"The Blair Witch Project": Six Years Later, Classic or Dud?

i saw it once, it was alright! nothing amazing, but a good fun night at the movie theater, yep.

Given its threadbare budget, I'm of the mindset that it's hugely effective in the creep-out department (that which you don't see is always scarier than any shitty special effect. Consider the original version of "The Haunting" for evidence of same). I saw during the middle of a sunny day in a bustling urban environment, and was still completely creeped out.

Haven't watched it recently (though brought the DVD to work this evening, anticipating a slow evening). May still watch it just to see if it will creep me out (which, during an overnight shift, would make it sort've a dumb thing to do).

Also for the Davey-conquering-Goliath reasons Blount mentioned, I'd say CLASSIC across the board.

And they had a cool Web site.

Given its threadbare budget, I'm of the mindset that it's hugely effective in the creep-out department (that which you don't see is always scarier than any shitty special effect. Consider the original version of "The Haunting" for evidence of same). I saw during the middle of a sunny day in a bustling urban environment, and was still completely creeped out.

this is almost my exact experience, except all I knew of it was a cryptic newspaper ad. I went in the middle of the day, sitting in an almost empty theater and it creeped me out for 2 days. I can't say anything to people who hated it after it got hyped, I'm sure I would've hated it the same way, shame we can't trade experiences.

of people that weren't scared there was always someone who was too dumm or inattentive to pick up all the little details that come out here and there in the beginning and so were immune ("i didn't get it, why were they just staring at the wall at the end?" "uh remember the nutty lady who said that would happen when they were gonna die?" "ohhh ok wow that is creepy")

Huh? No, it's Heather holding the camera. She comes down the stairs and sees Mike in the corner (as foretold by one of the interview subjects earlier in the film), and is -- presumably -- attacked from behind. She drops the camera.

Or that's how I interpretted it.

I ordered it directly from Amazon because I couldn't wait to see it. (If you want to catch it in a cinema here, you have to wait three centuries.) I saw it in on a dark evening all alone in a big house. After the film had ended I thought I could just stand up and go to bed. I stayed away for another two hours.... sitting on the couch unable to move. I was that scared. A year after that I saw it again and I loved it as much but in a different way. I could see some things better , especially the ending was very different because somehow, in my anxiety, I had missed a lot. So yeah definitely CLASSIC. The follow-up was so horrendous, just a ride of laughter and giggles and WTFness.

I think one of the guys who made the film died in a plane crash or something? I think it was the photography guy or something.

Heather was in some workaday romantic comedy shortlly thereafter, but nothing really came of it.

I'm remembering that final scene and getting the shivers just reading this ...

I also saw it before the uberhype kicked in (I think it was on opening night). A good friend is a big horror movie buff so I went with him. I didn't see it a second time until a couple of years later, and it felt significantly less suspenseful when I already knew what was going to happen. With the exception of the final 5-10 minutes, of course.

The follow-up was so horrendous, just a ride of laughter and giggles and WTFness.

I think the original directors/creators weren't involved with the making of the follow-up.

Yeah, they weren't involved at all.

Whenever I watch the film again, I always catch myself thinking: "Oh, I really hope they make it out of there." And then I realise.

Best watched in tandem with the "Curse Of The Blair Witch" mockumentary, which sets everything up perfectly and fills in lots of background detail only touched on briefly in the film.

Confusingly, not only are there several different edits of the film (the VHS was different to the DVD, for example), but they also shot interviews with the parents of the missing students, only shown in tantalising glimpses in the teaser trailers. "Do you believe the occult may be involved in the disappearance of your son?"

Haven't seen the two guys in anything since, but Heather was in a Sci-Fi Channel miniseries called "Taken" about two years ago, which was quite a big thing at the time. I think she killed Max Headroom in it.

Has anyone seen the "rival" movie, "The Last Broadcast"? It's awful.

Yeah, it's truly dreadful.

Scientologist crap.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

Very much enjoyed it and yeah, was honestly creeped out by the ending and couldn't readily get to sleep that night of first watching the day got wide release. I've only rewatched it a couple of times since -- I like the creators' commentary on the DVD, they're so casual and funny about it it's a nice contrast!

