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204 out of 276 people found the following review useful:
Tense, unsettling, original, intelligent, short, cheap., 3 November 1999
Author: Lloyd-23 from Newcastle, Blighty

This film is not a feature film. For a start, it is not feature length, also, it is not shot on film. More importantly, it does not have what feature films have these days: star actors, special effects, exotic locations, explosions. Instead, seeing B.W.P. is seeing something else that a cinema can be: a place where people can share an intimate experience created by a few people on a tight budget. I would be glad of its success if only for that reason.

The first section of the film appears at first to be amateurish and slow. In fact, it is very deft, and very efficient at what it does. It tells the audience everything it needs to know about the characters and situation, and nothing more. Also, it gets the audience into the habit of viewing the film's format: alternating between black and white (very grainy and poorly focussed) film, and the washed out colours of shaky pixilated video. The film makers managed to set up a rationale for why the film is so cheaply made. Three people hike into the woods for a few days to shoot a documentary, with borrowed equipment, and are in the habit of videoing everything for the hell of it. They cannot carry tripods, steadicams, dollies, large lighting rigs, or the like, so everything we see is lit either by raw daylight, or by a single light fixed to the camera, which illuminates just what is within a few feet of the lens. The film creates its own excuse to be cheap. This is intelligent.

The acting and script are both excellent. The well-cast actors are presumably playing pretty-much themselves, and are convincingly naturalistic, and neither too likeable or too dislikeable. The slow route into hysteria is well documented. Rather than simply having a character say "We're lost!", we see many scenes which show the trio getting more and more hopelessly lost, and more annoyed with each other for this. By the time they are thoroughly lost, the audience shares the despair.

My friend and I, after seeing it, both felt a little sick. I put this down to my having been tense for a hour, he put it down more to motion sickness. The jerky, badly-framed camerawork is hard on the eye and stomach, but I applaud the director for its uncompromising use. Similarly, no compromise is made with the dialogue. Some of it is very quiet and must be listened for, some is technical jargon, which is left realisticly unexplained.

One of the great strengths and weaknesses of the film is the editing. It is good in that it does much to heighten the tension, with many key moments lasting just a little too long for comfort. Each time the characters find something nasty, the viewer is made to want the editor to cut soon to the next scene, and the fact that he doesn't adds to the sense of being trapped, as the characters are. The problem with this, though, is that one is left wondering about the motives of the fictional editor. In truth, of course, the film is edited to create these effects, and to entertain, but the film's rationale is that these are the rushes of a documentary put together posthumously by someone other than the film's original creator. Why, then, would an editor piecing together such footage, edit for dramatic effect rather than for clarity? Why would he keep cutting back and forth from the video footage to the film footage, when neither shows any more information than the other?

The film is stark. After one simple caption at the start, all that follows is the "rushes". I wonder if the film might not have been improved with an introductory section which documented how the rushes were found and edited. A programme was made for television which did this. Perhaps a portion of this might have been added to the film, making it more complete, and more believable (and proper feature length).

While I applaud the fact that young original film-makers have managed to create a mainstream hit out of a simple idea, well-handled. I dread the possible avalanche of inferior copies which may come.

Most horror films these days are created not for the audience, but for the makers. The departments of special effects, make-up, model-making, animation and so forth all try hard to show potential future employers what they can do. The result is that nothing is left for the audience to do, since everything can be seen and heard, and the viewer's imagination can be switched off. Today, it is possible to see pigs fly on the screen, and so film-makers show off and show us a formation of Tamworths, which is something which will look impressive in the trailer. To show us less is to make our minds fill in the gaps. This way, we create our own terrors, perfectly fitted to ourselves. The ghastly face I see in my head, is the ghastly head which I find scary. The ghastly face I am shown may be one I can cope with quite easily. If I see a believable character screaming in hysterical fear at something I cannot see, my own brain creates demons for my night's dreams, demons far more mighty than anything CGI graphics or a latex mask could portray.

This film will stay in your thoughts for some while.

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302 out of 480 people found the following review useful:
Sorry we couldn't supply the eye candy most of you are so used to....., 1 December 1999

Author: blackheart from London, Ontario

I think I know why Blair Witch has generated as much negative as positive responses. It FORCES YOU TO BECOME INVOLVED IN THE MOVIE GOING EXPERIENCE!

