What’s wrong with you guys?! The Blair Witch Project was monumental and truly scary! And made on a shoestring budget. Why it was probably the best—
<BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA>
Sorry. I couldn’t even type that without laughing. It was shit. Total shit.
Side story: Half the movie, the main girl character yells, “Josh? Josh?” (I think it’s Josh). After about 30 minutes, someone in the back of the theater answered back, “Yeah?” Everyone in the theater started cracking up. That’s the only thing positive that I remember about the movie.
Tim, I’ll join with you in appreciating the film. I liked the atmosphere it created. I do think it would have been more effective as a short film (say half an hour).
I had to check the date of the OP just to make sure this wasn’t a zombie thread. I mean, really, it’s been 10 years!
Anyway, the Blair Witch Project is not a GREAT movie, but frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone make that claim. What it is, is a victim of its own success. If it had only been in limited release, I guarantee it would be a cult classic today. Instead, it blew up huge in 1999 and was playing 10 times a day in every multiplex in the country. As a result, everyone was burned out by November 1999, not to mention burned out on all the parodies it inspired.
I agree with the previous posters who liked the atmosphere and said it could have worked better with half the running time. It was an effective, low-budget thriller. It was never meant to be a blockbuster or a pop cultural tidal wave, which unfortunately it turned into.
I quite liked it. It’s been around for 10 years, been parodied to death, and it’s fashionable to slam it. But I thought it was a really creepy movie, and I like creepy movies.
It didn’t scare me, but parts of it definitely creeped me out. The scene wherethe spirit children are shrieking outside the tent, and banging on the tent sides was one. When I camp now, if I wake up in the middle of the night it’s hard for me to not think about that scene.
The movie is a one-trick pony. Once you’ve seen it and know the routine, there’s no point seeing it again. I saw it in a packed theater and thought it was great. At the time it seemed startlingly new and different and genuinely suspenseful.
Of course, I missed parts…seated next to me in the theater was an elderly couple. The man talked through the whole movie, describing the action. It was loud enough that the person on my other side, a teenage girl, nudged me to complain. I agreed with her, wishing the old folks would clam up. Then the movie ended. We all got up from our seats. That was when I noticed the old lady’s white cane.
I knew it wasn’t “real” when I first saw it, but I still think it’s the best of the “Found Footage” films(such as Cloverfield, Quarantine and Paranormal Activity). I agree that the characters are incredibly annoying, but the movie succeeds on two fronts: First, it has a mythos of sorts, which is more then any of the others have. The other is the sense that the very woods are conspiring againest them.
There’s plenty of hints in the movie, not the least of which, and they point this out, that they should be able to just walk out of there. The fact they can’t seem to do that is central to the map thing. Not to mention the fact they try following the river, because it’s the logical thing to do to leave the woods. What happens? After 24 hours of walking and following, they end up exactly where they started. That’s one of the reasons they start freaking out so much. Well, that and because somebody/something is obviously messing with their heads.
There’s also the house at the end, which if you pay attention, isn’t supposed to be there. I forget where it’s said, but it’s said somewhere that Rustin Parr’s house burned down years ago. Yet they find themselves there, bloody handprints and all.
There’s plenty of legitimate criticism to level at the movie, but calling it out on things that were explained if you actually pay attention isn’t one of them.
I liked BWP, but the sequel just annoyed the crap out of me. Some parts were creepy, but I guess I was annoyed by, among the other things:
1.The pagan/wiccan chick who keeps whining about being persecuted.
The main premise of the movie.
Okay, they go out to the ruins of Rustin Parrs House, begin smoking dope and drinking booze. The next morning, they wake up and can’t remember anything and what footage on their video camera shows them doing really wierd things(one of the girls is naked and dancing around a tree).
They spend the rest of the movie trying to figure this out, and no one ever even mentions the most obvious answer: YOU WERE SMOKING POT AND DRINKING BOOZE LAST NIGHT!
Well I’ll say I liked it. I only saw it once, when it was pretty new, and I think I was in high school at the time. I didn’t know it wasn’t real at the time, but I think I would’ve liked it anyway, as I liked Cloverfield. The way they film it, I can at least imagine it’s real. The more “professionally recorded” movies are just obviously fake to me. I don’t think it has much replay value, but considering I hardly like anything in the horror category, I’d say it did well.
Sounds like more than a few weekends I’ve spent. Yeah the sequel would’ve been less obnoxious if it had been made as a stand alone movie. The Blair Witch references came across as really forced. Maybe the most impressive special effect of both movies is making Burkittsville look interesting. I’m quite familiar with the town, and it’s one intersection, one cemetery, and no traffic lights. Don’t blink or you’ll certainly miss it.
The witch was fucking with them.
The last scene, where the guy is made to face the wall like the kid is indeed creepy.
Anyway, that movie scared the snot out of Mrs. Plant.
How many of you who believe it to fellate with great alacrity believed the legend existed at the time you saw it?
I knew it was fiction when it hit the theaters around here (Chicago), and saw it in the theater at the time.
I get that the problems with getting lost and the map not helping were supposed to be witch influence, but I still didn’t “buy” it. It just wasn’t well acted in many spots, but I did at least find the last scene redeemed a fair amount of it. The story was a good idea. I’m always glad to see decent indie-ish films succeed - my personal favorite of that group is El Mariachi (though without the wild, runaway success of this), which had a $7000 budget compared to over $500,000 for BWP.
That’s the thing. The whole thing only works if you believe it was found footage. If you know it isn’t, there’s nothing in the film (aside from the last shot) that’s any good. I got a bit of a laugh at the guy running around with the 16mm camera, shooting film as if it was tape. Film is expensive, and he only had 11 minutes in each magazine.
It was more of an experience really than a movie. Nowadays there’s been plenty of shaky cam faux docufootage drama, but at that time it had been out of the public eye for quite a while (I guess since Cannibal Holocaust - but how much buzz did that have at it’s time anyway?). So the whole thing had this extra bit of verite surrounding it, even for those who know it wasn’t real. It was also at the early years of the viral marketing phenomenon. So it was the context more than the film itself that made it such an exciting experience.
Similarly, but for different reasons, watching Sixth Sense or The Crying Game now for the first time would not have the same impact, even if you somehow had managed to avoid the spoilers all these years.
I was amazed by a few people I know who were convinced that it was all real. They were convinced that someone had really found the video cameras and released the footage disguised as fiction so that we would be warned of the dangers of witchcraft.
Fundie Christian Conspiracy Theorists can be pretty amusing…
