Forum:Blair Witch Project

So like many of us this weekend, I saw the Blair Witch Project this weekend. I thought about writing a full blown review, but have opted against it. I enjoyed the movie a lot, but I'd really rather solicit comments on the movie. I do ask that anyone who wants to put spoilers in their comments try to warn people before they read anything that might spoil the movie. But what did you guys think of it?Update: 08/02 08:34 by H :FiNaLe wrote to say that August 2nd, at 9pm Eastern, on irc.scifi.com in #auditorium the Directors of The Blair Witch Project will be talking.

Comments

Predictable but haunting

[Pretender]

No major spoilers here; all things you've probably already heard, but if you haven't heard anything then I recommend getting completely off this page and go see it before anybody spoils anything for you.

I wish I hadn't heard so much about it; I think it would have had more of an impact on me.

It was interesting to watch them break down, and the final scenes stayed with me (and still flash in on me every once in a while, even when I'm not thinking about it). Haunting, I would even say.

I also liked the way that they didn't explain anything too much. No need to show us the reasons, physical or metaphysical, for the things that happen every night. Too many movies have to explain everything.

Overall, I liked it, but I won't see it again. It's very predictable, but set up, shot, and acted very well. And those last scenes...

For those who haven't seen it.

[HarveyOpolis]

All I can say is if there are any dark woods with a utility road within a few miles from your theatre, GO THERE.

It's the most awesome experience to go see the movie and right after it drive into the woods and turn off the engine and the lights in the car.

I did that to my friends when we saw it (we went to the 12:35am showing on Saturday). One of my friends was really freaking out by the dark woods with the wind causing the trees to sway and light to bounce off the various metal objects dumped in the woods.

**SPOILER WARNING** - BWP Thoughts

[blaine]

The warning may be unnecessary, but I'm not sure what I'm about to write :)

Thoughts on the Blair Witch Project:

This movie is definately one of the best horror movies that I've seen in a long time. It does so many things right that most modern horror movies do wrong. In fact, calling the Blair Witch Project a movie is wrong. It is a film. There is a difference.

Some of the more striking things about the movie:

1) The lack of music: we're so used to hearing background music (even when we don't consciously notice it) that it makes it all the more eerie to realize that there is none. All you can hear is the actors and the world around them.

2) The role the audience plays: a good friend of mine put it best I believe. What he said was this:

"the movie has seven characters. heather, the director. mike the sound guy, and josh, the cp-16 camera operator. then there is the DAT, the handicam, the cp-16, and the witch.

...

*we* play the role of the dat and the cameras. "

What is so interesting about this fact is that we never get to see exactly what is going on. Unlike most movies, it is not told in the 3rd person Omniscient. We're a very limited third person, almost a first person (as the role of the cameras and DAT). Things happen, the three main characters react, and yet we barely get to see what they're reacting to, if at all. We don't know what the heck the noises are out in the woods. We have no idea who made those rock piles outside their tents. [sure, we have some guesses, but so do they, and ours are no better than theirs]. We don't know where Josh went. There are even times where the cameras and sound are blacked out, and we are left only to guess what happened while we were away. The point is, we are in some ways a part of the story, but only as a powerless observer. We couldn't help them no matter how hard we tried or wanted to.

3) The realism of acting: this is one of the finer points of the movie. I have seen at least one review berate the amount of obscenities thrown about, but realistically, what do you think YOU would be doing in that situation? The realism comes largely from the fact that almost all of the movie was ad-libbed. There were a few key turning-point scenes that weren't, but the rest was done on the spot. The three main characters were given a GPS, the cameras, and supplies, and left out in the woods. The crew stayed far away most of the time. The crew didn't even tell the actors when they were going to do stuff like noises. Sure, the actors knew they had to happen sometime, but they didn't know when. This helped make a lot of the fear a lot more genuine. Had I been doing this movie, I would have been scared shitless myself :)

All in all, this movie was incredible. It didn't scare me as much as I thought when I saw it, but it was creepy nonetheless, and the final scene is still vivid in my memory, even though I saw it last friday. Those who dislike this movie have a high likelihood of being the type of person who only likes gory horror movies, and dislikes more subtle, and psychological films.

Rating: ***** :)

Go see it. It is good. But for those of you prone to motion sickness, consider some dramamine beforehand.

Blair Witch - Original - not at all

[stresspuppy]

There was a movie out in 1997 called "The Last Broadcast" that has so many similarities to the Blair Witch it's gonna make some lawyers lots of money.

InterneTV Film

More 'proof'

A friend of mine also studied with Lance (one of the filmakers) and it seems the makers of "Last Broadcast" are currently reviewing their options with lawyers. What makes them so sure they have a case?

