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The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project

List Price: $9.98
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: You have GOT to be kidding!
Review: This was one of the least scariest movies I have ever seen! I am 11 years old and I saw this movie with my friend and we laughed our heads off. A bunch of kids go into the woods hear some noises, aim the camera up there noses(nice)scream at rocks and sticks and the like. It was so patheticly un scary! People have said they don't want to go outside anymore! WHY ON EARTH NOT! All I saw to be scared of in this movie was some baaaaaad acting!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Highly overrated
Review: This movie is one that seems really interesting in theory. That is the only reason that I give it three stars. It is always refreshing to see new cinematic styles, and realize that originality can succeed in Hollywood. It is also a different experience to be frightened by something that you don't see, rather than having bloody, gore-festooned ghosts jumping in front of the camera for two hours. It did succeed in giving a person the creeps, and I'm sure the more sensitive were nervous to be outside after dark. However, the movie was only successfull for one reason: people thought that it was real. There was a ton of publicity treating this event like it had actually happened, including a history lesson on the witch's life, and interviews with the (fictional) family and friends of the three young stars. Part of the draw was the thought that you were really going to see these three people die. An unpleasant fact, but humans enjoy watching violence, and the more realistic the better. The dialogue was mostly ad-lib, and every other word out of the actors mouths was "F***!", which makes this something that young children shouldn't watch. Honestly, they shouldn't watch it anyway, but people are more adverse to letting their children hear vulgarities than to seeing violence. Overall, this movie was somewhat frightening, though certainly it would have been better if every surprise hadn't been shown beforehand in the commercials (a highly common, and annoying practice as latley.) If you are a person who actually thinks for themselves, and doesn't always jump on the bandwagon, then this movie isn't for you. I wouldn't recommend it for someone unless they were having a drunken Halloween sleepover.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: what a disappointment.
Review: Sheesh. Some kids go out into the woods with a camera and come back with what was, in almost all respects, a really lousy film. I'm all in favor of new cinematic styles, and I have faith that the rough-hewn home video will yield at least one great cinematic work in my lifetime, but this isn't it. It isn't scary. It isn't funny. It isn't pleasant to watch. Give me _The Exorcist_ any day.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It couldn't survive outside of Sundance.
Review: This is one of those movies that's awesome in theory. As an independant film, it's kinda cool... but it's WAY too long and not particularly interesting. If you enjoy the F-word to no end and love to get motion sick, then you'd love this movie. Otherwise, stay away from this plotless, overdrawn atomie of a movie.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Let's just give it a chance
Review: So, The Blair witch Project is a movie that splits people's opinions half. Sure, it's messy, cheap and badly produced. But when people say they really thought this had happened for real, doesn't it tell you something? I mean, it is quite hard to empathise with this film, and right after you've seen it you may feel a quite blank, but if you really concentrate to look at it, it is very good indeed. so, before you judge it, think of the value it has on indie movies. And stuff...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Chilling
Review: Clearly, based on the complaints, most of us watch movies with a passive stance; waiting for loud music and expensive special effects to pull us into the screen. To put yourself into the shoes of any one of those 3 students and stay there would be enough to disturb you and captivate you long after the movie ends. I have been a horror buff for years and this one found a way past the hollywood machine right into my psyche. When you watch it; be still and brave enough to enter the Blair Witch world...It'll bite so good!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Pre-watching Warm up
Review: It is obvious by the Average Star rating being three after over 1200 reviews that you either love or hate the BWH. Maybe it is best to try to help whoever is considering buying this movie some insight as to what to expect. Although I am a fan of the '80's spatter movies (F13th is the best), this movie does not fall into that genre. I think the best advice is that it really dosen't fall into ANY horror genre which is why so many people have problems dealing with it. It is so different than any horror film I have ever seen in that these are real people going through emotions that are not given in a script. They are all ad libbed. Bearing in mind that they spent seven days in the woods in which they were given less and less food each day; had to carry all their equipment (except for the tent); and had to do this all on camera makes it extrodinary. Their only direction was given at "check-points" where each person had a rough outline of what they would be "acting" for that particular day. The actual dialogue is completely made up on the spot. Their fears are real. They had no idea what they would be facing every night. In addition, Josh and Heather HATED each other almost from day one. Josh was not originally slated to be the one taken, but because of the increased conficts between the two, it was decided Josh would go. It is obvious in the later part of the movie that the two are REALLY arguing, almost forgetting that the camera's are rolling. Finally, the final scene in the abandoned house was so emotionally draining during filming that Heather was hysterical to the point of the producers having to yell, "TACO, TACO" which meant that the actors were not shooting content anymore.

I'll admit that the first time I watched it I was somewhat let down do to the hype. However, on subsequent viewings I find the movie very surreal and disturbing. No, there are no hatchets through heads or blood spattered scenes, nor is the "person" causing their horror ever seen. The best way to watch the movie is as if you were actually doing what they did. The real horror is that your mind wants to think what you see is fiction, but you find yourself so caught up in the frustrations and fears of the cast that it becomes real.

