Rating: 
Summary: A return to "quiet" horror.
Review: Sure, this one has been hyped to death. There is even going to be a sequel(please, say it isn't so! ). However, all of the ballyhoo cannot obscure the fact that this is one of the best horror films to come down the pike in a VERY long time. It is a refreshing return to the subtler horrors of years gone by(you know, back before advances in digital technology killed our imaginations). People accustomed to having everything spelled out for them will be sorely disappointed. You are left to sort it all out by yourself. That is this film's great strength. We are only given clues and fleeting glances of the whole picture. The three leads all turn in very believable performances(yes, their bickering is sometimes tiresome... yet, it still works in the context of the situation). The filmmakers have done an extraordinary job of crafting an engrossing and scary little movie. They deserve credit for bringing a level of ingenuity and creativity back to the genre. Some may be content to be apologists for soulless "product." I, however, will continue to champion films like this; films that keep us from becoming complacent as viewers and as filmmakers. Nice work, guys!
Rating: 
Summary: What has been going on in the last 90 minutes?
Review: Honestly,I really cannot believe the rave reviews and cult status this film has achieved.If I had an option to give it 0-stars or a BOMB rating,I would do it in a heartbeat.TBWP has flaws galore,I don't even know where to start,but I'll try.The story is virtually impossible to follow.So many things happen at once.Basically nothing happens except the three kids keep on running screaming like babies saying the F-word non-stop and so on.The camera angles are terrible.Half the time I couldn't tell what was going on. Did I mention that the acting is horrendous? I was surprised that these kids actually have an acting career.They breath literally no depth into the characters and basically their nothing more than plastic toys. The direction is incredibly lousy.These guys don't know exactly how they want the characters to react nor what to do.In other words,Myrick and Sanchez are rip-off versions of real film makers like John Carpenter,Wes Craven and many more.And that is NO joke. TBWL is without a doubt the worst horror movie I've ever seen.Not a decent performance,line of dialouge,good direction or scene.I really wish I had a 0-star or BOMB rating,cuz if I did,I'd use.If you want a good horror movie,check out Halloween,Friday The 13th Parts 2,4 and 6 and Phantasm 1 and 2.Avoid this like a live hand grenade.Rated R for non-stop profanity.
Rating:
Summary: The Great Blair Witch Hype Project
Review: Month before "The Blar Witch Project" hit Theaters Nationwide,Artisan Entertainment pulled out all the stops in their promotional Campaign and billed The Blair Witch Project as one of the Scariest Movies ever.By adding on a fake Documentary about The Blair Witch(which aired mostly on the Sci-Fi Channel) and The Region where these strange things where happening,Artisan Entertainment even covinced some Airheads that the footage and events in the Movie are real(Believe it or not,but i ran into some of these Airheads)Being caught up in all the Hype i eagerly went to the theater expecting one of the best independent Horrorflicks ever,but after an half hour or so into the Movie my dissapointment grew bigger and bigger.Instead of watching a horror movie,i became witness to the exploits of three foolish College students lost in the woods. Their constant complaining,whinning,crying and screaming got on my Nerves very quick,one of those lost fools even decides to throw away their only Map,deeming it useless,go figure....Also the ending could have been treated differently,instead of trying to explain why and what made the three lost Fools dissapear,i believe it would have been more effective to leave the audience in the Dark.All in all,not a bad premise for a Movie but poor execution and hats off to Artisan Entertainment for a great Advertising Campaign.My Tip,watch the Mock Documentary "Curse of the Blair Witch",it's far more entertaining then the actual Movie itself!
Rating: 
Summary: Decide for yourself if you want to see it.
Review: I watched this movie when it first hit the theatre last summer, before word-of-mouth spread around so much. Therefore, the footage came across as very real. At several points during the movie, I was unsure of what was real and what was not real. That is what made the film horrifying for me. The very last scene left me and the other people in the theatre extremely stunned and very quiet. We all filed out of the movie silently. But that was then and this is now. If you're trying to decide whether or not to buy or rent this movie, I'll describe it. Imagine "Deliverance" meets "Friday the 13th" (with all the gore taking place off-screen) meets MTV's "The Real World." You've got the camping in the forest scenario. You've got the unseen horror that relentlessly stalks the unwitting victims. You've got Gen-Xers bitching and whining at each other every five minutes until you want to shake them silly. The campers get lost (they can't follow a straight line or a stream), scream obscenities at each other, and run around in circles.