Wow. What a concept. Instead of sitting there like the passive sponges most of us become when going to the movies we are actually expected be become involved. Take a leap of faith/belief or whatever and delve into this movie. Without the overpowering F/X and music score most movies rely on to 'scare' you, if you still have an imagination left what is implied becomes a hundred times scarier than anything offered up by Hollywood in the last 30 years. The hardest thing in movies is to scare you. Not make you jump out of your seat with 5000 watts of sound blasting at 400 decibels (ever seen the 1999 version of the Haunting? Event Horizon? - every potentially tense scene is preceeded by dead silence then the Blast). Wake up people! Blair Witch is the horror movies we have been needing for a long time and I'm glad someone finally had the guts to make it.

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180 out of 264 people found the following review useful:
Generation Xers head into woods; we view excellent results, 17 July 2000

Author: Brian A. Cagayat (dresden212@hotmail.com) from San Diego, CA, USA

I saw this film last night, LONG after all the hype and reviews were made about it. I settled in with the right mood for any film: no expectations. If you expect too much, you may be let down (take note for any Kubrick film). I watched the entire film without interruption and came out with a great feeling. "The Blair Witch Project" is one darn good movie.

Many critics and moviegoers complained about the film for its length, its amateurish photography/editing, and its lack of adequate acting. I feel these things MADE THE MOVIE. First, the film has to be at most ninety minutes long: any more, and it would be too long and boring. Second, the amateur video take gives the audience the feel that they are actually in the woods, listening to the rippling water of the creek, snapping branches under their boots, and hearing things go bump in the night. I greatly admire the use of two video cameras (one black-and-white, the other color) to denote which character is shooting the film. Lastly, the incessant screaming of whiny Heather, the constant complaining of average-joe Mike, and the Dudley-Do-Rightness of Josh make for great acting. Yes, these are regular people and up-and-coming actors from your local community theater, but YOU KNOW THEM. You've met people like them.

The biggest complaint, however, comes from the film's supposed "lack" of scary moments. This film reminds me of the classic horror film "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," and though not as gory and as shocking as that film, "The Blair Witch Project" shows just enough fright in the group's search for a way out of the woods, stalked by people and/or things they may never understand. In the older film, the long interval between opening credits and first gory act of violence is about thirty minutes long; it is even longer here, but the suspense/fright (just as in the older film) begins right from the opening credits: you just don't see it until the film's over. These are three people out to make a documentary in the woods with handheld camcorders--these are REAL PEOPLE. And GREAT ACTORS. Heather whines a lot and screams and reminds you of the girl you hate so much you fall in love with her. Her screams sound real, her cries are genuine, and she is DEEPLY DEEPLY sorry for bringing the others into the woods in order to film her documentary.

I really dig the beginning. It seems so real to me I may delve into my old home movies for nostalgia. Heather and Josh pick up Mike, then go to the store for supplies. This opening sequence really packs a punch. These are three Generation Xers out for a camping trip. We all know what happens to them, but we're glued to the screen, intent to know what actually happens.

The interviews give us some detail into the Blair Witch legend, but most of the audience is too busy thinking about the actual trek into the woods that they don't listen. This is wrong. Listening is good. The interviews, which also sound real and not rehearsed in any way, are like movie reviews: the critics tell you what they saw, but mostly they don't want to ruin it for you...unless they hated it.

And that's what I'll do. I won't ruin it for you. 8/10.

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162 out of 264 people found the following review useful:
Gripping, stunning film, the absolute thriller!!, 3 July 1999

Author: Keith R. Schumacher from Tulsa, Oklahoma

Privileged to see a preview of this fantastically terrifying film, I found myself actually feeling the pain and mind-numbing anguish of the characters. At times in the movie, I would find myself trying to peer through the darkness with them, fully realizing that there was absolutely no chance of knowing what was out there. I think that is the most effective aspect of this, the fear of the unknown. I really can't think of anything more frightening than something that has no identity, and so you don't know how to relate or react, and you are forced to suffer through the unknown. A key component also included in this film was the steady decline of human spirit that you witness first-hand. You watch as the characters are broken down to small, scared, hunted animals, and you find yourself shaking your head at how pitiful and helpless they have become, yet you don't feel sorry for them, only agonizing hope that they will escape the fear with at least their lives. Wonderfully created film that, at least for me, an outdoor enthusiast who used to enjoy wandering alone through familiar woods, will always haunt me to the core of my soul when I look around and see nothing but endless woods, unknown sounds, and things that are never seen.

