Blair Witch is basically a rip-off of The Last Broadcast, which came earlier, but didn’t have the big PR/hype machine behind it.
I didn’t find Blair Witch scary at all. I thought it was a great idea for a movie, but that it was pretty poorly executed. There wasn’t enough explanation about the legend, and every time they interviewed a local about it, that annoying Heather would interrupt the person being interviewed just when whatever they were saying got interesting. I noticed that the three kids had a book about the Blair Witch. It would have helped make everything a little more clear (and therefore much creepier) if they had read passages from the book each night in the tent.
In general, though, I was too busy being annoyed by Heather to be scared by the movie.
The Last Broadcast was much creepier, and far superior. I agree, though, that the ending was weak.
In the DVD commentary, the directors identify the stuff in the bundle as teeth. They go on to say that the most common misconception as to what’s in the bundle is “a tongue”.
Already answered, it’s Digital Audio Tape.
Already answered, historical killer made one kid stand in corner while killing the other.
The filmmakers had both a hand-held camcorder and a 16-millimeter camera, the kind that uses actual film. You’ll hear them refer to this camera in the film a lot; they call it “the 16”. Cameras that record on film don’t record sound. That’s why, at the end, when Heather goes down to the basement, you hear her voice first only faintly, then louder and louder. The recorded sound you’re hearing comes from Mike’s dropped camcorder, which can be seen lying on the ground to the lower-left of the screen just before Heather gets “hit”.
About The Last Broadcast: TLB sucked donkey. Neither film ripped off the other; they were shown at the same Sundance, so they were produced simultaneously. The look of TLB is substantially chintzier than TBWP. The structure of TLB is flawed from the outset: the narrator’s dense omnipresent monotone bores you before you have any chance to give a damn about any of the characters (I’m glad I watched it on tape so that I could fast-forward). In TBWP, you got to see the filmmakers themselves, identify with them, and feel what it was like to be in their shoes. TLB puts the narrator between the audience and the deceased, and the distance makes it impossible to care. Plus, (you’ll read the following spoiler if you’re smart, so you don’t have to waste time watching this cinematic sinkhole)
------SPOILER-----
the TLB narrator is the killer. If it was supposed to be shocking, it wasn’t; it only made me wonder how stupid he was that he’d stir up public interest in a series of murders he’d committed. And the change of style/perspective at the end was VERY jarring. One moment it’s a documentary with a narrator, the next we have an omniscient camera watching the narrator kill/dump a body. Pick a perspective and stick with it, or the audience just hates you for jerking 'em around.
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(little) Why does she apply fresh mascara? In the big “I’m so sorry” speech, she clearly has on fresh make-up. Priorities?
They claim to have borrowed the most expensive equipement from the school. Wouldn’t it have had stabilizers? In other words, it would NOT jiggle around like that.
IMHO, boring boring boring movie. I was glad when they were dead so that I could be done with it.
Blair Witch premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it got it’s rep for “a scary fucking movie.”
Let me tell you why…
Park City is a fairly isolated place, surrounded by mountains. Getting lost in the forrest is very possible, and a very real fear. Also, if you wonder around at night outside in that area of Utah, you hear weird sounds. Blair Witch was like a camp fire story. You take a fear that’s real (like getting lost in the woods) you take another fear that is less possible but just as real (Things that go bump in the night) you combined them, and you make it look real.
It may not be too frightening to “City folk” but for some people who grew up in the country, always facing the possibility of getting completely lost, it’s a terrifying movie.
Just reading about the movie scares the shit out of me, because it’s my two biggest fears combined. I think Blair Witch is the scariest movie ever made. Because for me, and for many others, the movie wasn’t about abstract things like Jason, or Freddy getting his revenge in dreams.
Who said they were being stalked by a local nut? I always assumed it was the unhuman Blair Witch.
Actually, Mikey standing in the corner was one of the really disturbing parts of the movie. As in, what kind of messed-up, evil presence would make him go stand in the corner and wait his turn to be massacred, and then he actually does it?
The premise was cool, even if the finished result left something to be desired.
For everybody who so glibly dismisses “BWP,” why don’t you try taking a battery-operated TV and VCR with you camping out in the middle of the woods around where I live, watch the video and then curl up and go to sleep in your little tent?
