Don't go in the Basement

[Patrick]

OK, so I finally took it upon myself to see the movie "The Blair Witch Project." The movie was definitely scary and leaves you speechless after it's over. I give it two severed thumbs up. I was just wondering what everyone else thought about it. I personally loved it. It makes me wonder if that kind of atmosphere is something you could catch in a Doom mod.

What really makes that movie scary?

[Enjay]

I thought it was shit - start to finish. Over-hyped crap. Absolute wank. I got the whole "OMG we found a video this could be real" in the first few minutes. Then I spent the rest of the movie squinting at a grainy little postage stamp picture in the middle of the giant screen at my cinema whilst talentless actors wept, wailed and swore their way through a story that was nothing more than a kiddy-sleep-over-like "tell your mates a scary tale at night-time when the grown-ups are downstairs" piece of pap.

Not scary.
Not good.
Not worth all the attention it got.
Not worth the admission fee. (And I had a "see as many movies as you like" entry pass at the time so the fee was nil.)

The only thing that was good about it was that it was mercifully short. When we came out, my friend and I both felt we had been robbed of some of our life. Had we actually paid, we'd have complained and asked for our money back. As it was, with the movie being quite short, there were still other movies showing so we went in to see "Bowfinger" which, whilst being far from the greatest movie in the world, stood towering above "Blair Pish" like a monumental colossus and we at least didn't feel that our evening had been totally wasted.

[Bucket]

Were you raped by a low-budget movie when you were a child?

[EllipsusD]

I saw the movie a couple of days after it started in theatres, before I really heard much of the hype about it... though somehow I manage to be oblivious to hype about most things, so I guess that helped. Anyway, I really liked the movie at the time. Most people seem to hate it, though.

[Enjay]

Bucket said:

Were you raped by a low-budget movie when you were a child?

Yes.

;)



I just don't understand why Blair Witch is spoken about in the terms that it usually is. It's just a mediocre to bad movie with no real plot, bad acting and nothing actually going on. It's based around a simple, one shot idea and that's it. Fine, it was worth making a movie about to tease out the idea, but it's utterly dismissible. I'm not saying that I can't be scared or that I don't have an imagination or anything, but it takes a lot more that that obvious piece of toss to "get inside my head".

To me, the only really good thing about it (other then length ;) ) was the web site. I came away from the movie thinking that it was a waste of my time and I couldn't see how anyone could actually believe that it was real. However, the website was a real piece of class. It came across as authoritative and genuine. After reading the website, even after having seen the movie and already knowing that it was all just bullshit, I came away from it thinking "I wonder".

Maybe that was the movie's secret. It was an all-out media assault. There were pseudo documentaries, the web site, media releases etc all coming together to make it seem like it was a real thing. Quite why that would make anyone scared years after the event though, I don't know. The movie itself simply wasn't scary at all IMO and very, very obviously not a genuine piece of "discovered footage".

Interestingly, I saw a documentary about the town where it was set (which doesn't actually bear much resemblance to the way it was shown in the movie). Even now, they still get people turning up and insisting that it was real.

Deluded fool: Hi, I'm here to learn about the Blair Witch
Citizen: It never happened man.
DF: Ah, but it did. I know all about it.
C: No, it really didn't. We don't even have a police station.
DF: No, you're wrong. I know. I have teh intarweb and a foil hat.
C: Nope, I live here. You're wrong.
DF: Just as I thought. You're part of the cover up.

I kid you not. O_o

[Kira]

Never seen Blair Witch and I don't care, still if one of these days I have nothing else to do and that this movie is in my hands for one reason or another, I'll check this.

[Lüt]

Patrick Pineda said:

What really makes that movie scary?

I was going to say something like "nothing", but Enjay beat me to it and 100x over at that.

[Sharessa]

Yeah, that movie never looked very interesting to me so I never saw it. Interestingly, I remember watching Bowfinger at the drive-in while it was playing at the screen next to it (the drive-in here has 3 screens).

[SYS]

To the movie's credit: it cost fuck all to make, had ingenious viral marketing, and grossed an incredible amount of money. Not to mention deprived many a retard from their money in the process. I've never seen it.

[Coopersville]

I'm a big fan of the first Blair Witch movie. Watching some young adults bitch at each other seems kind of testing, but now that I've been involved in many college horror flicks (one actually was bought by Lionsgate), I've come to apprectiate how great the acting was. Strangely, I haven't bought the movie... Guess I'll do that soon.