The Last Broadcast people are also from Florida and studied above the Blair Witch guys. It is known the Blair witch crew saw the Last Broadcast and allegedly re-edited their fledgling film in lieu of the footage they had seen.

The premise of the last broadcast is so similar I'd urge any of you to try and get hold of a copy. Murder, woods, found footage all the same.

You heard it here first!

I've not seen the Blair Witch project myself. I want to re-rent the last broadcast first. I don't want to detract from the Blair guys at all - well - Ok yes I do. Credit where credit is due for "such an original storyline and concept" etc.

Also recommended...

[double_h]

For those of you interested in the cinema verite / fake documentary aspect of "Blair Witch Project", I also recommend finding a copy of "Man Bites Dog". I haven't seen BWP yet, so I don't know how deep the similarities are, but "Man Bites Dog" is a wonderfully, darkly witty film that is thought provoking and lots of fun.

Different, but...

[dmorin]

I liked the style, the acting, etc... and thought it was worth my money to support such creative, independent filmmaking.

As for the plot itself, though..umm....I think I was hoping for some more resolution on a few things. I mean, when something's mentioned at the beginning of the movie, you at least hope that it'll somehow tie up toward the end. And more stuff was left hanging, then resolved. Sure, the argument can be made that it wasn't intended to be plot-based, it was intended to be more real life documentary...but it was fiction, after all, and the filmmakers are supposed to at least attempt to make me want to go see it, or tell my friends about it.

Total spoilers ahead! Don't read! But, Questions?

[dmorin]

Ok, if you haven't seen it, don't read me.

(Remember the good ol' USENET days when you could stick a ^L in your spoiler posts?)

Now, I've got some questions about the ending that perhaps people can help me with. I just saw it like two nights ago, and haven't had a chance to discuss it with anyone, so I want to understand these bits better:

• What was tied up in the bundle of sticks? A piece of Josh? Could we tell what bit? If it was a piece of Josh, did she tell Mike? I didn't think she did. If she did, why would they still be hoping to find him in the house?
• That was Mike standing in the corner? How did he get there so fast? And why was he just standing there? I didn't understand that bit about the legend. If somebody tells me to stand in a corner while he kills my friend, I would think I'd be trying to get away? Maybe it was Josh standing there (if it wasn't a piece of him that she found). But then where did Mike go? She was right behind him coming down the steps.
• What were all the stick figures in the trees? Did they have any connection to anything else we saw in the movie? I would gather that the piles of stones represented the dead -- 7 original disappeared, 7 piles. 3 of them, 3 piles. But all the stick figures were never really explained.

Re:Total spoilers ahead! Don't read! But, Question

[dmorin]

blairWitch.reallyFuckingWith( theKids )

What witch, though? Is the whole idea supposed to be that the crazy hermit in the house, and the witch are two entirely unrelated myths that just happen to both be true and take place in the same location? I wasn't the only person to walk out of there saying "Ok, so, where was the witch?"

too much hype

[0xdeadbeef]

It maybe an excellent movie, but I'm hesitant to see it because of the behavior of it's marketers. They created fake fan sites to sell the movie, à la DivX, documented in this article at Salon. Pretending the movie is real is one thing. It's cute and only morons believe it anyway. But this sort of thing is disgusting.

Not everyone "gets" it

[anticypher]

[no spoilers here]
There was a review recently from a slightly jaded reviewer that he didn't "get it", but many of the people in the theater obviously did.

I would have to put myself in the group who didn't get it, but enjoyed the film anyways.

I saw BWP at a film festival, after having seen about 20 films in the week before it, so I was fully in Jaded Film Reviewer Mode. Even a sneak preview of Phantom Menace at that point wouldn't have got my pulse moving. When I walked out, I had been scared, but not as much as some other films have done. I did give the film some thought, which is my litmus test for a good film.

I did like the hand held camera style, it has been used effectively in only a few films before. Most film makers try to avoid it because audiences tend to get sick if there is too much natural feeling motion, and the film doesn't make as much money. It works to great effect here.

Most of the film is kind of boring, but almost every bit of it is necessary to set up the last 10 minutes. For anyone who has been camping regularly, or was in the scouts, the stupidity seems a little far fetched. But if you remind yourself these are wanna-be film makers first, and probably have never been camping more than once or twice in their lives, then it works. It allows the tension to build for an hour, because the human body really needs that much time for the adrenaline to kick in and power the "fight or flight" response.

What especially got me was the final 10 minutes, there was a kind of tension I've only seen in very few other films. Alien and Psycho are two of my favorites for creating fear when the camera is not really showing anything to fear.

BWP now is firmly in the realm of in the category of "sufficiently scary", and I would put it on my list of top 20 films to cause you to lose sleep.

I wonder what I will think of it after I have seen it a few times over the years. Time will tell.

the AC