User reviews

This film has maybe been one of the most hated 100 million dollar grosses in history. Before seeing this movie one should know absolutely nothing about it. Not even what the critics have said. It is a very creepy film. I for one loved it. I love the fact that it had virtually no-budget and it has made tons of money. It deserves it. It provides more atmosphere and creepiness than any horror film released this decade. The way it is presented, as the footage taken by 3 missing film-makers, is so simple yet pure genius. I've heard people complain that anyone with a video camera could have made this. This is true, but those people didn't and these people did. They had the idea and those who criticize it are just displaying their jealousy that they didn't think of it first. An instant classic whether you like it or not.

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.

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.

This kept me a nervous wreck throughout. Considering the reviews I've seen, looks like you'll either love it or hate it. I personally love it, and think it's better than a lot of films I've seen with an all star cast, and a much higher budget.

It seems many people dislike this film because they think the entirety of its reputation lay in the confusion/publicity campaign generated at the time of its release as to whether it was a real film found in the woods of Maryland that documented the disappearance of three college students or whether it was just a movie. What made this film scary in 1999 and scary now is what you don't see and what you think you hear as well as the growing paranoia and fright of the college kids lost in the woods over a period of days that find - as they run out of food and supplies - that they are just wandering in circles.

The very last scene is particularly chilling, and if you already know how it ends it will kill some of the fright factor for you. However, this film just proved in 1999, as it still does, that you don't have to fill a horror film with wall-to-wall state-of-the-art CGI visual effects and shocking violence in order to be scary. I personally think the horror genre has been much worse off since Jason and his ilk first invaded the movies back in 1980 with graphic violence that is predictable and, quite frankly, boring. Although I like this movie, the sequel, "Book of Shadows", is just awful. Its makers Hollywoodized the original concept and thus made it completely incoherent and unwatchable. Avoid it at all costs.

well i hated this movie the first time. so one year lated i rented it again to see "what was i missing???"

well i am missing a brain for thinking that it might improve with age or a second time around

it doesn't ==== as a matter of fact it gets worse.

i don't get the big deal -=------ it is NOT scary, NOT entertaining, does NOT hold your interest, it does NOT have good characters, it does NOT make you think. it isn't even mindless fun.

it is just stupid and annoying and a complete waste of time. i guess one can never underestimate the taste of the public at large. this movie deserved to make $0.

i still think the entire budget of the movie went to beer and pizza. and twigs and rocks.

made me save money by NOT going to see Blair Witch 2.

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.

One time as I entered a theater the usher was handing out 3D glasses for a short demonstration before the main film. After the previews finished and we were instructed to put the glasses on, there was a brief shot of a virtual theater in 3D, then it ended! Several members of the audience, including me, said in unison, "That was it?"

That more or less describes my feelings about "The Blair Witch Project." When it first came out in the summer of '99, a fellow told me that it was the scariest film he'd ever seen. That's what many critics had indicated as well. Since I love being scared, I eagerly went to the theater, thinking I was in for the experience of a lifetime.

The movie tells the story of three college kids who do a research assignment, go on a long camping trip into the woods, and ultimately lose their way. As I watched the kids grow increasingly panicky and finally get separated, my interest began to perk...and then the movie just ended! I sat there in confusion. That was it? Where was the fear that everyone spoke about?

My complaint is not that the film lacked violence. On the contrary, I'm genuinely tired of the sort of horror film where explicit gore substitutes for true terror. I believe that the most effective horror movies leave a lot to the imagination. Shortly after seeing "The Blair Witch Project," I saw "The Sixth Sense," which scared the pants off me without containing much explicit violence. A movie does not need violence in order to be scary, and, indeed, too much violence can detract from a movie's suspense. But one thing a good horror movie absolutely must do is establish a real threat, something that "The Blair Witch Project" does not do.

In the early scenes, I was unable to make sense out of the local legends the kids were investigating. The stories that the residents tell are unconvincing and contradictory. One resident talks about seeing a "white misty thing," another describes what he saw as "an old woman whose feet never touched the ground." This is the kind of naiveté associated with popular folklore like the Loch Ness Monster, and I could not connect any of it with the movie's later events.

While we are told that the kids were never found, the footage presents no clear-cut evidence that anything actually happens in the woods, other than that the kids get lost. In one scene, Heather begins screaming frantically at something she finds in a pile of leaves. I later found out that she was supposed to have seen severed human parts, but that was far from clear to me. Fans somehow piece together the various sections of the film and concoct a coherent story of supernatural murder, but to me it looked more like a case of hysteria than an encounter with a Blair Witch.

Despite my criticisms, this isn't a bad film. As a fake documentary, it is well-made. The kids look, talk, and act like real college students. While not scary, the film is far from boring. I enjoyed watching the story progress while giving the appearance of being something spontaneous.

