text: I absolutely love this film, it's one of the best horrors of all time. And people who say they don't get the ending annoy me because they obviously didn't pay attention to the beginning.
  Are you glad that Heather didn't turn the camera around when they ran from the tent? I read that one of the directors was standing there dressed all in white or something like that. I think if we saw just a glimpse, it may have taken something away from the film.
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 16:39
  # ? Jun 17, 2019 07:44
  When I saw it in theater, when Heather goes "WHAT THE gently caress IS THAT?!" and the camera sweeps to the left, I could have sworn I saw a creepy figure just barely visible in the woods.
  I kind of wish they had kept the original cut which didn't have the story explaining the "stand in the corner" thing because having it end on that with no explanation would have been even creepier.
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 16:42
  I didn't see a figure myself but always fun to have another look.
  moselle posted:
  Apparently there was someone dressed in all white off to the side to scare them but they never caught it on camera.
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 17:52
  Here's a screenshot from the cutting room floor of what the Blair Witch might've looked like (hidden behind spoilers for scare factor)
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 17:55
  Hey man, could be Michael Myers under there.
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 17:57
  The ending freaked me out so much when I was younger and first saw the film, it really gets inside your head and makes you imagine far more than what was shown. I recently rewatched it and the tension really builds up throughout, I think it's held up well.
  I agree with comments upthread about how it was criticised for ages, so I didn't use to admit I liked it - it's a lot better than the other scary films from the era so I'm not sure why it was hated so much.
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 18:46
  The first few times I saw the movie, I didn't remember the explanation by the time I got to the ending. It's really, really unsettling that way. Why is he standing there? You kind of hope he doesn't turn around.
  I think it's a movie that expects its audience to play along more than most, which is a gamble, but turned out really well.
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 18:51
  Huh, I think I need to pick up the DVD/BR, then, before I finish up my post. One of the things that stuck with me was predicated on how much I worried that some of the things we saw weren't acting, but people actually suffering hard.
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 19:16
  I actually just saw this for the first time a few months back when it hit Netflix, since I was so used to the bad reputation that I never bothered seeking it out. It's now a favorite of mine, holy poo poo.
  In my admittedly bush-league understanding of horror history, there were very few mainstream suspense-horror films of this kind out there at the time, and most people went in expecting something more like a return to the golden age of slasher movies instead of what we got.
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 19:47
  I think it was over-exposed and there was a backlash against it being everywhere in the popular media.
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 19:54
  book of shadows owned if you don't watch it as a horror movie and instead watch it as a dark comedy blooper reel of a horror movie
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 20:24
  I love the movie now, but as a 13 year old kid on Halloween with a group of friends who finally got a copy to see on VHS and was promised pants-making GBS threads horror, I hated it.
  Little did I know, it IS a terrifying movie. Just not the kind I was expecting as a dumb, overhyped kid.
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 20:27
  Yeah, it's worth it. There's just not that much info out about the movie, which is so weird, so any of that sorta stuff you gotta just latch onto.
  # ? Oct 29, 2014 22:05
  Here's the key, and what Book of Shadows gets even if it is a bad film, the real legend of the Blair Witch is the story of it's production rather than any of the stories they're told in the film.
  It's half dark comedy - but also half genuine murder mystery, without any Sherlock to divulge the solution. It's a nifty puzzle.
  The film provides all the necessary evidence to explain what's going on, without recourse to the supernatural, but never officially reveals that [game-ruining spoiler] the goth chick and the tour guide were apparently working together to reenact the events of the film, to create a profitable hoax.
  Everything the goth chick says - especially the stuff about the psychic powers and the (ridiculous animatronic) owl - is a lie, while the tour guide's exact level of complicity is uncertain because he's half hoaxer and half delusional. Whatever the intent, the outcome of their conspiracy was to push the other three into becoming murderers - with specific focus on breaking the decent, unexceptional atheist guy.
  The goth chick essentially becomes the Blair Witch, with the tour guide serving as her Rustin Parr. Her only major slip-up was being caught on camera during the gas station robbery.
  # ? Oct 30, 2014 07:33
  I'll let a much funnier man than me state how I feel about this movie.
