belly descends into a jumbled mess. Belly desires to be a message movie, a mafioso flick, a music video, and the ultimate declaration of black urban culture. A film made by hip-hop, for hip-hop. Yet this production was plagued by production friction. This is clear from its haphazard screenplay, which bounces from scene to scene with only tenuous connections. The clammy, calculating hand of a studio executive can be felt. But Belly has other issues. Something this writer will look to talk about later in this piece. Till then, let’s start with the good.

Belly is astonishing visually. This is no surprise. The film’s director, Hype Williams, is a pioneer of Hip-Hop and RnB music videos. The memes of 90s rap videos and how they look? It’s pretty much all down to him. Originally a graffiti artist in his own right, Williams’ bold style was influenced by artists such as Basquiat. Taking his visual artistry towards the world of narrative film makes Belly stand out against many of the “hood” movies of the era. Even now, the film feels unique.  In films in which every shot could be a painting, with Belly, many shots could grace an album cover. The strip-club heist takes most of the plaudits. However, more should be said about the scene almost immediately afterwards, set in Tommy’s home. The blacks of the gang’s outfits are contrasted against the whites of the walls. Layered upon this are the black and white paintings of black women, which are hung above the characters. The beauty of the compositions is contrasted against the crass, egoistical exchanges of the men within the scene.

Belly doesn’t muck around when it comes to visual distinction. Tommy’s black and white apartment becomes a great visual representation of how Tommy sees the world at that point. Sincere’s home is gracefully blessed with woody, naturalistic tones which are acutely attuned to that character. Taral Hicks, who plays Tommy’s girlfriend Kisha, is often bathed in electric blue, which could have signalled an emotional resonance to that character, but may only be used because Hicks looks incredibly sexy in that light while wearing only white laced lingerie. Although the treatment of female characters highlights an issue with Belly’s blase attitude towards women. Before Williams, black actors were plagued by muddy representations of themselves on film due to colour tones, and lighting was balanced for their white counterparts. Williams set a precedent in how black skin is captured on film. Utilising items like baby oil to reflect the skin correctly in the highlights. Acclaimed director Barry Jenkins has stated that Belly was a strong influence on how the filmmaker works visually. Williams’ formalism is of high artistry. He knows what looks good. Belly is a perfect distillation of his visual form.

But what of the script? Has anyone noticed this piece has danced around Belly’s plot? Barely offering a small morsel of a synopsis to nibble on? It is the film's screenplay (and the editing of said screenplay) which breaks Belly. Nas plays Sincere, who robs banks with his long-time partner in crime, Tommy Bunds (DMX). After one huge strip club heist (mentioned earlier), Sincere debates whether he wishes to continue living the life. Tommy, on the other hand, has his head turned by a Jamaican gangster who wishes to deal drugs in Nebraska for some reason. Tommy’s blunt view of the world has him up sticks from New York to sell drugs in Middle America, while Sincere begins to flirt with the idea of moving to Africa. Although this dream pops into the film rather suddenly. There are some wispy thin subplots involving the two men’s girlfriends. The film introduces hitmen, espionage and double crossing of some kind. However, much of the film’s narrative is wrapped up in a screenplay that feels both unfinished and gutted. The connective tissue that should guide a viewer is missing, while the film’s visuals seem to be used to paper over the cracks.   

The film suffers from similar criticisms which have been aimed at masterful mafioso films like The Godfather (1972) or Goodfellas (1990). Williams’ film glorifies “the life”, and the visuals are a key part of the seduction. But the likes of Scorsese and Coppola have well drawn and complex plot strands to contrast with the surface glare. Hype Williams can’t plumb similar depths. Late in the film, a newly introduced character performs a literal sermon to another character, set on New Year's Eve 1999, denouncing certain ills of black culture that have been displayed within Belly’s story. It’s out of the packet, on the nose and more than a little naïve. The women in the story are objectified, Drugs and fast cash are embraced, and Black men live the stereotypical gangland lifestyle heard in hundreds of rap albums. Yet Belly’s sudden moral stance on what has happened before is not well integrated into the narrative. Is there anything wrong with Taral Hicks looking stunning in white underwear? Not at all. Especially in the way Williams captures her. But the film does little else but this. It’s a character without agency, seemingly around to be looked at, while her partner cheats on her (in one of many badly developed subplots) before being targeted for Tommy’s crimes. Speaking of which, Tommy shows himself to be a literal predator of minors. Does the film provide any strong commentary on this? Does it truly denounce it? Not really. How it slips by feels sickly when watching with 2026 eyes.