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102 out of 146 people found the following review useful:
Loved it, but you might hate it, 21 June 2000

Author: steves97 from San Jose, CA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Like most movies, whether or not someone likes TBWP will usually depend on what they're looking for. Many people enjoy horror movies because of the special effects, gore, shocks, and, in some cases, the high production value. Since TBWP came from a small independent film company that cost less than a hundred grand to make, can a moviegoer really expect all that and have a good time? I honestly don't think so.

Myrick and Sanchez had a terrific idea for a film: make a frightening mock documentary that was supposed to look like it was done by some amateur college students. Some people seem to be under the impression that the movie was about the witch, when what it really was about the mental and emotional breakdown of the three film students. I feel that once viewers could accept the low production values and the improvised script, only then could they deal with Heather, Josh, and Mike. Until they do that, the film would never work for them.

I just put myself in their position: I'm lost in the woods, I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I've got the added stress of returning borrowed equipment. The weather is getting colder, it rains just enough to make life miserable, and something is waking me up each and every night. Now, I'm exhausted, grouchy, scared, and I having troubles thinking clearly.

People might have hated Heather because they she was bitchy and annoying, but all three of them had their moments, good and bad. Many people might have also hated the fact that not everything was explained to them, and that they never got to see the Blair Witch. Many other people may have resented Artisan Entertainment's marketing campaign, although they can't deny just how effective it was. All the filmmakers and actors asked was that filmgoers understand the spirit that was intended; without it, they knew the film couldn't work for anybody.

As you might already tell, I thoroughly enjoyed this film. What Haxan Films managed to do with what they had is not only revolutionary, but is also inspirational to independent filmmakers everywhere. I found the backstory interesting, the plotline well thought out, and the characters extremely developed, considering the lack of structure and guidelines within the film. If you do decide to see this film, I think you'll enjoy it if you see it for what it simply is, nothing more; it might even scare the hell out of you!

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116 out of 189 people found the following review useful:
Inventive and terrifying. Will spawn many imitations., 19 July 1999

Author: Lynwood Moore Jr. (butch@nsimail.com) from Washington DC

With all the hype surrounding this new independent horror film, you might think it would be hard for it to live up to expectations. The Blair Witch Project is probably as scary as it's reputation. Feel free to read on, I do not intend to give away any of the film's secrets or surprises. The less you know about this creepy little chiller, the better.

Filmed on video and 16mm black & white, this film is exactly what the horror genre needs in a time reminiscent of the early 1980s slasher onslaught. The Blair Witch Project has no knife wielding maniacs, no DNA altered monsters, and no real bloodshed onscreen. We see what the three film makers see as they make their way through the deep, dank woods in search of a legendary witch. There are times when there is nothing but a black screen, and all we can do is listen to their scared voices and the unexplained noises going on around them. The true horror behind this film is the unknown, and those dark places where you know something is lurking.

If you are a seasoned veteran of the horror cinema, The Blair Witch Project may be less frightening than for someone who has not seen many scary movies. You will have to respect it's originality, and it's manipulation of our deepest fears. At times the film really makes you feel the sense of dread the film makers are experiencing. One thing I did notice about the audience in the theater is that everyone was very quiet. Except for an occasional gasp, the moviegoers were absorbed in this film. That's unusual for a modern horror movie. Most are full of fake scare tactics and multiple twist endings that keep the audience shouting and screaming at the screen. One thing for sure, you can expect many imitations of The Blair Witch Project in the future. Isn't that how it usually goes?

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76 out of 121 people found the following review useful:
Haven't you ever been to camp?, 2 February 2000
Author: Roo1i1 from Boston

This movie scared me in a way that no other has done before. I remember going to camp as a child, and hearing things outside at night. That was scary enough. This movie recreated that entire scenario and then added some to it. The fact that those things that go bump in the night outside your campsite were REAL in this movie makes it more nerve-inducing and frightening. As anyone, the first time I set foot in the ocean after seeing JAWS for the first time, I was nervous. Let me tell you in order to get from the movie theater to my house, I have to drive through the woods. After seeing this movie, that drive got SIGNIFICANTLY longer, more eerie, and scared the heck out of me. I went about 90 mph all the way home in order to get out of the woods! This is one SCARY movie.

