Squidhead

So this means Blair Witch 3 isn't coming out?

steebo777

If it's anything like BW2, then let's hope not.

marty888

I guess I was ahead of the curve - I hated it from the start.

Save Ferris

That is such a lame exuse: dismissing all the 'haters' as 'one time closet lovers' of the film.

I hated it sometime halfway thru the film when it was becoming apparent it was full of boring low resolution imagery. And Ive hated it since.

The HYPE a movie creates is a totally seprate entity. Dont tie in a movies success to how well hyped it was. Give it an advertising award if you want to but it wont make the movie any better.

I didnt like:
The characters -- they were whiny and I didnt like them any more than the bimbo in any slasher pic. Yes the crying looked real. They looked scared. Too bad I wasnt. I kept wondering how they could be so dumb. Why didnt they 1. FOLLOW THE RIVER OUT OF THE WOODS? or 2. MAKE A HUGE FORREST FIRE/BONFIRE? Morons!

The 'witch'-- The complete lack of any scary imagery made it seem like a campfire story, but a campfire story told by whiny teens in the safety of a Lowes Theater.

Alien Redrum

They did follow the river, but it led them in circles. Those were magic woods, so a fire would not have helped any.

Save Ferris

strange. I only remember them wandering and CROSSING the same river. I thought they werent walking downstream. If they could make a campfire somehow a bigger smoke/signal fire should of been possible. But Oh well.

Groucho

They didn't follow the river, they followed their compass.

scott shelton

Why do people insist on logic for EVERY movie they see?

Honestly. I don't get it.

Save Ferris

Lack of logic makes a movie thats trying to be 'realistic' seem silly.

Its no better than the typical bimbo in the slasher flicks who walk backwards into darkened doorways.

HistoryProf

what?


That said, I think people just playa hate on this because it became cool to hate something that was so succesful....I loved it in the theater, and I loved it at home....especially living in the woods watching it by myself alone...scared the crap out of me - moreso than any other movie in the last ten years. But you have to have an imagination, and it helps if you've ever been a camper/hiker/outdoors person....city folk didn't get it I don't think, nor do folks who need everything shown and explained to them. imho of course.

HistoryProf

obviously you've never done much hiking/camping....rivers can be mighty long. they don't necessarily lead anywhere. I'd follow a compass before i'd follow a river. as for making a bonfire....for what? if you're ten miles from nowhere, then you are ten miles from nowhere, a bonfire isn't gonna help you much. especially in the fall when everything is wet.....so who's the moron?

Pants

The number one reason for backlash against the makers of BWP is the wasteland of '99-2001 when every two bit idiot no-budget fool decided he could get rich quick by making a Blair Witch Parody. I worked for a couple years with some producers way-way-way on the fringes of Hollywood, and they'd just completed the Blair Bitch Project, a horibly unfunny film.

BWP created a "low tech" phenomenon that became too dizzying to watch. Dogme 95 this was not.

My former boss told me a story that made me hold my tongue to stop from laughing in his stupid face:

They had just wrapped The Blair Bitch Project, no wait it was called the Belle Aire Bitch Project! Anyway they had just wrapped post production and were delivering copies around town to financers and small time distributors. So it's Friday morning and the cast and crew screening is that night. My boss delivers a copy to some distributor. He hands the Belle Air Bitch over to this guy who hands him right back another video tape of another Blair Witch parody. He says, "I've been getting these things for months, most of them aren't good, but take a look at this one it's the best I've seen. If yours is better than this you might have something."

So my boss (who probably should have pre-screened the tape) decides that that night, at the cast and crew screening, he'll show this other "competing" film to everybody before he shows his finished product.

Needless to say the competing film was tighter and funnier with a much better cast. But the most hillarious thing is that the film wasn't just a Blair Witch parody it was a Blair Witch parody parody. The film was about the misadventures of a bunch of bargain basement wanna-be "players" who have a series of misadventures while trying to make a parody of The Blair Witch Project. I would have paid $100 to have been there and seen it, but according to my boss it was practicly a mirror of the rediculous production they'd had.

El-Kabong

You want list? Fine. . . .

1) Hey, amateur film makers, here's a clue for you all: Write a freaking script! Don't just go into the woods and start improvising the action until you run out of tape. Your movie will be better for it.

2) It's called a Steadycam, people. Look into it.

3) And if you insist on improvising the script, for god sakes don't BE STUPID. Hey, look - a stream! Lets follow it downstream and eventually we'll reach SOMETHING - a road, a building, a town - or hell, eventually you'll reach the ocean. Even I, as someone who never sets foot into the wilderness and is a complete novice knows *THAT*.

3-B) Don't write in stupidity as a plot device, either. "I'm pissed as hell at you so I THREW THE FREAKIN' MAP AWAY! DAMIT!" was the lamest excuse for a plot crowbar as I've ever had the misfortune to see.