No, it wouldn’t have had a stabilizer. The way they get the steady shots in movies is with a SteadyCam. This isn’t a camera, but a rig that isolates the camera from the operator. The operator wears a harness and the camera is attached on an arm that is stabilized with springs, shocks, counterweigts, etc. The operator views the action on a video monitor that is also on the SteadyCam. It gets its image from a “video tap” that looks through the lens.
I liked TLB. TBWP was better done, IMO, but I thought TLB worked better as a documentary. I reviewed both films here: http://pw1.netcom.com/~heliboy/reviews.htm TBWP had a lot of footage that was cut out. That footage was used to make a “documentary” for The Science Fiction Channel. It’s best to see that one first, as it gives some important back-story. They should have incorporated the cutscenes and they also should have added some “after the fact” footage. JMO.
TLB was released two years before TBWP, and one of TBWP’s makers was at the theatre where it was first shown; but the maker of TLB said that he doesn’t think TBWP ripped him off and he said he’s happy for the publicity.
Ok, let me explain myself. I didn’t say they were being stalked by the local nut (Rustin Parr?) I asked why Mike was standing there in the corner. I know Rustin killed the little kids in the '40’s, and made them stand in the corner. My take on it was that he was just insane, the Blair Witch excuse was just that, an excuse. But he’s dead now, right?
The BW never put anyone in the corner, right? Or did she?
It was the BW chasing them. She already got Josh. Did she put Mike in the corner so Heather would freak out when she saw him? Was Mike under a spell to just stand there so passively?
As for whether I am “city” folk or “country” folk, well, I guess I’d have to say I’m “suburban” folk. I have gone camping, though, and remember hearing sounds in the woods at night, similar to what they heard. We always figured it was deer or other critters. I WILL think twice next time I go camping after seeing this movie!
Scary movies for me? “Poltergeist”, for one. I’m one of those weird people who is afraid of clowns, so that scene at the end with the clown doll…totally freaked me out.
Also, “The Excorcist”…'nuff said.
I can’t think of any other right now.
I was just a little disappointed in this one. As bup said, I was more aware of what time it was and how much time was left in the movie.
Whatever…
Sorry, but I grew up in a wooded area (adjacent to a national forest), I have spent plenty of time in the woods, and The Blair Witch Project still ain’t scary. Matter of fact, I’m going camping again next week. Ooooooohhhhh…
Y’all are just yella, that’s all.
I will say that it can be very creepy being alone in the woods on a dark night. Mainly because you can hear forest critters rustling around in the leaves. In total darkness, your mind has a neat trick of turning every foraging raccoon into a marauding grizzley. I’ve never had a problem with witches, though…
>>My take on it was that he was just insane, the Blair Witch excuse was just that, an excuse. But he’s dead now, right?
The BW never put anyone in the corner, right? Or did she?
It was the BW chasing them. She already got Josh. Did she put Mike in the corner so Heather would freak out when she saw him? Was Mike under a spell to just stand there so passively?
My take on it was that the serial killer was a tool of
the Blair Witch - she either possessed him, or controlled
him, or something.
I thought Mike was under a spell, or in some magical dead
stand, or something.
If the BW used (Russin?) as a body, she may have been the
one ‘really’ making the kids stand in the corner in the
40’s.
I thought it was an interesting movie, but toward the end
I knew it had to unravel quickly, so I wasn’t too shocked.
From what I can tell most backwoods campers and hikers are the ones who find TBWP the most boring. Most of the tension in the first 4/5 of the movie comes from being lost in the woods, but if you’ve camped your whole life, you don’t even consider this as a problem. Anybody who gets lost in the woods these days is a complete moron. I doubt you could go much more than 30 miles in the same direction without hitting a road(at least in the lower 48) plus you can follow the river if you have to, or look at the sun. Who cares if your compass freaks out. Without the “lost in the woods tension”,its just a movie with about a little freaky supernatural stuff, and comes off as totally boring.
Also I got the feeling from the movie that the 16mm was the actual movie they were filming, and the camcorder was just a video diary of the filming process, so it didn’t matter how bad it looked.
LOL…That’s almost exactly how I first saw it! A buddy brought a TVCR along on a Halloween camping trip just for that purpose. It didn’t bother me a bit, but he didn’t sleep at all–and he’d seen it half a dozen times.
For me, BWP had too many circumstances going against it, and therefore I was less than thrilled.