Curiously, the Razzie awards nominated both this film and Heather Donahue's performance as the worst of 1999, one of the few times I've disagreed with their selections. We tend to overlook how hard it is for actors to act like they're not acting. People who argue that Donahue's performance was over-the-top have never, I suspect, seen someone panic. There was not a moment in the film that felt wrong or fake to me. Perhaps the reason I didn't get scared is that I felt smarter than these characters, who behave in ways that I do not think I would have behaved in the same situation. But I still found their reactions plausible.

If I was disappointed, it was only because the hype surrounding this film gave me a certain set of expectations, which failed to solidify. This movie was an early demonstration of the power of the Internet, a cheap $20,000 production that never would have attained so much popularity if not for a website that helped propagate the legend to the public as something real. It was more than just a film: it was an act of showmanship. This all amounted to an interesting demonstration, but not the sort of film I expect will endure.

I spent about an hour and a half sitting around in my living room on halloween waiting for something...anything to happen. Just when I thought it was coming to the big climax at the end in the house, nothing happens....big surprise.

This movie is a complete waste of time..there is nothing scary about it unless you find filming shots of the woods, watching swearing teens, listening to a high pitched annoying girl voice (that was pretty scary), watching film from inside a tent with cheap sound effects playing outside, or watching a wobbly camera run through the woods at night (cant see anything), then you should skip this movie. If I was out in the middle of the woods, I too would decide to throw away my only way of finding my way around..my map. This movie had a weak, if any plot. This movie was one of the biggest let downs I have ever seen, and I've seen "Batman and Robin."

I've never seen BWP 2, but it's anything like this movie, it will be equally bad if not worse, because I would have to waste another 90 minutes of my life.

This one is like the fable about the Emperor and his new clothes. He didn't have any, and the Blair Witch doesn't have any. This thing was awful, I wanted to like it, I expected to like it, I tried to like it, I came away hating it. I saw this thing three times, and while it's got a great idea, and it's not terrible for a student film say, it's far far too long and boring for the one trick it's got to pull, I simply am at a loss as to how so many people can allegedly have loved this thing.

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.

In October 1994, three film students Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard and Mike Williams (their real names) disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. A year later, their cameras are found. There is a local legend of The Blair Witch and missing children. They were there to do a documentary.

This is the granddaddy of the found footage movies. This could be scary if the audience buys into the film as real. I didn't and it's not scary for me. It's a little too shaky and rambling. I am reminded of Michael Moore talking about what a revelation the tripod is. Also the start is excruciatingly slow. It's an interesting idea that birthed a whole new genre. That's no easy task. However, it achieves very little more than that for me. It is more dizzying than frightening.

Hmm. Wow. What is there left to say? I've waited for most of the hype to die down to even add my comments for this movie to IMDB, and here they are:

This is really a movie that has polarized a lot of people. Many love it and consider it the best thing since sliced bread, and plenty more absolutely hate it and call it tripe, drivel, awful, wretched, the worst ever, etc. (NOTE: as far as I'm concerned, the opinions of anyone calling any movie the best- or even more especially, the worst- movie ever are to be immediately disregarded.) Highly innovative in its way, it spawned many parodies and an interesting but inferior sort-of sequel. In the summer of Star Wars: Episode 1, this was the movie that originated several cultural symbols.

I saw this movie shortly after it opened in wide release. Sitting in a theater surrounded by my friends with popcorn in my lap and watching Mike and Heather run around some creepy old house, I felt for the first and last time in my adult life *real, creeping fear* when I myself was not in danger.

Many have complained about the shaky-cam, the cussing, how nothing 'really happens', and that it's not scary. By and large, the camera is not *that* shaky, at least to the point where you can't understand why- they're tromping through the woods and they're scared half to death. I must not get queasy very easily, as I had no problem with it. As for the cussing- the lines were ad-libbed, the actors are college-age, and all three sound exactly like every American college student I've ever known. So maybe people have a problem with young peoples' language, but what else is new? That's not a flaw of the movie- it's realism and part of why so many more young people found TBWP scary.

I think at least some of the dissention in opinions is caused by generational and cultural differences. My mother's friends told me it wasn't scary, but that 'Psycho' terrified them. 'Psycho', while interesting and a classic, is not the least bit scary to me. 'The Excorcist' has only a couple scenes that I find frightening, but my mom breaks out in goosebumps at the mere mention of it. The scariest thing I ever saw until I watched this movie was a reel in a collection of horror shorts: a woman walks into her house carrying groceries, drops her keys down her heating vent, bends down to try to get them, and something grabs her scarf. She struggles, but within a minute or two, she's drug down and strangled. The scarf goes slack, the woman is lying dead on her floor, and that's it.

TBWP is about what you *can't see*, about how your fear of the unknown is so much worse than what the unknown could probably ever be. The characters were not even necessarily likable, but they were *familiar*- Heather is the girl I sit next to in film class who thinks she has all the answers. Their mundane existence, captured in the beginning of the film, roots them in reality. What happens to them is terrifying because they are so every day, so interchangable with millions of other college kids. And, finally, you never know whether the Witch exists or not. Everything that happens can be explained away by coincidence, pranksters, bats, hunger, exhaustion and imaginations run wild with fear- or you can choose not to explain them away.