It's a classic horror film in that it sets up all the dominoes just to knock them over (the detail about the kids facing the corner has, as noted, maximum payoff -- when my theater audience saw Mike standing there in the corner, there was an audible groan of 'oh fuck...' throughout the theater) and that common sense has to be set aside a bit to make it work. As Mr. Blount notes, the whole idea of the hoaxed urban legend is a great touch -- there was a pretty good comic book tie-in with the film that illustrated each of the previous points in the legend via different illustrators rather than doing an adaptation of the story of the film, and the Rustin Parr sequence in particular was strikingly well done. The tie-in fake documentary, with the 'archival' footage of Parr and the seventies "In Search Of..." style bit with the one 'witch,' was pretty slick.

The story itself wouldn't work nowadays for a key reason:

"Hey, we're lost."

"Oh that's easy, I'll just call the police on my cell and then IM a friend of mine."

"Okay thanks."

http://www.haxan.com/

They've made the main site into a group blog of sorts that they update as they do. I think they know lightning will never exactly strike twice again so they just keep on keeping on.

Hehehe, it DID come out in 1999. Clinton's sunset years, pre-9/11, lots of dotcom money in the air, rah rah rah.

"Okay thanks."

The only thing this would really effect is the is-it-hillbillies-or-is-it-a-witch issue. Expect 'wireless reception is down' to become the 'the phone lines are down' of 21st C horror movies.

I'm just saying - modern technology going all haywire and useless is a very very old trope in spooky stories.

Ha!

Damn, I'd completely forgotten about this film. I fucking loved it when it came out and I think I may just buy the DVD right now this second.

Why's the sequal so universally derided? I've never seen it, having decided not to bother when I found out it had no real connection to the original - is it reall so shit?

xpost - yeah I was gonna say, the film's set in a pre-cellphone world isn't it?

Also classic: low-budget and black and white.

Also also classic: sending people out to the lobby to vomit, the first time that's really happened en masse since "Husbands and Wives" yet before "Dancer in the Dark."

Not so classic: the sequel is a piece of shit, and the sole glaring stain on Joe Berlinger's otherwise impeccable documentary resume.

http://kimmydirector.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/b17.jpg

Do I need to add anything more?

don't waste yer energy, they die anyway.

Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows was much better.

blount otm re: nostalgia.

But the original: CLASSIC!! I think it works extremely well if you didn't know it was a hoax. I watched it with my siblings at home late one night on a pirated copy of the movie MONTHS before it got released anywhere so we didn't know anything about the big internet viral marketing campaign and really, honestly, thought it was real. Creeped the shit out of us and we all ended up sleeping in the living room instead of going back to our own rooms.

Thank god for the late 90s south-east asian pirated VCDs boom but dud for the massive, massive disappointment that came with knowing it was a hoax later.

yeah this was pretty much my experience! although i gotta say the movie itself left me pretty cold too. love the idea but i was not nuts about the execution... or maybe i just didn't like the actors or something?

-- Dan Selzer (danselze...), October 29th, 2005.

i wish i could've seen it like this :-(

1. i'd just gotten back from summer camp int he woods, and a lot of it looked like blair witch woods.

2. i used to go walking around my neighboorhood late at night and there was a house about a half mile away, abandoned and dilapidated that looked way too much like the one at the end of the movie.

3. saw it in a practically empty theater with the air conditioner making it freezing cold and giving me huge goosebumps.

i knew it was a hoax going in, but man, those noises and stuff scared the shit out of me. I guess i just knew that i'd have to place myself in the movie, and getting back from camp the week before made that really easy i guess. it worked.

classic, though i would probably never watch it again.

With all due respect, I'm sorry, but you're an idiot.

Just for the sake of perspective, may I ask what your, say, five favorite movies of all time are?

Suspicions confirmed.

That I should be on the Oscar committee?

I live(d) way out in the country, in the WOODS. Like, DEEP IN THE WOODS. I parked my car, sprinted to the house and slept with the lights on. Terrifying and totally kickass.

That I should be on the Oscar committee?

No, that you have an extra chromosone.

I'm going to assume that's a typo. But, yeah, it's an alien chromosome that gives me superintelligence.

Blair Witch 2 is certainly a steaming load of crap, but it's worth renting if only to hear Berlinger's commentary. It was meant to be some sort of meta-commentary on the "Is it a hoax?"-ness of the first film. It seems like it could have been a really interesting film, had he pulled off what he intended.

