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The Blair Witch Project

I must say I get a perverse pleasure out of watching it, but scary it most definitely is not. Mebbe I'm thick but I found the ending far too ambiguous to be frightening.

The three students didn't inspire any sympathy at all, I'm afraid, and Heather was just an obnoxious, smug, bossy, know-it-all bitch who was extremely unlikeable.

I found I didn't particularly care what happened to the three of them, so that was probably why I didn't find the ending upsetting in any way.

Carole
 
Well, I thought BWP was outstanding. I was quite unsettled for a good few hours after seeing the film.

For me a good horror film is one which you can relate too through experience. It may be an emotional experience or a real experience. I have camped inforests and been lost and had my imagination play tricks on me and the BWP brought all those feelings of helplessness and panic rushing back. I suppose if you've never been in a similar situation it would have very few emotional triggers.
 
Phill James said:
i'd say the stage play is excellent, still running in London, i think...i've seen it twice and it was still scary the second time around...much scarier than the tv production :)
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It's harder to scare someone when they're sitting in the comfort of their own home, even the cinema is safe, but I think the theater has some kind of mystique about it.
Maybe it's because you're there with the characters rather than just sat staring at a two dimensional screen you become more involved in what they're doing.
Although I never knew the tv production had been adapted from a novel and stage play I still think it was an excellent ghost story.
 
Re: Blair Witch Project and map

Fortis said:
Do you remember the scene were they come to a river. Wouldn't it have been really easy to have followed the river downstream?
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Mana said:
All the map scenes were total b****x. You can't use a map and a compass without referring to landmarks. They clearly were not using landmarks to guide them, hence the endless arguments. Also, having made it to their destination, they should have been able to make it back with just the compass and the landmarks of course.
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Well Fortis and Mana, that is precisely the point. The three kids in the film clearly are not experienced in the woods, likely none of them have done any real off-trail hiking in their lives, or else they would have been better prepared for a long outing than they were.

All horror films that are worth watching IMO are metaphors for the subconcious mind. You go into a chaotic state that your mind is unused to, there are no signposts and landmarks that are famliar, you lose your way, and if you are not pure of heart or learn to master the monster you will be devoured by the monster lurking in the dark (your own fears). This is why the Jamie Lee Curtis character and the kids are the only ones to survive the slaughter in Halloween. Or else, as in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you can escape with your life, but be rendered insane by the experience (the girl laughing insanely in the back of the pick-up truck). The kids were haughty and presumed they understood the nature of the danger of the Blair Witch, thinking that it was nothing more than a local legend. As they began to realize they were dealing with something real, they began to get disoriented and eventually got lost, culminating in the loss of the map and any reference they had to reality.

Edward said:
I have camped inforests and been lost and had my imagination play tricks on me and the BWP brought all those feelings of helplessness and panic rushing back.
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The film demonstrates this idea vividly and is one of the reasons I think it is such a great film. It is a pity and a shame that the filmmakers Myrick and Sanchez did not continue to try to grow the Blair Witch idea, which could have become an ongoing classic cult mythos if they had kept to the original concept of rooting the mythos in an invented reality. Even with the knowledge that the legend was not real, I think that people like myself would have craved a full length film or book about the Rustin Parr character and his involvement with the monster in Blair Witch would have been terribly fun. A chat board with ideas about what the franchise could do next would have been loads of fun.

In all I think BWP was a great start that could have continued into a really fun mythos. Sadly, the filmmakers copped out and went for the quick dollar (surprise surprise).
 
I was left feeling disappointed too. I thought, 'Well, what bloody happened? What was THAT all about?' It was well done though. As a drama student I don't think I can think of anyone off the top of my head who could have put in a more realistic performance. Maybe that was because they actually were getting the crap scared out of them though. They kept the suspense going although I couldn't watch the previews properly, let alone the movie. I sat there with my eyes closed. All that moving camera stuff... I almost threw up:cross eye
 
don't get me started on the Blair witch...


*wanders away muttering 'it was plainly badgers...' to herself...*
 
Were you as dissapointed as me that there was no witch in it? The title of the film was clearly a ploy to lure inquisitive witch watchers in and then not deliver.......BAH......
 