****EDIT****
3-C) If I am lost in the woods, and I'm alseep in my tent in the middle of the night, and suddenly something starts attack the tent and I take off in panic - I am sure as hell not bringing the video camera along! I am streaking buck-ass naked out of there so fast that even Jessie Owens wont catch up. Grabbing the camera and filming as I go will be about 810th on my list of things to do.

4) Have an ending. "Oh my god, there's something scary in the corner!" and then cut to black is not an ending. (of course by that point in the movie, I had given up caring at all. It was just one more Sucky Thing in a long list of Sucky Things)

5) Include all pertinent information IN THE FILM. After the showing I was complaining around the office to a group of friends. One of them said - "Oh, go check out the web page! You'll get all the background on the Witch and the setting you'll ever need!"

This of course violates my most basic rule of film-making. If the audience has to do homework to cover deficiencies in the movie, then you have not done your job correctly. All that information needed to be in the movie, and not on some lame ass web-page that only 5% of your audience will ever see.

6) Actors: standing around and shouting "F You" at each other every 45 seconds is not acting. Also, it's not very interesting or entertaining.

7) Audience Members: This movie is NOT the most scary movie in the entire history of film-making. In fact I've found more frightening things in my corn flakes. If you want a movie that delivers TRUE terror, then feel free to check out anything from this list: Alien, the Exorcist, Halloween, Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, The Ring - or hell, even Jaws delivers more suspense in one scene that this piece of shit delivers in 2 hours.

Shall I go on, or will this do for starters? I could go on for hours about this sad and pathetic turd. This was 2 hours of my life that I will NEVER get back, and I'm pissed.

RichC2

Psst.. You just wasted another 20 minutes justifying your hatred, that's even worse.

CreatureX

Actually in the movie the characters do mention that they kept walking in one single direction, yet they keep ending up in the same place. The reason this happened was because the witch had already trapped them and was messing with them. At this point there was no longer any chance to escape no matter what direction they went in.

I also hope the Blair Witch prequel gets the go ahead.

HistoryProf

shhhh, we wouldn't want to confuse the haters with actual plot points that completely invalidate their silly arguments

Buck Turgidson

I've always thought the whole thing was a ripoff of The Last Broadcast, and that is the main reason no one involved in the "creative" end has ever done anything since.

RichC2

I don't think they had time to rip off The Last Broadcast to be quite honest.

But even if they did, I don't think that really has anything to do with anything (and would also have to note that neither Lance Wieler nor Stefan Avalos has done anything substantial since Last Broadcast)

Buck Turgidson

^ True. I was under the impression there was @ a year lapse. I know I saw LB at least 6 months before I heard the first commercial for BW.

The ideas are SO close, it's hard to believe it's a coincidence. It's not like two adaptations of outside source material.

veritasredux

This thread makes me feel old. Has it really been five years?

I still remember the jaded theatre managers handing out barf bags because of all the weenies who experienced motion sickness from the handheld cam.

El-Kabong

Wandering around in a forest without landmarks, it's easy to get confused - which is what they were doing. It's hard to get lost when you always keep the stream to your left - no wandering around in circles that way.

Oh please - I saw the stupid movie once five years ago. I'm sorry for getting a detail wrong.

But hey, if my points are such 'silly arguments', then why dont you go ahead and debate the others, hmmm?

edytwinky

I thought this movie was so overrated. I saw it in the theatres, and admitted it was original but that was about it

andyh

One against the grain here ...

Five Years On ... I still think BWP is one of the most successful examples I've ever seen of creating an atmosphere. I sat there in the darkened movie theatre, and went with it ... I did what you have to do when watching a movie, and gave it a chance to convince me that I was watching something real, and not a bunch of actors.

Sometimes, you don't get into it .. like those Magic Eye pictures that you just can't see in 3D.

But I got into BWP, my mate sitting next to me didn't. He thought it was a waste of his time, and I was scared sh**less ... go figure lol ...

Nah, my hat's off to the folks that made Blair Witch Project. I've read this entire thread and some of the idiotic remarks (the one about get a Steadicam just takes the buscuit for sheer stupidity lol ...) make my blood boil ... but that's why I like DVDTalk so much :-) ...

neocheddar02

Discovered this thread, three years too late (while searching Dogme 95 of all things). Nonetheless;

What I liked about the movie was that it relied on no traditional horror gimmicks; particularly music cues (you know, the orchestra slowly builds up until the killer reveals himself then the volume shoots up to 11)

I liked that it was sort of up to your imagination to decide what was lurking in the forest. To me it was much more effective

(I can't believe I used spoiler tags for this movie)

When you have an (over)active imagination and a ridiculous fear of horror movies, the movie can really get to you, IMO. It's nice to see a movie that strays from the formula and really sticks with you.

And, if anyone is reading this, I'd love to get some horror recommendations that don't rely on musical cues and gimmicks.

Mr. Cinema

This still remains one of my favorite horror films. Very effective with a terrific setting...lost in the woods.