Belly’s leftfield turn into moralising doesn’t come from a “holier than thou” place. There’s no egregious academic pomposity here. Belly isn’t just considered a FUBU film for no reason. Its use of rappers and RnB singers as main cast members doesn’t feel like corporate synergy. This is apparent from the film’s opening moments before the iconic heist. This moody intro scene has DMX’s Tommy preparing for the strip club heist. His gravel-laden voice hovers over the images. Narrating some of the film’s themes in rhyme. Vocally, it feels lifted directly from the Prayer skits that appear on DMX’s first three albums. The use of DMX in this opening segment, as well as his overall casting, is a smart decision from Williams. The tragic personal life and desire for redemption bled into the late Earl Simmons’ music. The combination of semi-auto biographical persona and Belly’s attempts at moral convictions gel well. As cliché as this may sound, it’s clear that Williams wants to have “the streets talking” as opposed to any fakery.  The same can be said of the casting of legendary rapper Nas as Sincere. DMX fares better in his performance due to his kinetic energy. Nas looks and feels out of his element as an actor. But one suspects that if you picked any of either artist’s albums, you’d see Williams trying to filter the words they spit on wax and transfer it to screen.

As Iconic as these two legends of hip-hop are, simply having them as leads is not enough to provide the substance which is sorely lacking within Belly. Neither artist carries the film well, while the screenplay lacks the key foundations which would make much of Belly credible. Bunds and Sincere are self-referenced as Butch and Sundance, but rewatch the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. You believe the Newman/Redford relationship is not only based on their chemistry, but also because the film spends time with the two of them together. If Nas and DMX were stronger actors, Belly could get away with the two being separated in the film for so long, but it really can’t. The central idea of this duo having such a cemented friendship doesn’t hold water.  They’re apart for too long, and when they do interact, the relationship holds no intimacy.

This coincides with another issue of the film. Belly is neither surrealist nor based in magical realism. There’s no dream logic here. This is a film meddled with by its studio. The cast didn’t help matters. They turned up high, drunk or late. All the while, the visionary director is doing what he can to maintain a semblance of control, working semi-guerrilla style at various points. And it shows. The film feels muddy and jumbled. And the grand statements it wants to express aren’t the reason behind this. Everything comes down to the simple fact that whatever needed to be put in place to make narrative sense is clearly missing. Unlike, say, David Lynch or even Harmony Korine’s Gummo (1997), which the film overtly namechecks, Belly can’t articulate the emotional resonance it desires.  Not because it wasn't aiming to fly high, but because it was clipped at the wings.

Supporters of Belly are extremely passionate about the movie and are snippy about the critical reaction towards it. But I find myself agreeing with what the reviewers saw. It’s the kind of movie that such writers fear from Music video directors: A visually ambitious feature hampered by a cannibalised screenplay and weak performances. Something that plays out like a 90-minute music video.  Williams hasn’t seen a transition or bold composition he doesn’t love, but his visual ambitions continuously stumble upon a quagmire of narrative. The film casts a lustful eye over how things look, but never on how characters and scenes intersect. Williams has not followed Belly with a second feature. This is a shame. One wonders what the man could do without the shackles, less meddling, and a full script.

Article: Thirst Trap left me parched.

Thematically, Thirst Trap is the kind of film that’s right up my alley. Dedicated to the “lost souls of Hollywood”, the film is a low-key thriller in which a failing actress, now a cam-girl, finds herself the target of a sinister stalker who has designs to murder her once the two finally meet. In terms of execution, however, Thirst Trap is a film that says the right things about the trappings of modern-day sex work but is so blunt in its message that it lacks any penetration. Film critic Stephanie Malone’s positive review of the film states that there aren’t enough films that refuse to demonise sex workers, and that films which tackle the world of online sex workers are rare. While it’s true that there isn’t a truckload of such films, the ones that concern online sex work, or have tangential themes, are executed far more substantially. 

Thirst Trap begins like a character piece. Grace Gordon plays Riley Ann, who addresses the audience head-on, breaking the fourth wall, detailing how she operates. Due to her struggles finding acting work, Riley Ann turns to camming to pay bills. She happily obtains the honest bucks from her male followers and fans. Riley's efforts to find acting jobs are highlighted in scenes with dismissive female movie executives.  Her fight to maintain a sense of balance in her work life gets lost as the film breaks off into a more conventional thriller with Riley trying to expose her anonymous stalker who watches her every move. 