I think if you go into it with an open mind and do not expect an ending that will bring logical closure to the movie (any movie like that is difficult to like) you may end up really enjoying it. I think in five years this movie will be considered a classic for doing what Halloween and the Exorcist did to the genre; it changed the rules. But the BWH doesn't tell you what the NEW rules are. It only gives you brief glimpse of what's to come. BWH 2 is coming in October.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This li'l kiddie ride ain't no Space Mountain
Review: The triumph of this movie is not the story it tells. Rather, it is the uplift it must give to the hearts of small filmmakers everywhere. If this can enter the $100 Million Club then surely their better-crafted pieces must have a chance of making serious profit margins as well.

This storyline is as implausible as Ricky Martin selling out a stadium to an audience of people who are there for his "artistic integrity." My pet mouse following the scent of cheese five miles away would've had a better chance of getting out of the woods than these morons. It just makes no sense that the "woods" could've been more than a thicket in densely-populated Maryland. What rural plot of land in Maryland wouldn't be completely transversable in a day, walking slowly? And even if worse came to worse, were these people so INCREDIBLY stupid that they couldn't have marked their trail? Some might well say that by the end they were so exhausted and delirious that rational thought wouldn't have occurred to them. But this is a bankrupt theory. One of the people might've broken down in this way. Two, maybe. But all three of them so completely fogged over that they couldn't put together a logical plan for...WALKING?

Ahhh, but what about the witch, I hear you saying? Did she not change the shape of space-time around the woods so as to make it impossible to walk out? Did she not cast a spell upon them to make them forget basic navigational skills? Please. It's impossible to walk out because the filmmakers NEED it to be impossible to walk out. This magical property of the woods is the _deus ex machina_ of the plot, and the story is inevitably cheapened by it.

Oh, sure: the ending rescues the filmmaker's credibility. They do know how to induce terror in an audience, however briefly. And this "payoff" is the result of some convincingly-acted character metamorphoses. But throughout the vast wasteland that was the film's setup we in truth learn only two things: 1) the filmmakers disregard their audience's intelligence and 2) $20 is an awful lot of money for a movie we could've seen at the dollar theatre downtown.

What's amazing to me about this film was how it depended upon its website and media hype to tell its story. Exceptionally clever marketing, of course, but bad storytelling. If you had no access to the media before you went to see it, the film would be all but incomprehensible. Without the hip website, and background documentary, you've really got nothing of substance in the film. Since the marketing was so pervasive and effective, it's hard to imagine doing, but try to conceive of going into a theatre with no prior knoweldge of the film. My guess is that you'd walk away scratching your head. I mean, think about it: what happens? People walk around, people walk around some more, objects are left tentside, and *boom* there's your witch blurring by the camera for thirty seconds. The ending is scary not because we've been told an engrossing story which feeds us little tidbits along the way to turn the screws of terror in our minds. It's not scary because it could happen to us. It's scary because all the marketing TOLD us it was scary. It's scary because there's a prelude at the beginning of the movie which says that the protagonists snuffed it and after an hour you 'feel' that it's about time for that prelude to come true. Because you know in advance it's not going to end well for our three adventurers, there is no mystery. And without mystery, there can be no great horror. There can only be the effect of being on a roller coaster looking down the tracks of the drop that's coming.

In fact, this movie reminds me very much of a ride at the Magic Kingdom. Not Space Mountain, which is an ordinary roller coaster made frightening because it's entirely dark. No this is maybe Splash Mountain. It's so heavily hyped and all the lines are so long that it must be the best ride EVER. You see that big flume at the very end of that ride as you're wating in line, and you think this ride is going to be GREAT. And maybe to some people it is. But when YOU get on it, you realize it's just a carefully created environment populated by a lot of dancing animatronic bunny rabbits singing a song until the very end, when--briefly--you have the wits scared out of you by what you had already seen on your way in. And as the car comes back into the station and you wipe the fractional amounts of water from your face, it suddenly hits you: THAT'S what I spent the last hour waiting in line for?

There are better ways to go bump in the night, people.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This is one you'll either love or hate
Review: personally I thought the film was great, but I know a lot of people who didn't. It's dark, scary, eerie and certainly makes you think!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: For sleepless nights: watch it at least 3 times.
Review: Most people don't get, I suppose, the fact that this movie's complete success relies on the fact that there is no visible perpetrator in the events that lead up to the untimely deaths of the protagonists.

The first time I watched it, I fell asleep, thinking it was pure drivel, wondering when I was going to get to see some gore. Then I watched it again, and again, and again, and became (painfully) aware that it is, indeed, one of the most effectively psychologically damaging films that I have ever seen. Why? Because you never, ever get to see who or what is out there doing this to these people. Without a visible bad guy, the imagination of the viewer is allowed to wander in any direction, most likely toward the viewer's most inate fears. And for God's sake, I don't care how cool you think you are: if you woke up in the morning and found your camping partner's teeth bound up in a bunch of sticks, you'd be pretty justified in freaking out.

Now, I am not a wimp when it comes to films. I've sat through Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist (yawn), all of them, countless times. Not one film has ever done to me what this film did. Just the noises outside of their tent on their third night camping, even before their tent gets pounded and they run screaming into the woods, makes me quiver and shake. Ooh-wee, I love that scene.

All I can hope is that they don't run the whole thing into the ground with sequel and planned prequel. As long as it doesn't turn into another dang Friday the 13th I'll be happy.


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