Ten years ago, The Blair Witch Project depicted a group of naifs lost in the woods of Maryland, their mounting unease turning to fear as they capture glimpses of horror on camera. Blair Witch’s co-creator, Daniel Myrick, revisits the general scheme in The Objective, transposing the setting to a remote corner of Afghanistan and the film students into a Special Forces squad way over its head.
The Objective (out Oct. 13 on DVD) is probably the first Afghan War horror film. For the metaphorically inclined, its story could symbolize a nation-building project gone awry. Set during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the months after 9-11, The Objective concerns a secret mission whose hardened Special Forces grunts are led by a CIA agent. Supposedly, they are seeking contact with an anti-Taliban cleric in the mountains. Soon enough, it becomes clear that the agent has kept his true agenda hidden from the soldiers under his command.
The plot seems a little wobbly after a point, but The Objective’s journey into darkness has many strengths. The cinematography, with its use of stark natural light and deft angles of vision, reinforces the Americans’ alienation from the Afghan landscape and its tribal people. The troops are displaced in time as well as space, setting forth from a village little changed in centuries. As they push into a mountain range haunted by ill legend, the unaccountable begins to occur. For much of The Objective, the uncanny gains force slowly through an accretion of unsettling details. The soldiers’ bluster is increasingly undercut by bewilderment. The unit’s cohesion (and the dynamic between the men) is well written and portrayed and probably differs little from the actual condition of G.I.s under fire at remote outposts in Afghanistan. In The Objective, they become lost in the alien strangeness of the place, a little like America’s current presence in the country.