But the sequel? I mean, what was so refreshing about the original was that it wasn't just yet another whistle-headed teen slasher flick ala "Scream" (which I never found scary or clever) or any variations of same ("I Know What You Did Last Summer" etc. etc. ad nauseum). That its sequel would pander directly to the same braindead demographic that laps that garbage up was profoundly depressing.

I wasn't talking plot, I was talking about it's style and its marketing and its production.

I've seen episodes of "I Love Lucy" that were scarier than "Scream".

I guess the whole "movie about a movie" thing doesn't appeal to you, but it did give it a credible connection to the first. Otherwise, you'd just have a sequel that had nothing to do with the first one. It's not as if you can do another home video movie and it's not as if you can act as if the first BW was real when it clearly wasn't. The whole point of the first was that it was a marketing gimmick which some fools believed was real. Other than that, there's nothing to the movie. It sucked. By the time BW2 came out, the cover was blown. So, the way they tied the 2nd one to the first was about the best possible solution. It's a bunch of kids having a good time going on a good scary tour of the woods where BW was filmed and it turns out there is something to legend of Blair Witch after all. It's really not even that similar in style, marketing or production to either Scream or IKWYDLS. It features kids, but most horror flicks do. It's a movie about a movie, which I think Scream 2 did, but it's hardly the same thing. Maybe if the first one didn't suck so much, the second one wouldn't have had to try so hard to link a plot to a gimmick.

Well, technically, it's a parody. It's just not a very well written one.

I guess the whole "movie about a movie" thing doesn't appeal to you, but it did give it a credible connection to the first. Otherwise, you'd just have a sequel that had nothing to do with the first one.

Well, as i mentioined earlier in the thread, I don't think there should've been a sequel at all.

It's really not even that similar in style, marketing or production to either Scream or IKWYDLS. It features kids, but most horror flicks do. It's a movie about a movie, which I think Scream 2 did, but it's hardly the same thing.

It's just another poorly written, high gloss crap horror film, just like the afore-mentioned films. Nothing new or innovative or fresh about it.

Maybe if the first one didn't suck so much, the second one wouldn't have had to try so hard to link a plot to a gimmick.

Are you of the mindset that the first one sucked because there wasn't any big payoff? Was there not enough gore to sustain you? Did you lament the absence of some teenybopper whistlehead icon like Jennifer Love Hewitt or Courtney Cox? Were there not enough dumb one-liners or easily repeatable soundbyte catchphrases? What exactly about it left you so cold and clammy?

And why are you comparing thie incredible lameness of Blair Witch to "dumb one-liners or easily repeatable soundbyte catchphrases?" Does "We're gonna die out here" ring a bell?

As for BW2, I can't think of a single dumb one-liner or easily repeatable soundbyte catchphrase. It was all natural dialogue well-scripted. What exactly left you so cold and clammy about BW2? There was certainly more to it than BW1. And you didn't have the sad realization after 45 blurry minutes that nothing was going to happen because it simply wasn't in the budget.

Yeah, `cos the script of "Scream" -- hoo boy, yeah that was so believable, wasn't it. Give me a break.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree here.

I saw the sequel once and can remember just about nothing from it, which is unusual. I remember I thought it was rubbish.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree here.

Why are you talking about Scream? You keep talking about completely different movies instead of sticking on topic with Blair Witch 2. You never saw the second one, did you?

Probably because it changed so much it was hard to keep track of what was going on. It was intense for a very long time, as it examined a mass psychosis through several individual characters who kept crying out, "this makes no sense!" In this way, the movie was aimed at destroying the viewers' sensibilities more than the characters and it felt like a dirty trick was being played on you, as the evil spirits are wont to do. But if you paid attention, it did all made sense in the end... or did it? It clearly had a logical explanation, but you left the theater with a bad hangover thinking, "what the fuck just happened, exactly? Was it or was it not really an evil spirit?" This felt much realer than the first one to me.

That's about all that I remember about it other than the fact it was quite visually stunning in the theater, but I'm sure this didn't come across on dvd. There were some beautiful hallucinations up on that second floor. People getting killed on surveillance cameras (or more hallucinations?) and there was the cutesy teenage 15 minute intro before the horror began, that must've bothered Alex so much. But, that intro was really quite a brilliant strategy, acknowledging the reality of the original gimmick and media hype both for those who appreciated it and wanted another 'reality' anchor in the second installment, but also for those who felt ripped off by the first BW (and there were lots of people who felt ripped off by the first). The second one might have been geared toward people who felt the first one was a ripoff, actually, since it starts off with the premise that the first one was a phoney gimmick and attempts to make it real again.