  Chris Rock posted:
  That was a movie? I thought I was watching a wedding in the woods. What the HELL was that... I've got videos of my birthday parties scarier than that! Everyone's saying "Oh it only cost $60,000 to make"... Where the hell did all the money go? Somebody's walking around with $59,000 in his pocket.
  Just saw this for the first time at a screening at my school today. I thought it was pretty solid, though a lot of other people were bitching about how you never see the Blair Witch and what not.
  That's one of the things that works so well in it though, and any reveal would have just looked lovely.
  # ? Oct 31, 2014 00:11
  Yeah, I don't really get the complaint either. I was fine without seeing her.
  The one part I was a little iffy about was "I threw the map in the river!". Part of me wishes that instead we had seen a tussle or something between the three kids over the map, with Mike taking a hold of it and maybe throwing it in a river then. OTOH you would lose the great paranoid buildup with all the arguments about who possibly took the map, who's hiding it etc.
  # ? Oct 31, 2014 00:21
  I always thought the way to go with that was have them keep following a map and keep getting lost until they realize they're not doing anything wrong and SHOULD be out by now. But I'm not a filmmaker so even if that scene is a little dopey it's probably the right call.
  # ? Oct 31, 2014 00:29
  I haven't seen it since it first came out, but yeah, that stuck with me then and I still recall that ending very well. I like how the story went that the kids were made to stand facing the corner so they had to listen to the others get murdered, which made it much worse, and then the film essentially does the same thing to the audience.
  # ? Oct 31, 2014 00:42
  First off, I think I would've gone with DAT MAP WAS YOOSLESS as the title, but otherwise I'm glad this movie is being discussed: by semi-randomness, I watched the movie recently for the first time in quite a while.
  I'll try to keep this to a start-to-finish post but I can't promise it.
  The first thing that stuck out to me with the movie was the casting. Sorry to be so superficial about it, but all the leads look normal/unactorly enough that made the buy-in a lot easier. Even with the internet as young as it was at the time, would people have bought into the idea that the movie was real had the leads been more conventionally attractive? I don't think so. Everyone knows the kinda-chubby girl, the stocky dude, and the wiry guy who has probably done more drugs than most of your other friends, combined.
  The first act stood out to me a lot more than I remembered. Most films in this genre (and those that aped this one) tend to have cheerful/happy smooth-road feel to them early on: this is the time when things are going well and everyone is ok. BW doesn't do this, with the road getting rough long before any spiritual events go down. How many times does Heather get them lost in that act alone? How many times do someone off-camera say they don't believe her? This is what makes this movie special: by the time Real poo poo goes down, the protagonists have already had their nerves rubbed raw by things everyone can understand.
  Watching the film again knowing how little of it was staged actually increases the sense of painful awkwardness: as an article posted above mentions, how much of the conflicts/fights between the characters were acting scared/lonely/afraid/angry, and how much of it was legitimately three people who were scared/lonely/afraid/angry? Every cutaway that was clearly a fight between Heather and someone else made me emotionally wince. Having watched the commentary doesn't really weaken this perception of things.
  As some have said in this thread, Blair Witch suffered from an impression that it's Not Scary. For me, I didn't get scared from a rewatch and I'm not sure I ever did. The impression I got reminded me of what Cameron described his edit of Aliens: "Fourty Miles Of Bad Road". I don't know if its the color pallete or the way the film is shot, but I really got the sense that this was the last few days of people's life.
  One of the weirdest thing in rewatching the movies was how wishy-washy the (for lack of a better term) backstory the film has. There's two competing mythologie at play in the background: you've got the Rustin Parr stuff and the Blair Witch. I'm sure the two are more intertwined in supplemental sources, but within the scope of the movie it could be either. Because ambiguous plot lines are pointless ones, it refocuses the viewer's attention on what matters: the three people and their personal tragedy.
  The ending for the movie got to me strongly, and not because of the implication about what happened. It's in Heather's voice. Sure, the captioning says she's saying "Mike!", but she isn't. She's screaming in bursts in the end. There's only movie where I felt something similar, and that's the ending of Contracted: sure, it's possible that those few minutes represent the character becoming a zombie, or someone just so emotionally done that she's gone feral.