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40 out of 67 people found the following review useful:
Not your average horror film, 21 June 2000
Author: Goreripper from Sydney Australia

A film which fell foul of its own publicity machine, `The Blair Witch Project' was abhorred and derided by the mainstream film-going public which it became unfortunately directed at due to its extraordinary and outlandish marketing campaign. `The Blair Witch Project' is not a typical film that the typical cinema-going public would normally be exposed to. The camera-work is jerky, the dialogue repetitive and inane and the action virtually non-existent. At times confusing, annoying, irritating and tedious, this film is nonetheless a brilliant piece of arthouse experimental film-making. This movie is virtually all style-there's hardly any plot, no real action, no semblance of a real script-and one that works on a deeper psychological level than the standard mainstream horror film. Indeed, only the very last image in the film is truly frightening, and only if it can be correlated to an incident at the very beginning. The rest of it only becomes scary afterwards, when the audience has had time to consider what they've seen. It is groundbreaking, manipulative cinema made without a script, with an amateur cast and with little or no post-production values. This is a remarkable film which can only really be appreciated, if the accompanying hype is overlooked, as a unique, avant-garde art film and not the regular Hollywood stock it was presented as to the public.

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52 out of 92 people found the following review useful:
Cinema Verite Fright..., 25 October 1999

Author: Donald J. Lamb from Philadelphia, PA

Is THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT a masterful ghost film or a gimmick to create a multi-media event? It is both. The picture, shot on super 8 video and 16mm film displayed in a squared, documentary-like frame, is quirky, annoying, and spectacularly scary. The scenes at night quite frankly scared the hell out of me. The gimmick that THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is created confusion and wonder over whether or not the footage shot was real life. Now, we all know the truth, but the French term 'cinema verite' is defined by this grisly film.

A guaranteed cult classic, BLAIR WITCH has "Heather, Mike, and Josh" heading off into the allegedly hexed woods of Maryland looking for the Blair Witch or whatever else may exist up in those hills. For most of the film, it is very unclear. The beginning excerpts ingeniously set up the three participants to believe they are a) experiencing the supernatural, b) being played like a fiddle by the suspicious townspeople or c) just completely out of their minds. Its up to the viewer to decide but my money is on option A.

Most filmgoers know that the filmmakers Sanchez and Myrick used their MAC cards and cookie jars to put this phenom together and I commend them. This is a tour-de-force thriller that does indeed seem real. Its all improvised and 'verite' like and the best part about the movie's many chills are based on the basic premise that scares most of us: We are generally frightened by what we cannot see. Many times throughout the film, the screen is completely dark with sudden bursts of screams and grainy scenery. For the sake of the suspense, the film may have been better if we did not know the gimmick. The realism is sometimes smothering.

True, the hand-held camera can make you achy in the head, but the way the actors play off each other is magic and not for the faint of heart. I viewed the film on DVD with someone who was not feeling too well because of the dizzying camera, but somehow the black and white and color and rain blend together and allow Myrick and Sanchez to do what they were attempting to do. Spooking an audience with unseen forces is so effective and I was reminded of Robert Wise's original THE HAUNTING from 1963 with the groans and the cries and the shrieks. A baby's giggle can be heard during one spellbinding scene when the tent the 3 students sleep in takes on a life of its own.

Much has been made about a similar film made in similar fashion by some other young auteurs well before THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT was released. I never saw it and if it was as good as this film we would've seen it. Nonetheless, this past summer shocked and surprised me with the amount of good horror pictures around. In the woods, no one can hear you scream either.

Rating: ***1/2

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20 out of 29 people found the following review useful:
War of the Woods, 3 February 2003
Author: rrichr from Berkeley CA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

CONTAINS SPOILERS In Berkeley, The Blair Witch Project generated a lot of a certain type of buzz that will often make me wary and I avoided seeing it during its first run, suspecting that I'd feel the rip of an eight-dollar ticket. After having screened a VHS copy acquired at Yard Sale Videos, I still feel that way a little but not because I didn't like it. Seeing it in a theater would have precluded being able to really watch a film like this the way I prefer to do.

