Best “recovered footage” movie for me is Last Broadcast.
Better and earlier than the BWP.
BWP last scene - ha ha why is that guy taking a whizz against the wall?
Oh, it’s a cheap payoff for that dull set-up from the start. Goody.
I actually paid to see The Blair Witch Project twice. I saw it once on a Saturday and it was so terrible that I went back the next day to see if I had simply been in a bad mood or something. The second viewing confirmed that it was a terrible movie.
I did the same thing with Dogma. People were saying that it was funny and a clever dissection of the Catholic church. I didn’t laugh and there was nothing clever about it. I saw it again to confirm that Kevin Smith is as dumb as Dogma makes him seem. The fact that he thinks he is quite smart and clever (see his Evening with Kevin Smith series) is the only funny thing about him now.
Don’t get me started…
I also wondered how much good a map would do you in the woods, especially if you’re not an outdoorsy person. If you’re using a map in an urban setting, you’ve got street names and landmarks to guide the way, but in the woods you’ve got nothing but trees, which, I imagine, would probably all start looking the same after a while. Again, I’m sure an experienced outdoors person with a good sense of direction would do fine, but to a couple of kids who might not even know how to read a compass, a map would probably be pretty useless in that setting.
I think my lack of enjoyment of the movie wasn’t due to my foreknowledge that it was pretending to be real footage. In fact for most of the film my brain was in “Reality TV/Documentary Viewing” mode. The acting was pretty good considering it’s hard to pretend to be normal. But as mentioned upthread, it was long and the ending was as childishly self-satisfying as one of my pre-teen kids’ “scary stories.” The hype just set up a far greater expectation than was actually delivered.
Hm, I’ve still got the movie (from Blockbuster) and I get the kids tonight. Maybe I’ll try it out on my 13 year-old, tell her it’s really ‘found footage’ and see if she thinks it’s creepy or dumb. :dubious: Could be I’m just too old and wise to fall for its charms.
They taught us how to use maps (especially contour maps) in the outdoors in Boy Scouts, and my White Mountain guide is full of trail maps. Of course, to use them effectively you have to be some level of “outdoorsy”, I guess.
I can guarantee you this same thread will pop up again in 10 years, except the movie will be Paranormal Activity. Also included will be references to the inevitable crappy sequel.
FTR, I loved BWP. Did anyone really think the marketing as “found footage” was supposed to be anything BUT marketing? I basically thought of it as “here’s the mindset to have while watching”. A useful direction for my suspension of disbelief.
I like the movie. The marketing around it was brilliant and original for the time, and it really drew me in. I saw it in what I think was the perfect venue: a little art-house theater with a relatively small screen. I think a lot of the early hate came from folks who saw it on a huge multiplex screen and got motion sickness.
I’ll never forget the bit when they first come to the house. “Oh shit.” “What?” “It’s a house.” And you could hear the whole theater cringe, because they knew whatever happened in that house was gonna be bad. For folks who say the ending was the only scary bit, you need to back up a few minutes, because that house was seriously creepy.
As for Blair Witch 2, it was utter garbage that pissed over everything the first movie accomplished. It was so bad that one of my favorite review sites, Mr. Cranky, created a new bottom to their scale especially for it: “Proof that Jesus died in vain.” As I recall, the review included lines such as, “I’d be willing to bet that if you strapped a camera to the back of an epileptic cat with diarrhea and threw it into an empty room, the resulting footage would be better than Blair Witch 2.” Can’t say I disagree.
Pepper Mill and I saw it on its original release, in an art movie theater, and weren’t impressed. my critical faculties kicked in, just as they would during Shyamalan’s The Village (Where the hell are they getting all that oil they’re burning? Most 19th century towns didn’t even have a couple of street lights!), and ruined things (Where are they keeping all this film? How do they manage to keep changing reels? How are they freakin’ recharging their batteries?) We never felt that this was recording of an actual event, and the practicalities killed any suspension of disbelief.
The first movie totally creeped me out. It probably didn’t help that after I saw it, I went to a keg party in the woods, but still, I didn’t sleep well for the next two nights.
I saw it early it its theater run, just as it was starting to get hyped. I agree that after you see it once, there is really no point in seeing it again.
The sequel was total crap though. The most amazing thing about it to me in retrospect, it that it was Jeffrey Donovan who played the main guy. I had no idea who he was at the time, but now its kind of funny. I mean, Michael Weston getting all freaked out by spirits - ha!
Meh, it’s nothing great, but I liked it. We’re watching it tonight as part of our Halloween film fest.
Not Nessicarly, I know that pretty much any “Found document” story is false. It doesn’t stop me from enjoying it if does other things well. Hell, Lovecraft and Poe were in love with the “Found Document” trope, so I’m used to it. Dracula is one long series of fictional documents(diaries, letters), put together to tell a story.
Yeah, I agree the actors(and their characters) are annoying, but I’m a sucker for horror when the environment itself is subtly conspiring against you, so I could overlook it.
I haven’t seen it since it was in theaters, but I enjoyed it for what it was. I didn’t for a second genuinely buy into the “found footage” thing, but as Dante said, it was the framework for my suspension of disbelief.
That kind of horror works for me. I like suggestion better than illustration. I like hints more than statements. My only complaint about the movie was the incessant shaky-cam and ridiculously overdone swearing (although “My whole shit is wet” became the standard complaint for anything that had gone wrong amongst my coworkers for a couple of years).
And I also thought the ending worked. You know no one survives, and now you know more or less how they die without actually seeing it. So, two thumbs up.
Good point, I did like that as well. I used to say I’d like to see it remade with a real budget and better actors, but the Wiki article says it had a budget over $500K. So now my recommendation is - get better actors, get a good script, reshoot the movie in the same fashion. Hint at stuff rather than being all in our face about it. I would have enjoyed that a ton more.