The Cinematheque

“The actors never put a foot wrong; the video diary form allows no artifice, so that as terror mounts, the dread is infectious.”

Tom Charity, Time Out

The Blair Witch Project
USA 1999
Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez
81 min. DCP

Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s Sundance breakout marked a new trend in genre filmmaking, making a case for low-budget productions fuelled by pure inventiveness. The found-footage faux documentary follows a film crew of three as they go in search of a legendary witch said to be haunting the woods of Maryland. Relying on local gossip and superstition, the ill-prepared trio find their paranoia peaking when they realize they’re lost. Once the rustling in the dark starts, there’s no escape. One of the eeriest horror films ever, this structurally simple yet devastatingly effective take on the power of suggestion and fear of the unseen makes for a truly bone-chilling watch.

“As riveting and terrifying a study of fear as it is a chilling reminder of the inscrutability of myth.” Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

“An extraordinarily effective horror film … A reminder that what really scares us is the stuff we can’t see.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

preceded by

Under Land
(Tierra encima)
Colombia 2024
Sebastián Duque R.
18 min. DCP In Spanish with English subtitles

Sebastián Duque R.’s sharply calibrated lo-fi documentary traces in chilling detail a long-standing feud between two neighbours whose grudge-holding ways fan some dark flames.