When people say the first Blair Witch was intense or scary, I just have no clue what they're actually talking about. I sat there in the theater and was kind of laughing to myself about it, but trying not to ruin it for the person I'd dragged to see it, hoping he was actually enjoying it. It was obvious they were trying to fill up 90 minutes and I got bored less than halfway through. I remember half the people I talked to about the movie felt this way. People just felt compelled to see it to know for themselves what people were talking about.

Someone needs to go round with a handheld camera and find out how AiNYC mysteriously disappeared after this question...

oh how i laughed when i saw the trailer for this last night on e4...having ONLY YESTERDAY ordered the DVD on Amazon...

He frantically ran down to Hollywood Video and rented it!

I left because it seemed pretty clear that we weren't going to change each other's mind. In answer to the question, I watched about ten minutes of the sequel (not in a theatre, but via DVD), and found it so depressingly bad that I wasn't interested in finishing it.

Like I said, we're just going to have to agree to differ on this point. As far as I'm concerned, I can't understand why you like schlocky, crap entertainment, but hey -- to each their own.

Right... this you know from "about ten minutes."

I thought the teenagers were pretty typical goofs in the first 10 minutes of the first Blair Witch, but I still managed to get all the way through it before I made a final judgement. I sat there waiting and hoping the movie would prove me wrong, but it never happened. Even afterward, I thought about the movie for several days before I finally really decided I really didn't like it, despite what a good idea it could have been, because the execution let me down.

They did in Finland, because the lack of witches abducting teenagers in the woods made them ignorant to the connotations of the images and without context something that appeared to be a documentary was just that - a documentary.

as if there is a difference....

Doesn't take me ten minutes to look in a toilet bowl and recognize its contents. Obviously you prefer closer examinations. Hope you wash your hands afterwards.

bad writing (more like improv)

Just FYI, it was largely improv. As I understand it -- and someone please jump in if I'm wrong -- the actors were given very fleeting stage direction via secretive notes during the production. There was no "script" per se.

This is a bit ridiculous since it takes the plot takes almost the full 90 minutes to unfold. But, yeah, you enjoyed sitting through 84 minutes of home vdeo of some dipshits improving in the woods, so clearly your taste is a little different.

The same people who still look at the sky hoping E.T. will one day come back. They have their bicycle all shiny and wheels pumped up so they can peddle to the moon with E.T..

ah, validation.

Josh in Chicago: I believe that I saw my preview screening after Sundance. I don't remember thinking that the movie was a true documentary. I just remember thinking that it was creepy as fuck. And a bonus: I think the entire audience was right there w/me. I've never seen so many people sit completely stock still for so long after a movie finished up.

Diplomatically put. Let's leave it at that.

That was all pretty clear in the film as-is.

I was one of the motion sickness people. I thought the film was okay, but I came out of the cinema as a great advertisment to the queue of people waiting to go in. I was pale and shaking and had to sit down on a bench right outside and take many deep breaths before I felt steady enough to walk home. That cinema should have PAID me! I must have looked traumatised!

As gypsy mothra said upthread, it's no Ring. That film had me afraid to go into the living room for a week.

I was just trying to come up with something as pithy as "Spielberg sucks."

Not a film; a con. The best scare it had was the one it threw into Hollywood execs who wondered "How do we reproduce THIS kind of shit?"

http://www.grizzlyman.com/

Granted, the murder scene had the lense cap on.

Amen, sister!

>>why the two guys didn't just tell the overbearing bitch lead character to fucking shut up

The answer is NO.

Scientologist crap.
What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

Feigning ignorance does no one any good.

Dan Myrick, one of the two guys behind it all, on his newest film. Sounds promising, actually.

Myrick seems like a nice fellow. Let's hope this turns out good.

Blair Witch Mistake, more like

I imagine the Adverts singing that.

wtf was going on with freddie and phil upthread

A good question John asked there.