I had to stretch a bit to get past some aspects of the film's setup. The self-filmed documentary approach can't quite carry the movie's weight through its entire length. Some sequences could not have been filmed by any of the protagonists, as was the implication, yet there they were. No one among the three `film makers' could have managed the presence of mind, in the midst deep panic, to have filmed Heather running screaming through the dark woods. It was all too far out of pre-established character, although the image is certainly indelible. But even a Dodge Dart with a brown door will get you there if it keeps running and once past my initial hesitations, I was forced to admit that The Blair Witch Project is.very effective.

There are moments when Blair Witch has the dankness of Silence of The Lambs and the raw, twilit scariness of the opening few minutes of Night of the Living Dead, in my opinion one of the great horror sequences. I became a true believer at the point where Josh and Mike began to realize that something was very wrong in the crackling Burkittsville woods, that they really had to get out, and were ramping up to full freak while Heather simply refused to stop filming although there was really nothing to film. This sequence nailed perfectly the deep frustration one can feel under the sway of a relentless know-it-all, especially when said person is female and, thereby, largely immune to the more primordial forms of conversation reserved for males. Josh and Mike, aggravated and frightened as they were, still could not abandon Heather, who had become more of a liability at that point than an asset. Both had begun to succumb to the stress of walking the razor edge between being scared squat-less and being unable to admit it.

The Blair Witch Project has an unassuming, almost sneaky way of getting to you. First off, the main characters are not at all likeable, which in itself is fatiguing. Josh and Mike are types that might be found at loose ends on any Saturday night, marooned in a mall or mini-mart parking lot. Heather is an almost-cute, soon-to-be-overweight, classic candidate for domestic violence at the hands of a future husband or boyfriend equipped with no sense of humor, or of the ironic. A few minutes with them and you are more than ready to burn out from slogging the monotonous autumn woods where night, freed from the shackles of Daylight Savings Time, comes too soon and remains too long. When the exhausted trio takes to its sleeping bags, you're right with them. Then, you're suddenly wide awake for all the wrong reasons. The sound of fracturing wood, out past a wall of darkness on which strong flashlight beams pile up like pizza dough, are not just twigs being snapped. They're branches, big ones. But this conclusion is never verbalized by any of the trio. One of the three refers to the sound as `footsteps' but only if the feet are size-72 American. It's left up to us to fully grasp the implications.

The three principal actors are, essentially, playing themselves and all perfectly manifest the giddy hubris reserved for those who may be able to come fifteen times a day but possess just enough knowledge and experience to be dangerous. But playing one's self may be harder than it looks and they do so with conviction, most notably the tough-minded, endlessly irritating Heather. Her character may be packing the only real cojones in the bunch and when she finally begins to unglue near the end, you know the doo-doo has gotten very deep. It's not mere post-adolescent, cheeseburger-craving discomfort any longer. That trifle has been left far behind; somewhere back under the decaying leaves. Heather's runny-nosed, video self-portrait, made upon realizing that she and her companions are in far, far over their heads, is truly poignant. We may enjoy seeing vain, clueless teens get theirs in slasher movies but the Blair Witch trio; three somewhat loosely-wrapped goofballs trying to pull off a film-making project, are really not clueless in the classic sense nor are they stupid. They've just intrepidly placed themselves in a very wrong place for which there may be no possible right time.

And finally the ending, which is really what this film is all about. Almost everything you ever feared in your youth, both in the light of day and dark of night, is compressed perfectly into the film's last few seconds. When the evil suggested throughout finally thunders down like stagnant water through a breached dam, the result is possibly the most viscerally disturbing horror sequence ever produced. All exploding skulls, bursting rib cages, and dangling intestines ever filmed are mere confetti alongside its simple, implicit power. Only the discovery of the maternal corpse in the basement, in Psycho, even comes close. Keep the little ones away from this one, Mom and Dad. A child's mind will have no defense, nowhere to run, and most disturbing, nothing tangible to run from; only an invisible, meticulously goal-oriented malevolence that comes from nowhere, and everywhere, at once.

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