Rating: 
Summary: Viewing The Blair Witch in a different light
Review: First off this review contains SPOILERS and I rate this film as a comedy, so you all know, and it works fairly well as a comedy. I mean all the parts before the woods, like the dialogue with the townsfolk: "Ay dar be a witch in dem woods you dam fool kids...ya never learn do ya! " are intended to be comedic. And the scariest piece of the film is obviously the extreme close up of the bag of marshmellows, as we the audience feel almost suffocated as the white through the plastic wrapper engulfs our screen. But then we go to the woods...where the Martha Stewart witch runs around and ties stick together and makes other assorted crafts (mainly dealing with rocks and a bloody something--the mystery part of the film) but she is a very absent minded witch.....She leaves the crafts scattered around all the time. At night in the film you can hear what sounds like a game of ping pong being played by a campfire in the distance..the witch is the undefeated ping pong champion of the woods having reclaimed the title from Donny Deer 3 years prior...yes that is somewhat scary after all isn't it? Then the fat guy with the weird chest hair patterns, oh I'm bad with names, loses the map..and so on..we lose the two guys, she's left, she runs into a run-down Motel 6 complex in the deep forest, doesn't check at the front desk, hurries down to the basement, sees smurf hand prints on the wall and the fat guy, and she clumsily slips and breaks her neck, dropping the camera, and the credits roll....well I thought it was fairly funny..my interpretation maybe wrong though, but I doubt it. I recommend everyone see this film for a laugh sometime in your life because this movie has some of the best 20- something year old's verbal fighting ever put to film. On the DVD the commentary is amusing as the filmakers themselves hardly take this picture seriously. And the documentary included on the DVD is great of course and adds more humour to the original film.
Rating:
Summary: Worst film in the history of the known universe.
Review: The title 'worst film ever' gets thrown about a lot these days... So much so that it has lost much of its meaning, but quite honestly, THIS is the worst film ever made, no joke it is THAT bad. You will never get those 90 minutes of your life back and if your one of those people that just has to go out and get burnt for themselves then consider yourself warned. It makes me shudder to think though that you'll be filling the coffers of the utter hacks responsible for this. Blair witch is not even a film, it's someone swinging a camcoder round, it's not a new form of cinema, it's a new form of garbage. Worst of all it is not scary AT ALL, not one bit. Anyone who got scared by this must be insane. Still hat's off to the marketing guys, they pulled off one of the biggest artificial hype jobs in cinematic history, well done boys, you must be laughing all the way to the bank. Lastly the DVD transfer is a total shocker, if you bought a DVD player for quality pictures then forget it. This is a video transfer and it looks quite frankly, putrid. Avoid it like the plague.
Rating:
Summary: So-So
Review: Well, some people thought that this movie was very bad, others thought that it was Great! I onth e other hand thought that this movie was so-so, which most of my friends think too. Some of the parts were scary, but some of it is just plain common sense. If you went into the woods for a Documentary, you would propbably come back the same way. Unlike the people in the movie, you're probably smart enough to do that. And if you find a whole bunch of little sticks that are purposely shaped in to strange symbols, you probably would book it towards the creek and stay their soiling yourself for 3 days. These people- Mike, Heather and Josh- stand there filming the sticks and got bugged by the Blair witch banging on thier tent. Unless you get scared Really easy, I don't recommend this movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Sorry, I just wasn't impressed!
Review: There really isn't much for me to say about this movie. Three college students go into the woods investigating the Blair Witch. Unfortunately the audience isn't given enough information on the Blair Witch to understand what makes the legend so intriguing. I can appreciate the way it was filmed. There were times when it seemed like you were watching an actual documentary rather than a movie. I can also appreciate that, unlike most films, you are not readily presented with what you are supposed to fear. A good job was done of presenting an atmosphere. There was no "horror movie formula" being followed, which made the outcome unpredictable. I guess my problem was that I didn't enough of a connection with the characters to care whether they lived or died. All I saw was two male brats led by an arrogant female brat. Their favorite word is the "F" word. They have no idea how to navigate through the woods. They scream, they yell, they die. End of story!
Rating:
Summary: Not a spring daisy...
Review: This is one horrendous piece of dog feces. This is truly one the most overrated film in the history of cinema. They called the fact that the director's used a minimal script, horrible equipment, and good actors wasted on improvisational lines that my little brother could write, creative. Boy were they wrong. The only enjoyable aspect of it all is the ending, which is bone chilling, other than that expect two hours of pointless drivel. Is this a study on how people and isolation, as well as fear, can not interact? By no means, there are better films that explore psychology than this gargantuan heap of flies. Is this a horror film? It is not a horror film, neither standard or cliched or of any sort, not even a gore flick, which could at least make us enjoy some aspect of it. It has no intelligence, contrary to the critics belief, its just some kids lost in the woods find out that a legend is true...haven't i heard this before? The filmmakers force you through more than an hour of three people goin' around in circles lost in the woods and encountering things that would only scare the most gullible of folks. It is until the last five, count them, five minutes that you can enjoy this flick or feel horrified to the least denominator.Other than that await seemingly endless film sludge. In fact i found it so dull that i actually thought the peripheral material like the fake documentaries found within the dvd,or on video, about the blair witch to be more terrifying than this massive mistake. The film itself though is pig slop. This is not innovative or genius it is just silly and boring. Trust me i've sst through some boring stuff in my entire life and i have seen films that move, innovate, inspire, terrify, and much more, but this is just the drivel of a 6 year old with a camera and a few friends, and not even good drivel. Ed Wood did a better job with Plan 9 From Outer Space. At least we expected manure from him. However three stars are deserved for the ending, which proved to be the most terrifying (in a good way) thing in the film. It showed a lot of potential. One or two scenes in between the beginning and the end also show plenty of potential and are actually watchable. However the scenes in the woods fail to communicate any suspense or worry for these "lost" travelers. Instead they just make you sit through meaningless drek. They fail to make these characters believable, like i'm sure they were supposed to do. In other words, while this film was supposed to look realistic it looks staged, very staged. The dvd features also contribute to the final three star judgement. As previously mentioned the documentaries piqued my interest and perked up my interest in the film. But alas the film was poorly executed on most behalfs.