Meantime, ten years since original release now. Couple of extremely 'uh?' claims in this story but some other details of interest:

" 'Blair' looked like it was shot on toilet paper," says Joshua Leonard, one of the movie's young leads. "There was absolutely nothing elevated or untouchable about it. It was like when you and your buddies were 14 and you heard a Germs album and you're like, 'I could do that.' "

Plenty thought along those lines. Submissions to the Sundance Film Festival have nearly doubled since "Blair," helped by the influx of cheaper, easier to use technology. But, for all the effort, nothing has popped. So where can you find all those movies? Try YouTube, a website still six years away from its inception when "Blair" arrived in theaters.

Of course, making that kind of scratch while landing simultaneous covers on Time and Newsweek is a bit much to expect from any artistic endeavor. Sanchez describes "Blair" as a "perfect storm," a freaky convergence of content, Internet buzz and savvy marketing that comes along once in a generation. Love it or hate it (and there were plenty in both camps), the film became a touchstone for a generation of moviegoers and filmmakers.

"Everyone remembers where they were when they saw it," says Mark Duplass, whose movies ("The Puffy Chair," "Baghead") written and directed with his brother, Jay, have become key entries in the independent film movement.

"It became hugely influential," Duplass says. "The semi-improvised nature, the hand-held digital camera work, the naturalistic acting inside a genre piece, the idea of 'We don't have a [lot] of money, so let's build a budget that's appropriate, so we can execute it correctly.' Those guys were ahead of the pack."

Duplass costars with "Blair's" Leonard in the upcoming indie comedy, "Humpday," an entry that won praise at Sundance this year. The movie has enjoyed such success on the festival circuit that, for the first time, Leonard, 34, says he's no longer introduced at parties as "Josh, that guy from 'Blair Witch.' "

The other participants haven't been as fortunate in finding a follow-up. Leonard's costars, Heather Donahue and Michael Williams, have appeared in only a handful of movies. Williams returned to his day job moving furniture in upstate New York. Donahue, whose terrified, flashlight-illuminated visage became synonymous with the movie, became the butt of "Blair" parodies. She has since distanced herself from the film. ("She really got boxed in with the public's perception," Leonard says.)

classic, but the thought of it inspiring mumblecore filmmakers = duddddddd

But imagine if it inspires crabcore filmmakers.

Donahue, whose terrified, flashlight-illuminated visage became synonymous with the movie, became the butt of "Blair" parodies. She has since distanced herself from the film.

It didn't work, because everytime I saw her in a Steak & Shake commercial, I'd think "Oh, it's the girl from Blair Witch selling me a milkshake."

But imagine if it inspires crabcore filmmakers.

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, July 11, 2009 1:46 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if only!

It was dud then and is dud 10 years later. Once you get past the gimmick, the characters are irritating, the "story" is by its very nature nonexistent, the visuals are painful to look at, and there are only a couple of creepy scenes. Due to the low budget and general talentlessness the "naturalistic horror" thing they were aiming for feels more goofy than scary, the famous pointing-a-flashlight-to-your-face scene being a prime example.

why would you want to look past the gimmick when the gimmick is that rad

I admit that the ending was quite nicely done, and the beginning where they interview people about the witch set the mood well. But no way do the beginning and the end justify the 60+ minutes of boredom between them, where you just watch amateur actors pretending to be scared in front of a trembly video camera.

it wasn't perfect but I'll take it over about 98% of other shit ppl call good - ending was so completely bitchin', I only ever saw it once and still remember it vividly & with glee

why would you want to look past the gimmick when the gimmick is that rad

Well that's just it, to me the gimmick wasn't that rad. It just results in boring scenes and occasional unintended goofiness. And no way does it justify having no proper story, characters no one cares about, and a shitty visual look. You can do much better horror than that even on a small budget, as many other movies have proved.

I only ever saw it once and still remember it vividly & with glee

Same here. I wonder if some people like it less because they watched it more than once.

I've only see it once too, I can't even imagine why anyone would want to see it more than once. What would you gain from a second viewing, when the movie has no point of interest except for the gimmick?

it gave me motion sickness and i found it pretty boring. Thought the ending was reasonably scary, which is a huge compliment from me because i'm almost never scared by movies.

"Everyone remembers where they were when they saw it," says Mark Duplass

A movie theater?

Yeah, that's pretty much all I remember.

Same here. I wonder if some people like it less because they watched it more than once.