  I have a feeling I'll have some short-form nuggets and tidbits, but I figure I'm already in territory and who knows how long this thread'll stay up enough for them to matter.
  EDIT: Oh yeah, the sequel. Bad, but the best goddamned commentary I've ever listened to. Director (I think?) knows his movie is poo poo because the higher-ups made him add a lot of crap he didn't want, and gently caress them he's going to let everyone know, in detail, the whys and hows if the shittiness you're about to experience. Could it have been better had the twists not been obvious in the first act? I wonder.
  MisterBibs fucked around with this message at Oct 31, 2014 around 04:57
  # ? Oct 31, 2014 04:44
  The ending for the movie got to me strongly, and not because of the implication about what happened. It's in Heather's voice. Sure, the captioning says she's saying "Mike!", but she isn't. She's screaming in bursts in the end.
  One of the subtlest, creepiest touches is that the sync gets reversed at the end and when you're with Heather you hear Mike's feed so she sounds distant, and when you're with Mike you hear Heather's feed and he sounds distant.
  # ? Oct 31, 2014 04:50
  Speaking of creepy touches - I love the fact that in the Curse of the Blair Witch documentary they have a segment about finding the crew's cameras and stuff under layers of sediment that have been undisturbed for centuries, under a house that hasn't been there for years.
  Rustin Parr claimed an old woman had told him to do it; an interviewee mentions it in the beginning of the film. The two stories seem pretty connected to me. Unless I'm missing your point?
  Speaking of creepy touches - I love the fact that in the Curse of the Blair Witch documentary they have a segment about finding the crew's cameras and stuff under layers of sediment that have been undisturbed for centuries, under a house that hasn't been there for years.
  That documentary and the website were so well done. They were designed to promote the film obviously but they really added a lot of flavor and backstory too. In the fifteen years since The Blair Witch was released there's been a lot of viral marketing done in a similar vain but most of it has just been... marketing.
  # ? Oct 31, 2014 15:19
  This thread is making me want to watch it again. So what's the best viewing order, the documentary as a lead in to the movie, or the movie with the documentary as a follow-up? Curse was on tv first to spark interest in the film, but does it make the film creepier or less creepy if watched first?
  # ? Oct 31, 2014 15:42
  Is Curse available on youtube or anything? I'd love to watch it, but I don't really want to buy the DVD (since I have the movie on VHS, the only proper way to watch footage of people stumblind lost through the woods before they die).
  # ? Oct 31, 2014 15:43
  Well, there's this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDOz5F41qcc with links to the rest of it. I don't know it the whole thing is there.
  EDIT: Nevermind, I think this is something different.
  The DVD is about $5 on Amazon.
  # ? Oct 31, 2014 15:54
  but thats 1/50th of a piece of poo poo robot toy he could buy instead
  Alternately I own the movie and I don't want to spend five dollars for a special feature on a DVD I plan on watching exactly never. Also this is a bad post!
  # ? Oct 31, 2014 20:32
  I like watching Curse afterwards because that's how I did it the first time. Some of the stuff that comes out of it makes you want to watch the film all over again. I also rarely watch the film itself without watching Curse too.
  # ? Nov 1, 2014 00:44
  I don't think anyone mentions Rustin's motivations for doing his killing, just that he did it and that it tore the community apart when it was revealed. I'm sure that there's connectivity outside of the movie.
  EDIT: Watching CotBW, it's mentioned there that a woman told him to do it, but it's not stated in the movie itself.
  MisterBibs fucked around with this message at Nov 1, 2014 around 01:53
  # ? Nov 1, 2014 00:56
  # ? Nov 1, 2014 03:25
  A young girl was led away by the Blair Witch. One group went out to find her, but the girl came back on her own. Second search party went out to find the first, found them dead on CR.
  # ? Nov 1, 2014 03:46
  Ah okay, I remember the bit about the young girl now that you mention it. Thanks.
  # ? Nov 1, 2014 03:49
  The common theory about this is that they traveled back in time, which is why they couldn't find their car or any other landmarks.