Believe it or not I have gone 20 miserable years on this measly planet without ever having seen The Blair Witch Project. I had been put off by the vitriol on both camps, those who love it and hate it. There was the initial hype then the backlash then the anti-backlash and then the backlash all over again. Luckily for me, I am good at divorcing myself from all the things that are not the actual film when watching.
So, I watched it tonight. Alone. In the dark. And it was fucking scary.
I got a strong Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe, in the sense that it felt guerrilla, DIY and 'real'. By real I mean that there was a small…

“I'm scared to close my eyes; I'm scared to open them. We're gonna die out here.”

The credits open. They tell you the ending right from the beginning, but that doesn’t matter; it was getting to the end that was important. The Blair Witch project is a film whose title can be mentioned and recognized by almost everyone. It is iconic. Since then, found footage has spiraled downwards, and has become a mundane and futile attempt at creativity. This is where it started; this film is one that cannot be topped in its category, because it practically invented it.

The Blair Witch Project is a found footage film about ‘three film students (who) go missing after traveling into the woods…

“I love you mom, dad. I am so sorry. What is that? I'm scared to close my eyes; I'm scared to open them.”
-Heather Donahue (Heather Donahue)

I think everyone is going to remember the first time they saw The Blair Witch Project. Be it in the local cinema on the day of its release, or entirely alone years later. For me it was seeing it on Film4 a good many years ago, in the dead hours of the night and alone. That was probably one of the most gruelling and unsettling cinematic experiences of my life.

The premise is simple, but is perfectly executed. Even for ‘found footage’ movies, it feels unnervingly realistic, from the student’s inept filming, the…

Part of **Halloween Season 2012**.

Astonishing. I have not watched this film since the theater in 1999, and I didn't expect it to affect me so strongly. The first half, I could take or leave. In fact, I was on the verge of turning it off and chalking it up to having needed the theater experience to really get into it. The characters are terribly unlikable for a good 45 minutes, and their acting in the early scenes is shrill.

But somewhere about the time they begin getting lost in the woods, I too got lost -- lost in the atmosphere. The filmmakers understand that there's nothing so terrifying as what I create in my own mind. They use nothing…

I'm torn on just how great this film actually is. Seen multiple times for various reasons I will probably always remember how unimpressed I was on seeing it for the first time in the cinema and how incredibly scared my friend was when walking through the woods on the way home but since then I have grown to appreciate it as a great horror movie.

Considering it avoids all temptation to have men in suits leaping out at you, gore spattering the lens or a score designed to make you jump Blair Witch really gets your heart racing by spending an hour making you empathise with all three characters despite the fact that they are truly awful people with the…

This film is so unique, especially for that time. It is a different type of film-making, a different type of 'cinema varité' (film studies overdose right here). The biggest fear is not in what we see, it is in what we don't see but feel, and 'TBPW' captures this essence right on point. It works because it looks real, and that's what they were aiming for. It's relatable, you believe the situation because you know that that could be you, and even the reactions of the characters to some events are the ones most people would probably have. It plays with urban myths, curiosity, despair, fear for the unknown, psychological horror and inner demons that gain life once we're out…

Despite its low, low budget and independent film status, “The Blair Witch Project” is clever and still overshadows the majority of existing horror movies. I saw this film for the first time during the year of its release in 1999 and recently I had the opportunity to revisit it.

A lot of the hype that surrounded this film was in part attributed to its unique and effective marketing approach. The majority of the public believed that they were presented with raw footage ("found footage") of real events leading up to the actual disappearance of the three students. The movie essentially asks the viewer to buy every bit of what they're seeing, and back in 1999, it was hard not to…

Eduardo Sánchez directed a horror film that cost just over $22k to make with a fictional myth created as a plot device and 3 unknown actors who were skilled at improvisation. The film went on to gross more than $248m and launched a new style of modern horror cinema.

3 student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams) disappear while hiking in the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland in 1994 to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. We learn at teh start the three were never seen or heard from again, although their video and sound equipment was discovered a year later by the police department and that this "recovered footage" is…

Found footage horror

So this was my second maybe third time seeing this movie. The first time was awesome as I had like most people never seen a found footage movie, it blew my mind and I have been a fan of found footage ever since. I rewatched this tonight because I'm writing a small review for some important independent horror movies for a Facebook page I help admin called OurWorld: Entertainment.

This second time watching The Blair Witch I was really surprised at how boring this was, the set up goes on forever and the "pay off" is insanely short. At the time this was released the marketing behind it was brilliant. They convinced scores of people that this…