I always avoid it when its on tv for that reason.

most of the haters were the same people who think they are geniuses for outsmarting a horror movie and/or have no imagination if I may make an insulting generalization :)

Summer 1999: I had just sat down to eat lunch in a Burger King. Just as I was about to take a bite, *BAM* that Blair Witch movie showed up and wowed us all. I never finished my Whopper.

josh leonard is really good in humpday

most of the haters were the same people who think they are geniuses for outsmarting a horror movie and/or have no imagination

these are the same lame-o's who complain that movies "aren't scary" by which they mean "I didn't feel as if I were in danger" - no shit? you didn't feel directly threatened by stuff on a screen? when I am king these ppl will have plenty to be scared about I tell you

poor Whopper ;_;

ya sorry to hear about that latebloomer

Way to build your strawmen, Bnw and John. I've seen plenty of scary and imaginative horror movies, but BWP just wasn't among them.

Maybe I'm a traditionalist or something, but for me a crappy handheld video camera and goofy "naturalistic" acting can't build enough mood to make me scared. Effective horror isn't really about realism.

I just watched this again. I don't know, it's underwhelming. Any kid who lives near the woods could do the same thing with a camcorder. I guess it's for people who don't spend much time enjoying the outdoors.

Still think "The Last Broadcast" is freakier.

i thought this revive was gonna be about josh leonard's new directorial effort

The Last Broadcast was terrible

adam wingard (you're next, the guest) made a surprise sequel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=girSv9UH_V8

how terrible

Blech

And i like wingard

Trailers nowadays are so friggin' cliché and loud --- fade in on expo shot, calm bit of dialogue, slo mo montage then BLACK ....Boom! Boom! Slam! rinse and repeat

The only sort of follow-up to the original I could see working is a period horror about the earlier Blair witch folklore, something like The VVitch. This looks like the same movie.

so in the horror thread I've heard one outright pan, one lukewarm praise....anybody else seen the new one?

I enjoyed it. Ultimately it's kinda goofy but there are some good scary moments. The main difference in this one is the obvious (almost self-consciously so) "movie"-ness versus the original's naturalism. The budget is clearly bigger so there are more supernatural shenanigans and the actors are all beautiful and the dialog is clearly scripted. It made me appreciate the improv skills of the actors in the first movie.

Lol just got out. This movie is like if you gave two ten year olds cameras and told them to scream, run in circles, and trip over shit

it reminded me a bit of Exorcist IV, where they threw a bunch of shit from the earlier film(s) into a blender and then amplified it to volume 11.

in the OG Blair Witch, there were several effective sequences where you couldn't see shit because it was audio-only, or the camera was shaking due to a character running, but you still could piece together what was going on via context clues in either the dialogue or sound. Here, it was sometimes impossible to follow what was happening.

couple of effective moments, but the last twenty minutes became infuriating when it was over - to spend that much time to just wind up recycling a bit, bleh.

the sound aggravated me too - knew they'd rely less on practical effects but lord, everything was off of a "Your Horror Film Soundz" CD-R

also lol here's nerds to Matrix the shit out for us: http://screenrant.com/blair-witch-ending-connections-explained/

oh and addendum - didn't like how overplayed the supernatural was. obviously the OG Blair Witch was supernatural as hell, but the entity in the woods fucked with the trio in practical ways. walking around, snapping twigs (or just creating the sound of snapping twigs, more likely), leaving totems, fucking with the tent. then slowly ratcheted up the supernatural by distorting their sense of direction and bringing the house into the woods to lure them in.

here, there's shit like time dilation/travel, permanent darkness, all kinds of Event Horizon shit going on, like God just decided to fuck with people one night

heh thx for that link

I have no idea what people think of Grave Encounters. It's clearly derivative of Blair Witch Project, as are most of these "found footage" thrillers, but I thought it was really solid (the sequel, too). Anyway, Blair Witch redux sounds weirdly similar to some of the stronger points of Grave Encounters, from internet video as bait (I think?) to the bending/stretching of time/permanent night stuff. It's been a couple of years, though.

review of the new one by Jon Dieringer on Letterboxd

A bunch of people from TGI Fridays commercials go camping and stumble upon a maelstrom of artificial video glitches.

The most enticing review I've read yet!