Young Americans are not scared of much- school shootings can roll off us like water, the evil human beings inflict on each other is run-of-the-mill 6 o'clock news, we are raised in a culture that claims to worship a vengeful, elitist god while almost everyone is hypocritical and uses the power of spirituality as a way to abuse others. We are in information overload from birth. What we fear is not knowing. And in the Black Hills Woods of Maryland, just beyond the flashlight's reach, something is making strange and terrible noises- but we don't know what it is.

If you are looking for something to scare you, look somewhere else, this is the worst excuse I have seen for a horror film. The style of shooting was as expected, shaky hand held camera, which fitted the premise of the film, but you felt like you were watching an amateur film by school kids rather than actual footage of a real event which it was supposed to depict.

Normally I expect a horror to get my heart racing a few times, and have some surprises, but the plot was too obvious, there were no surprises, nothing that would make you jump.

I would not recommend this to any film buff, ignore the hype and skip this film.

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.

Well, here we are in this woods (which doesn't seem to have a lot of trees; it looks more like a city park). But we have wandered in far enough to get ourselves turned around. That's cool. We are already spooked by the legends and our minds are playing games with us. One of our problems is that we are all so self centered (nineties kinds of people) that we don't listen. We whine, we complain, we don't think. We film everything creatively but we also have a really stupid streak. I thought the actors were very good. It's what they portrayed that bothered me. Wouldn't it be good to have a look at what was going on outside the tent at night. It could have been a fringe group of the Girl Scouts. Why was it categorically accepted that a fire should not be set. If the witch is out there, then wouldn't you want to see it, or at least let it get itself singed. Hey, you're in a tent. What could be more unprotected (we all know the stories about grizzley bears that treat small tents as doggy bags). Hey, maybe we could put someone at the door and let the others sleep!!! Why do we start running? Where are we going? There's nothing chasing us. The power of suggestion takes over a little quickly here. Why go into that house? Why try to find that guy? I mean, your first order of business is to find a way back. I felt for them and I thought the frantic camera work was interesting. I just couldn't get past the stupidity of the people and their lack of survival instincts and self protectiveness. I agree that experimental cinema is wonderful and I'm glad that this has done well. Hollywood gets pretty tiresome. But this movie didn't click with me.

Is there? Because if there is, I want to see it. I went to see this movie because all my friends told me that it would scare me. I've never been even remotely frightened by a movie before. This movie didn't even come close to scaring me. It was so unbelievably asinine and stupid that I can't believe it even got picked up for distribution, much less called "great". I can't believe it made the amount of money it did. I should have demanded a refund. Let's put it this way -- if I took a few of my friends into the woods, with a video camera, and made scary noises at them so that they could pretend to scream, it would undoubtedly be scarier and superior to this movie. I'm sorry, but those "blair witch" noises sounded exactly like someone playing a prank on them. A waste of my $7.

Okay so I've watched this movie over and over and over again over the past 23 years, everytime it gives me the chill factor and no other 'found footage' movie has beaten it. The sequel 'book of shadows' was absolutely mortifyingly bad, 'Blair witch' meh, better but nowhere near as good. This is literally one of the best horror movies of all time in my opinion. The less you see, the better your imagination makes up for.

It hardly needs saying that "The Blair Witch Project" sparked a flurry of "found footage" movies in the first part of the 2000's, some were good, some just ok & others were appallingly bad. TBW project itself is not a brilliant film but it should be called the pioneer of the genre which then became a household name.

Set in October 1994, it tells the story of a small team of three young investigators who are making a documentary on "The Blair Witch" legend in the woods of Maryland. On entering the woods they chat to two fishermen who tell the story of "Coffin Rock" where alleged human sacrifices were made which they film & chat about as they start to make camp for the night. The next day they continue into the woods, but tempers get freyed as they start to realise they are in fact lost...

This film actually works if you consider it to be an experimentle art house movie, because it is certainly not a mainstream horror movie. In fact horror fans like me will be appalled at the lack of horror in BWP as almost all the suspence is suggestive. Also be prepared for a film that is non scripted & contains annoying repeated phrase words, very bad camera work (pehaps this goes with the type of film this is) & unproffessional acting. This movie is unpolished, because it is supposed to be, as it's amature in it's conception. The main character, Heather is really annoying, as well as being loud, brash & bossy which makes her unrelatable & left me feeling sorry for the other two guys, who are both nastily hen-pecked. So much so I think they scarpered just to get away from Heathers whining!

Well for a movie that spawned a whole new genre in horror/suspence, you would be expecting it to be rated higher, but I think a 6 is fair. If you understand the genre, it is watchable, but mainstream horror fans should avoid this, as they will find it without substance & shallow. There are no special effects, no sound track & no visable antagonist. The BWP is simply a raw, bare bones movie making expierence, with s creepy romp in the woods as a back drop. It is also a short movie which I feel will keep people from being bored. It has minimal bad language, no nudity, no gore (beyond a blob of something) & no agenda, which I think is suitable for age 14 plus.