The BWP disappointed many people with no imagination, who need blood and computer graphic monsters to keep them entertained. People who think "scary" means that something unexpected happens and makes them jump.
BWP gave me the creeps BECAUSE there was nothing in it. I could imagine being with those people, there alone in the forest, hearing strange noises. I was glad there was no witch in it which makes me better than erm the others or something... :blah:
 
You'd be surprised at how many people thought it was a documentary (here in the USA at least). I was familiar with the plot device, having read 'Dracula,' and all of Lovecraft several times over.

A VHS tape is just a modern-day version of 'discovered letters' and journals, etc. I liked the movie. I thought it was a good modern version of a tried-and-true standard in the genre.
 
Iamroachford said:
Were you as dissapointed as me that there was no witch in it? The title of the film was clearly a ploy to lure inquisitive witch watchers in and then not deliver.......BAH......
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Not even an image of one. :furious:

I was like 12 at the time when I went to see it so like most I thought it was good. :eek:
 
Dingo667 said:
The BWP disappointed many people with no imagination, who need blood and computer graphic monsters to keep them entertained. People who think "scary" means that something unexpected happens and makes them jump.
BWP gave me the creeps BECAUSE there was nothing in it. I could imagine being with those people, there alone in the forest, hearing strange noises. I was glad there was no witch in it which makes me better than erm the others or something... :blah:
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Entirely agreed. I couldn't believe that people were writing it off as "boring"... Then I realised these were the people who liked movies such as Jeepers Creepers. (Which I thought was utter bob once the 'monster' was revealed).
BWP I found to be very unsettling, it's very easy to give yourself the willies when you're lost in the woods and the film touched all the nerves perfectly. Going round in circles, knowing its getting dark, realising the people you're with are as shit scared as you- it's bad enough without a film crew leaving 'surprises' outside your tent every morning!
 
Well speaking as someone who cannot stand movies like Jeepers Creepers I just couldn't get excited by a bunch of whingey condescending townies scared by normal foresty noises.

Generally the problem was that almost none of the sound effects seemed 'unexplainable'. It didn't help that I found the characters of the lost wanderers deeply unappealing and thick either. I just got horrifically bored. I'm not fussed by modern horror anyway - I like ghost stories and they seem to be better read than filmed so that your imagination does the work. I liked that one with Nicole Kidman though - the Outsiders.

The 2 single bits I liked - the scratching on the tent when no-one should have been outside and the final scene which was confusing in a good way but appreciated after my intense boredom.
 
Do you mean 'The Others'? I liked that to. In fact, although I saw it at the picture house on its release, I enjoy it more late at night tucked up in bed at home. It is a claustrophobic fillum. :shock:
 
Enjoyed the original BW movie for its originality but my god the sequel - which did not include the original cast or writers - was :bs:
 
[NB: there are spoilers below. Out of respect for anyone who's reading and has never seen the movie even at this late date but wants to, I advise such folk to skim or skip this post.]

I'm one of the people that the original Blair Witch Project "worked" for, very well indeed, even though I never fell for the hype that it was for real. The first time I watched it I started getting forbodings right away watching the three young fools gadding about and interviewing locals--especially the sequence with the two outdoorsmen who were reluctant to talk about the witch legends, and the crazy woman who wasn't a bit reticent.

The scene with all the fetish figures hung in the trees and the little cairns underfoot creeped me out something fierce. And the idea that something--evil spirits, maybe, or the land itself--was fucking with the kids and leading them in circles until they were hopelessly lost and far away from any chance of rescue, seemed plausible to me, in the sense that there's plenty of folklore concerning malevolent entities or blighted locales which do just that to people who stray into their areas of influence.

Then there was the night scene where the tent is attacked by....little kids' hands and the sound of their laughter, and you hear the protagonists yelling "Do you see that?" and "What the fuck IS it?" while we, the audience, don't see what they're screaming about. That sequence flat-out terrified me! So did the moment when the girl finds the little bundle of cloth and opens it to find blood and teeth....and so did the whole ending. The pursuit aspect, and how the imagery just kept getting weirder and more menacing, were horrific and rather convincing, and when the camera revealed the dude standing with his back to the camera and then fell to the ground, I let out an unembarassed short scream right there in the theatre, flashing back to the story about Rustin Parr earlier in the movie. I wasn't the only one who did so, either.

It's among the few horror movies I've seen as a jaded adult which actually had me nervous about going into dark rooms by myself for a week afterward.
 
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