First, the hype by the time I saw it was unbelievable. Someone actually quoted me that line from “Crazy People:” “This movie won’t just scare you, it’ll f*ck you up for life!” I also heard you’ll never go camping again. So my expectations were really high. I still think it is a great concept for a movie.
Second, I saw it in the theater pretty close to the screen, and I had to look away periodically to stop my motion sickness. That kind of breaks the suspension of disbelief.
Third, the people were so annoying and stupid. I didn’t believe they couldn’t find their way home, what with a map, video of the map, a compass, and a stream. There was no intimation that the Witch was keeping them lost, messing up their bearings, so it seemed they were just stupid and whiney. They were so obnoxious that I was rooting for the Witch early on, which takes away any terror.
I’m with you, AerynSun. Thought the 3 were really awesome actors - they really convinced me that they were stupid, self absorbed dolts whose genes were best removed from the pool. At the end, figured the idea of the guy standing in the corner was kind of a neat twist, but didn’t really dwell on it too long, was just happy the boring movie was over. Rented the tape, just wanted to last through it to see if it ever got good. Nothing scary there.
I saw the BWP in theaters and mainly found it dull. The jiggly camera completely failed to affect me, even with my entire frontal field of view shaking like a cranked-up flea and my inner ears and viscera rock-solid. And the plot really wasn’t that interesting. Come on, it’s a campfire standard. I used to hear those tales when I was five. And, yes, while I grew up in southeast Missouri, my family took frequent vacations to western Montana, plenty of which involved stays in the woods. Getting hopelessly lost isn’t plausible if you keep your wits, especially now. And psycho killers simply aren’t common enough to scare me. After all, there isn’t a man alive one well-placed round from a .30-30 won’t stop. Finally, Dinsdale, it’s easy for an actor to play a stupid, self-absorbed kid if the actor is a stupid, self-absorbed kid.
>>There was no intimation that the Witch was keeping them lost, messing up their bearings, so it seemed they were just stupid and whiney.
Actually, my impression was that the witch was the one
messing up their navigation. They decided to follow the
river, and still circled around on themselves.
I speculate that it was sort of an “anti-Huck Finn” - the
river was the witch’s strongest area, and the “heroes’”
biggest enemy. Near the river, they couldn’t think
straight.
Having said that, if I’m right, I think there needed to be
more in the movie to establish that. Maybe I’m giving
the movie too much credit.
I liked the movie well enough, but there was one important detail that ruins it for me a bit. At the beginning of the movie, when we are seeing Heather pack to go, she shows a book entitled “What To Do When You’re Lost in the Woods.”
And then they get lost in the woods, and she refers to the book not one single fricken time!
Along with Derleth many others said the same thing.
That’s what made it scary. They seemed to be doing the right things to get out of there and that didn’t work. In many, many other horror movies, the characters do dumb ass stuff and get killed. (“What was that noise?” “Don’t you worry, you stay here by yourself and I’ll go look for the noise by myself and everything should work out fine.”) In the Blair Witch they basicly did the right thing most of time that they weren’t yelling at each other. (The fighting among each other seemed very real to me as well. Although it wasn’t a smart thing to do, it is probably what would happen.) Therefore, it was obvious that the witch was messing with their navigation. What do you need to tip you off? Creepy organ music?
I made a mistake. I judged a movie by real-world standards. It’s just that my ‘willing suspension of disbelief function’ doesn’t suspend that much. Yeah, I can see how a scary witch would freak some of you out. I’m really not the horror movie type, I guess. I watch a show expecting an amount of realism, an amount of solid bedrock upon which everything else rests. That’s probably why I’m attracted to hard science fiction, where everything is firmly based in science while still delivering a good story with a plot that’s all the more plausible. Which explains my anger when good science fiction is grouped with fantasy. Tolkien was great, as he invented an entire world with a semi-plausible history, but nobody else can even come close. Getting back to the BWP, you’re right, the witch was screwing with them. I wasn’t looking at that angle, though. I was explaining why the film completely failed to affect me by pointing out how implausible the whole thing is. I have a head for facts, above all else. I love inventing entire worlds with tons of backstory, but it must all be plausible. There must be a framework, some self-consistent structure, for it all to fit into. Ah well, I’ll get back to my maths and facts and let you artistic types discuss the horror flicks.
