I found the film extremely effective as a full-on assault on the audience's sense of comfort. I've found that most people equate being scared in a film with being startled, i.e. by a gross effect or a killer jumping out of the shadows to shrill music. The startle factor of "BWP" is very low, thereby not "scary" to a lot of young people.
"BWP" crawls under your skin with a sense of dread. You meet three very appealing young people and watch them break down psychologically and emotionally. These kids could have been my friends, or me, and that's what's so unsettling. And the ending...I've never seen the proverbial "snuff" film, but I imagine those dark and dingy basements look much like that.
And then after the movie, piecing all those little bits together. What the insane old woman said, how the guys died on coffin rock, how the children were killed by the hermit. What *may* have happened to those three filmmakers is so horrifying, so terrible, so *painful*...that I don't want to think about it anymore.
I saw the movie opening night at the local art theatre with the local art cinema crowd, and the discussion afterward was highly technical (budgets, logistics, etc). I saw it *again* this Saturday at the local gigaplex with whole squads of teenagers. There were whole groups - girls and boys - who were visibly shaken, some girls were crying, and some didn't leave for a very, very long time.
Slashdot Mirror
SPOILER ALERT
I found the film extremely effective as a full-on assault on the audience's sense of comfort. I've found that most people equate being scared in a film with being startled, i.e. by a gross effect or a killer jumping out of the shadows to shrill music. The startle factor of "BWP" is very low, thereby not "scary" to a lot of young people.
"BWP" crawls under your skin with a sense of dread. You meet three very appealing young people and watch them break down psychologically and emotionally. These kids could have been my friends, or me, and that's what's so unsettling. And the ending...I've never seen the proverbial "snuff" film, but I imagine those dark and dingy basements look much like that.
And then after the movie, piecing all those little bits together. What the insane old woman said, how the guys died on coffin rock, how the children were killed by the hermit. What *may* have happened to those three filmmakers is so horrifying, so terrible, so *painful*...that I don't want to think about it anymore.
I saw the movie opening night at the local art theatre with the local art cinema crowd, and the discussion afterward was highly technical (budgets, logistics, etc). I saw it *again* this Saturday at the local gigaplex with whole squads of teenagers. There were whole groups - girls and boys - who were visibly shaken, some girls were crying, and some didn't leave for a very, very long time.
Say what ya want, the movie works.