While films with online sex work as the focus are perhaps not of the highest volume, that’s not to say there haven’t been entries. Numa Perrier’s Jezebel (2019) covers much of the same ground Thirst Trap touches on. However, Perrier's film uses themes of race and class to give its narrative more sensitivity. Jezebel may not be a genre piece, but it utilises the same subject matter with more earnestness, providing a richer viewing experience than Thirst Trap. King Kelly (2012) has a fame hungry teen Kelly webcamming and filming the extreme events of her life to earn c, while the chaos of her choices explodes around her. King Kelly is not a film for everyone; however, Andrew Neel's film becomes a poignant character piece once it cuts through its anarchy. However, its frantic, filmed-on-a-phone style is the perfect foil for Kelly’s fourth-wall breaking. The chaos the film inhabits quickly ensnares a viewer while also highlighting its protagonist’s troubled friendship and family dynamics. 2020s’ Sweat may not be explicitly about sex work; it accurately nails down the performative nature of social media as well as its under-researched dangers. The psychological thriller Cam (2018), mentioned by Malone in her Thirst Trap piece, is perhaps the feature which gets to grips with the issue of identity and consent around sex work. Isa Mazzei's tac-sharp script and Madeline Brewer’s kinetic performance work well in showing female intimacy and identity being dismantled via big tech and social media.  It also highlights the grind of today’s sex work: a relentless world of hyper-competitiveness and continuous one-upmanship, which gambles high reward on a fragile foundation. 

Thirst Trap wishes to be as effective as other films that have women confined within the world of modern sex work. However, director Chantal Massuh only skims the surface of the industry. While the film should be commended for its grassroots budget (with a chunk of the finance stemming from Massuh’s own cam girl work), Thirst Trap would benefit from a stronger screenplay and deeper characterisation. Massuh is smart enough not to leave Gordon’s Riley hanging out to dry as a piece of female titillation for male viewers to gorp at. Even when Riley parades around in lingerie and swimsuits, there's enough distance between audience and lead to never feel leery or exploitative. 

That said, Thirst Trap never feels strong enough in its conviction. It’s a film that name-checks the male gaze in the same way many on social media have picked up therapy speak. While the film never centres men, Massuh never really gets to grips with anything challenging to say about their supposed omnipresence. A short outdoor sequence has Riley observing a sex worker being abused by her pimp. However, the fact that the aggressor is a woman feels counterintuitive and lacks the contrast to modern cam girls who can often work independently from such men. A later scene has Renee, a stripper friend of Riley's, stay over to escape her current man troubles. The interaction between the two before Riley swiftly convinces Renee into a duo cam role is annoyingly rote. They sigh, tut and eye roll about men, but what is about the problematic men they encounter provides no real provocation. One could see both scenes mentioned being far more effective in other features, with a director like Sean Baker springing to mind. Massuh hints at a more provocative picture, with scenes of Riley fighting the validation that online clout brings, yet it never hits as hard as in the likes of Sweat or Cam. It doesn’t help that the film’s antagonist, as despicable as he soon becomes, isn’t particularly scary. The film never makes him the suffocating personification of the men Riley works to turn on.  

“I always feel disposable in this town”, an angst-ridden Riley explains, and while an obvious statement, it’s a very truthful one. The online world is a cruel and merciless beast, and Thirst Trap shows the grimness of the web melding with real life a couple of times. However, the sense of conviction seen in other examples never comes to fruition. The churn of online sex work is never truly established, with Thirst Trap never really highlighting the toll that such a line of work can take. Massuh knows the uncompromising nature of this life. The low budget has Thirst Trap constrained to one apartment block. Whether consciously or not, this is a strong decision, as it exposes one of the biggest symptoms of working from home: the inability to unplug. But despite this, Thirst Trap never really becomes the struggle that it suggests. Massuh does well not to glamourise a difficult and often misunderstood job, but she never makes it as acutely unsettling as the few other examples in its wheelhouse either. 

Thirst Trap is available to via Prime Video and Tubi

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Article: Procedural - Cure (1997)

Some of the best horror is effective because of how the uncanny quietly seeps into the mundane. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is masterful in injecting the eerie into the everyday. Pulse (2001) prophesies a world of deadly loneliness and makes the loss of connection commonplace, with characters quietly succumbing to the “ghost in the machine” once the internet's grip takes hold. Creepy (2016) has its antagonist distressingly abuse the social contract of neighbours in a manner which films like Speak No Evil (2022) riffed on years later. With Creepy, hidden rooms, sedative drugs and corpses become the order of the day, simply due to discreet manipulation of people’s obligatory requirements of “being nice”. Cure (1997) was released 2 years after David Fincher’s deeply pessimistic Seven (1995). However, Kurosawa’s enigmatic feature plunges us into a discomfort that crawls deeper under the skin. The frostiness which inhabits Cure is illustrated in its “middle distance” visuals. There are rarely any close-ups employed to humanise the story’s characters. Isolation is the name of the game here. Dissociation rips through regular people in Cure with a steeper potency than the deranged pseudo-religious crimes of John Doe. The crimes in Seven can be isolated, pinpointed and despite the repercussions, somewhat contained.  In Cure, it’s suggested that transgressions that occur will have no end. That what conspires may spread like a virus, quietly destroying the unassuming nature of its victims. This leaves them with a terrifying outcome and no idea of how such violence came about.