Rating:
Summary: The Old Tricks Still Work
Review: INTRODUCTION. Man, what a scary movie! When I was younger I watched all the blood-and-guts, shock tactic stuff and by now I thought I was immune. But this one had me on the edge of my seat, fingers occasionally covering my eyes, and kept me awake all night. This review will point out several new and original aspects of the filmmakers' techniques, as well as some old and not-so-original ones, which are used throughout the film to enhance the effect of suspense and fear. CINEMATOGRAPHY. The film's most outstanding aspect is clearly the use of ostensibly documentary footage. The attempt to portray fictuous events through Hi-8 and 16mm is, of course, intended to give the movie a "real" feeling, but it also serves the purpose of allowing us to view the events through the characters' eyes. Thus, the escape scene on the third night - and of course the closing scene - carry an eerie feeling of participation, added to by the unstable movements of the camera and the natural lighting conditions. It is a kind of no escape situation, where it is much more difficult to tell yourself that "it's just a movie". Also, the use of long periods of darkness with sound only adds to the keenness of the senses. For example, the sound of the tent's zipper - used at least twice - is very potent in this dark situation, as an indication that something is about to happen. Another point is the alternation between Hi-8 and 16mm. This serves as a seperator between the outer framework of the film's storyline - the outing into the woods - and the inner, more substantial layer - the scenes directly concerning the occult events. In this context, it is worth noticing that after Josh's disappearance, the 16mm is in the hands of Heather - meaning that we enter even deeper into her own point of view. It is during this stage of the film that she also comes into the most direct focus of attention, peaking in her self-filmed apology (this is shot on the Hi-8 again, creating a methodical diversion from her 16mm point of view and bringing us even closer to her). Despite these interesting effects, the alternation between the two cameras also has a drawback - it reminds us that the film was edited and is not "real" after all. FAMILIARISATION. Throughout the film, various techniques are used to enhance the viewers' identification with the characters, and thus strengthen the fear and agony when something happens to them. The directors clearly had in mind that the audience would be mostly made up of teenagers and young adults. It was therefore their goal to make them feel that the portrayed events were happening to people like them. Thus, Heather, Josh and Mike are depicted as typical American youngsters in the 90's. The first element serving this is their lingo - words like "totally" as a multi-purpose augmentative adjective; "like" at the beginning of every other sentence; and the uninhibited use of four letter words. This was an easy task, since it only required the actors to use their natural mode of speech. Also, there are the various means used by the characters to placate themselves in face of fear, such as the semi-hysterical fights among the characters in order to "clear the air" amongst themselves. A final important aspect is the use of sex. Josh says he wants "his mother's mashed potatoes and a lay"; Heather writes in her journal that "some nookie would be nice at this point". The Erotic is depicted as an opposite to what the characters are experiencing, all young viewers will identify with this craving, and its frustration will make the film all the more disturbing. MAIN THEME. Nobody's perfect, and you can't be 100% original 100% of the time. It seems clear that the filmmakers drew upon their own acquaintance with horror movies in creating their main themes, and some ideas ring a very familiar bell. I'm referring to "The Return of the Child Murderer" theme: stories of past atrocities haunt the community, only to spawn a new set of events in the present. This theme was thoroughly explored in "A Nightmare on Elm Street", and plays the central part in this film as well. Just as Freddie Krueger was a child murderer killed by the Elm street parents, thus the Blair Witch was supposedly responsible for the disappearance of children after she was banished in the 18th century. Rustin Parr, the 1940's child murderer who said that he was inspired by the witch, brought his victims to his cellar just as Freddie Krueger did. But even if it's been done before, the use of the child murder theme never fails to invoke our deepest fears. It is not only a radicalization of children's spooky tales such as the Boogey Man, but also the strongest possible thematic confrontation of good and evil, innocence and vileness. But although the film ultimately boils down to the same old ways of manipulating our primal fears, it is done in a highly original way that succeeds in finding a new route to these fears and reawakening them. The image of Mike facing the corner in the movie's shocking peak achieves its terrifying effect through the total annihilation of his personality and his turning into another faceless victim. CONCLUSION. What is the next step for horror films after The Blair Witch Project? This film has certainly stretched the boundaries and succeeded in plucking our nerves in the most unmediated way - without music and without special effects. Perhaps the answer is to be found in the exploration of horror themes other than that of child murder, through the same "documentary" techniques used here. An attempt to thus "documentalise" Ghost Haunting, Nuclear Holocaust or Serial Killings has the potential of not only giving us another great scare, but also of creating a whole new class of film - the "documentary" horror movie - in which The Blair Witch Project will always be remembered as the seminal piece.
|
