Probably in part thanks to the Tribeca Film Festival’s new pre-fest review embargo, it’s been extremely difficult thus far to get a sense of which of the festivals many, many titles are actually worth seeking out and seeing. I’m sure the embargo has a purpose, but the fact remains that we’re now five days away from opening night, and we’re starring down a festival devoid of buzz. As someone trying to figure out how to cover the thing, I’m in the odd position of reevaluating givens: I don’t know what to do with the rest of the lineup, but I know Tom Hall’s last blog post makes me think Speed Racer looks fucking awesome.

So spelunking the catalog, all I really have to go on is keywords. And, my my, what keywords do we have for the Encounters selection, The Objective: A horror film. Set in Afghanistan, beginning three days after 9/11. About a Special Ops mission in search of an Al Qaeda nukes stash, gone horribly wrong. Directed by Daniel Myrick, best known as the co-director of The Blair Witch Project. Are our jaws dropping in unison?

It’s the kind of film everyone would be talking about, if only Tribeca would let us review it before it premieres. But, they didn’t put an embargo on reviewing the trailer…

Based on the trailer embedded above, it looks like Myrick has dropped the shaky-cam, subjects-as-spectactors-as-hunted faux-documentary thing in favor of stable cameras and polished HD. But otherwise, the plot of the Objective seems to be an exact makeover of The Blair Witch Project, except transposed to Taliban-controlled, just-pre-US-invasion Afghanistan. A bunch of young people venture out into unchartered territory on a mission; they wake up to find that their shit has been fucked with; things get progressively spookier until people start dying, turning around and heading home is “not an option”; everything goes night vision and then black, and someone screams into the darkness, “What the fuck is going on?!?” Instead of a mystical, unseen villain, there’s a mystical, visible villain that, based on the last shot of the trailer, looks something like a cross between two images from Ghostbusters: the ghost from the library meets proton-gunned Slimer. The synopsis indicated this apparition has something to do with a “Middle Eastern ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of ancient evil.” Terrorists, ghosts…same thing, right?

I’m not even going to try to parse the political implications of this thing until I’ve seen it, but obviously there’s a lot of potential charge in the idea of setting a film about American guys at the mercy of a mystical, unknowable, “ancient evil” in the place and time where the War on Terror began, never mind the fact that it’s coming from the mind behind one of the greatest marketing-over-substance cinematic victories of all time. Take a look at the trailer and the Tribeca synopsis, and let me know what you think. I’ll weigh in as soon as the handcuffs are off.