Kenichi Takabe is a police detective who is balancing his troubled private life while trying to solve a spate of violent killings. The murders are puzzling, as each case has the perpetrators caught close to the scene with no explanation as to why they’ve committed the murders. This is despite freely confessing to their crimes with complete recollection of what they did. Takabe is fighting to crack the case while also struggling to care for his schizophrenic wife, who is slipping away from him mentally. Soon it is discovered that each killer encountered a mysterious drifter named Mamiya. Takabe slowly uncovers that Mamiya, despite his extreme short-term memory loss, is the architect of these crimes. Asking simple questions and triggers actions using the elements. Very soon, Takabe and Mamiya collide, with the mysterious nature of Mamiya’s “mission” gradually taking the detective to breaking point.

You meet an unassuming stranger, who disarms you with a series of innocuous questions which subconsciously loosen your inhibitions. Moments later, you are compelled to murder someone close to you. Something you would never consider when your civility is armoured around you. Everything you do to the person you remember, and while you were shocked at your actions, your intentions suggest it was always at the back of your mind. This hideously simple yet terrifying conceit lies within Cure, a film in which its antagonist quietly fractionates those around him through frustration, repetition, and obfuscation. Cure toys with the idea that people believe they’re more in control than they are. With the thin veneer of polite society as the one thing that stops the chaos, Mamiya’s ability to easily remove that layer of civility makes Cure terrifying. We like to believe that we have control. Even when it’s evident that we don’t. Mamiya's actions are devastatingly simple, and the menacing aspect stems from the fact that he doesn’t even seem to know himself how easy it is to arm multiple timebombs. Lit fuses that are primed for volatility because their courtesy is so neatly removed, and the last thing you would expect to be keeping you from becoming a raging killer. By removing people’s consideration for others, Mamiya unlocks a seething repression that lies within the characters. Cure proposes that this violence is always within us, and by opening them up to this brutality, it purges one's soul. They become vessels for a blank-faced missionary.

Takabe is a classic flawed protagonist. His quiet animosity towards his ailing wife, along with his frustrations on the case, slowly blend him into a dark anti-hero, a cop who’s only a couple of degrees from boiling over. The mannerisms between Takabe and Mamiya are in stark contrast, yet the motivations of both pursuer and pursued are muddied and troubling. In the scant confrontations between the two, there’s always the feeling that Mamiya’s quiet manipulation will unlock Takabe’s restrained anger. Mamiya’s mission appears to be setting people free from the restraints of society. Takabe is so tied to society through his wife and job that he’s unable to break free. Yet Kurosawa crafts the scenes of the duo in such a way that we’re never too sure if Mamiya hasn’t infiltrated the fracturing detective’s mind.

Cure plays on the known unknown. Tearing at the fabric of Japan’s well-known social norms of etiquette. Kurosawa primes everything to unsettle, with even the hum of a washing machine becoming something which unbalances the ambience. A familiar appliance which we use for cleaning is now something which rattles the nervous system. While no sequences in the film are executed as grimly as in Seven, the detached way Kurosawa situates his characters manoeuvres Cure into becoming the Yin to Seven’s visceral Yang.

Cure’s ethereal ambiguity and dread make it tough to talk about but absorbing to watch. Every watch gives a fan something new to chew on, yet it never feels possible to get a full handle on the events at play.  Its vaporous nature gleefully rewards you with added strands to any theory you may have, while also obscuring any previous certainty. On a previous watch, I was more certain about the melancholic relationship between Takabe and his memory-depleted wife. This current viewing left me further in doubt, with more reason to question Takabe’s possible malevolence.

Such thoughts bring me to the film’s ambivalent finale, which suggests a possible “passing of the torch” or a previous continuation of events that had never diminished. That the film is happy to leave its conclusion in the delicate hands of its viewer is a strong example of its assuredness. It’s also the best display of the film’s ambiguous power. The final moments remind me of another deeply disquieting thriller: Michael Haneke’s Cache (2005). We’re given a wide shot loaded with information, but no clear explanation of the outcome. If you rewatch both scenes, it’s possible to pick up something deeply unsettling that may not have been considered before.  What makes it more horrific is how easily the threat of violence is lost within a sea of the mundane. Something insidious occurs but is soon lost within a crowd of the everyday, which is how Kurosawa likes it.

 

Cure is available to buy on Blu-ray. 

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