Patrick Pineda said:

What really makes that movie scary?

It's like the oldest trick in the book. The less they show of the monster the more your imagination runs wild, and you can sometimes get carried away and be more frightened of something than you really should be. Movies like Jacob's Ladder play a lot off of it.

[alexz721]

Shit movie. I'd elaborate more, but Enjay stole my thunder.

[Enjay]

It's good to see that there are some other people around here who think the move was as bad asd I do (or at least a load of fuss over nothing). :D

[Ed]

90% of what the movie was trying to portray could've been compressed into a half-hour straight-to-googlevideo segment. It is socially irrelevant at this point, satired to the point being a parody of itself.

The second one *cough* had the hot, typically overly-morbid goth chick though.

[leileilol]

Gary Busey made me think to not go into the attic

[chungy]

Now we just need to guess what the next subject Enjay will rant about and get added to his title...

[Use]

Was pretty craptastic until the very end. About 15 minutes in I wanted to murder that loudmouth moron chick myself.

[Patrick]

another thing to add to enjay's title. haha. well, having watched it a few times, i really wouldn't classify it as a "great" film, but it had it's moments.

I think more than anything, the mood in some of the earlier scenes, like the shots of just the woods and the area around there were quite good, as well as the colors and "faded" look that everything had. I don't quite know what it is about that movie I liked so much, but I think the atmosphere was really quite good.

[Creaphis]

Alright, so some people like it and some people don't.

That isn't exactly a news flash.

[Chow Yun Thin]

I rented the second one a long time ago. Utter fucking trash and it didn't have the "discovered footage" shtick of the first.

[John Smith]

Blair Witch 2 is awful, full stop. Anyone who enjoyed this movie need not volunteer any other movie related opinion ever again, drunks and stoners (at the time) excepted. I bet Blair Witch 2 would be a pretty bitchin drunk movie.

The Blair Witch Project, on the other hand, is actually a pretty damn good film for what it is. Good enough for me to own on DVD at least. The worst I can say about it is that Heather Donahue should have known how the fuck to operate a camcorder before they went out and shot the film, and in retrospect that probably hurt the film rather than help it. Otherwise its at least as good, if not better, than if it had been some regular old Hollywood B-Grade Horror movie. I suppose it didn't necessarily have to be a big screen picture, and I've no doubt in todays world it would have been a 30 minutes direct-to-google-video-hope-it-becomes-an-internet-phenomenon thing, but in the nineties that outlet didn't exist. So in summary the movie does what it does well, and did it well for the time period in which it was released. Maybe I'm just not critical enough but thats good enough for me.

EDIT: I just asked the most movie critical person I know if he enjoyed Blair Witch and his response was "Yeah it was ok"

[Kirby]

I only ever saw the ending at one of my friend's insistence. I thought it was pretty good, although having not seen the whole movie I can't exactly give a full rating/review. It does not enamor me to see the second one.

[EarthQuake]

Blair Witch sucked.
Now, Cloverfield, was fucking epic.

[Sharessa]

Yeah, I actually really liked Cloverfield.

[Steeveeo]

Danarchy said:

Yeah, I actually really liked Cloverfield.

Why is it that I seem to be the only person in the world who disliked Cloverfield?

[myk]

Steeveeo said:
Why is it that I seem to be the only person in the world who disliked Cloverfield?

A friend of mine said she disliked it.

I thought it was decent for a simple concept; a tribute to (big) monster movies with a sense of immediacy.

[Coopersville]

Steeveeo said:

Why is it that I seem to be the only person in the world who disliked Cloverfield?

I actually dislike Cloverfield in hindsight of the Blair Witch Project.

[Tango]

I loved Cloverfield. What I didn't like was how my stomach felt while I was watching it :(

[Sharessa]

Steeveeo said:

Why is it that I seem to be the only person in the world who disliked Cloverfield?

Actually, the reason I said that is because pretty much everyone else I've talked to (over the internet at least...my real friends loved it too) hated it.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

That's not a witch, it's a very naughty boy.

[fraggle]

Patrick Pineda said:

It makes me wonder if that kind of atmosphere is something you could catch in a Doom mod.

while (1) {
    Radius_Quake (9,35,0,1000,0);
}