Three film students vanish after traveling into a Maryland forest to film a documentary on the local Blair Witch legend, leaving only their footage behind.
In search of a local legend, three bold amateur documentarians--director, Heather; cameraman, Josh; sound recorder, Mike--hike into Burkittsville's gloomy Black Hills Forest to find a shadow: the fabled Blair Witch. Now, one long year later--after that fateful October of 1994--there's still no sign of the student filmmakers, apart from the raw footage they left behind. Who knows what truly happened during their creepy five-day journey into the mouth of madness? Was there, indeed, an intangible supernatural presence in the dark woods that led to the team's disappearance? Either way, the missing trio must have seen something. Could the nightmarish myth be real?Written by
Nick Riganas
In October of 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary...A year later their footage was found. See more »
Many of the Futhark runes seen in the old house are reversed, which has a special meaning. A reversed rune implies a dark or negative fate for the person who reads them. See more »
Goofs
In Mike's reference to "The Wizard of Oz" in which he asks "Wicked Witch of the West, Wicked Witch of the East, which one was bad?" And Heather answers "Wicked Witch of the West was the bad one." Actually both Witches were bad. The Witch of the North was the good one. See more »
The beginning and end credits are designed in the style of a documentary, e.g. jumping slightly, static instead of rolling credits. See more »
Alternate Versions
"Newly discovered footage" was shown online on Amazon.com. It's basically Heather and Michael arguing more about the project. Amazon.com says the footage won't be available on the DVD or anywhere else. See more »
The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle
(The Theme From Gilligan's Island"
Written by George Wyle and Sherwood Schwartz
Courtesy of EMI U Catalog Inc. See more »
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.
79 of 137 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this
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.