I forgot this last sequel existed until today. it's seriously so bad it created a hole in my brain and walked out

Good read:

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/blair-witch-project-cast-robbed-financial-success-1236033647/

great armchair reactions from people who didn't read the article, classic.

yeah the comments are even more than usually infuriating

jfc those comments. I'm sure these "enTERtaINMENT iS A buSINesS!" warriors are the same people that pitch a goddamn red-faced fit when Chipotle raises prices 2% on their burritos.

I remember seeing this when it first opened at one of the now-defunct Berkeley theaters.. I was breathlessly scared, but there was a young woman sitting in front of me that was sobbing uncontrollably.. it's hard to overstate what a splash this ambiguous film made in the dawning of the internet age, before most of us even had cellphones; as the article states, it can never be repeated

Yeah, it was definitely an event. A group of us went to see it the first weekend at the campus theater in Champaign, but two of the girls in our group noped out in the lobby and refused to go in to watch it.

Andy's comment triggered this similarly very pre-tech despite living in DotCom1.0-era SF vivid moment...

I remember waiting in line (!) at the Coronet (RIP ~2005) on Geary/Arguello in SF to purchase tickets (no advance sales!) on opening day. JFK Jr. died in his plane crash the day before and that was the cover story in the newspaper which I was reading in line. I had encountered a bit of the film's hype but had avoided any real spoilers. I went with my very goth/artist/wiccan GF at the time lol. She was genuinely spooked but I thought it was more entertaining than terrifying. I'm not sure if I had a phone or a palm pilot... I was relatively slow on that tech until my employer mandated we have them.

a deeply stupid movie for non-horror fans, similar to A Quiet Place

stand in the corner PD

there's a whole bunch of deeply stupid horror movies, but I don't think the original BWP is one of them

unfortunately most of the 'found footage' knockoffs are universally crummy

Filmed in beautiful Frederick County, Maryland, my home of over two decades.

Oh so you were the guy.

I feel lucky that I was taken to this in its opening week, having not heard a thing about it beforehand.

I haven't felt any desire to rewatch it in the last 20 years, but that first viewing certainly worked on me.

Oh I had no idea that was Fredrick

a deeply stupid movie for non-horror fans, similar to A Quiet Place

huge horror fan for about 48 years and strong disagree

my brother and I watched it on vhs in Australia when it came out and somehow weirdly we didn’t know much about it, like the real/fake gambit etc … Anyway, for fun we usually watched scary movies with the lights out, and i will never forget he fully got up halfway through & turned the lights back ON because he was too scared <3
and then when it ended we sat and just stared at each other like omggggg O_O

I rewatched this for the first time with my kids last year, and it scared the bejesus out of them. They had seen a good number of horror classics already, but this one legit freaked them out. I thought it still worked surprisingly well. Tight little movie.

I would have been more into it seeing it on a shitty CRT in the dark all alone, I think. That's how I saw the pre-release SyFy show and that scared me a lot more.

I saw this when I was living in Maroubra in Sydney. I didn't know much about it and it scared the shit out of me. We had to pass some woods on the way home and I legit ran the length of them. I slept with the light on, too.

holds up pretty well. easily avoids the traditional pitfall of found footage, the "why would you be filming this?" moments.

I think the "WTF NOTHING IS HAPPENING" contingent of people were somewhat reacting to the bland state of horror in the 90s, with the waning hours of big-tent 80s IP slashers, films loaded with jump scares and heavily reliant on absurd plot twists, as well as high school horror comedies. genre pieces that were slower burns, where you don't get to outright see the big bad, that relied more on atmosphere and required closer watching weren't mainstream hits.

I sat too close to the screen in the small cinema where I saw this, and was badly affected by motion sickness. Staggered out of the cinema feeling nauseated and looking pale. Had to have a little sit down. People in the queue to go in looked a bit worried.

And then one of my housemates went to see it a few nights later. When we heard him coming home, my boyfriend and I turned off the lights and stood facing into the corners of the sitting room. "What are you doing? Why are you doing that?" he asked, when he turned on the lights. He'd fallen asleep in the cinema and missed the last half hour.

aww he ruined your fun joke! :(

lol sad trombone

lmao at snoring through the blair witch project

i woulda thought it was part of the film

anybody ever been to a film where they mistook the ambient noises from audience members as part of it and had it enhance their viewing?