17 facts about "The Blair Witch Project"

boing
21

In 1999, I commuted into the Santa Cruz mountains daily, and would often head home after twilight. So the road home (windy, 2-lane, and heavily wooded) was always kind of creepy anyway. So there’s item 1, lots of time spent in a wooded setting at night. :wink:

When I’d heard about the movie (pretty early on, before it was even screening anywhere), I spent a goodly amount of time going through its website. For the time, it was really well done and original, and scared the pants off of me the same way a good horror novel should. Add to this, I was going through a lot of personal turmoil at the time, and wasn’t incredibly emotionally stable.
Check off item 2, stimulating the imagination beforehand.

My brother and I went to go see an early screening at a local art house theater, in th e middle of the day (in summer). The theater was filled with adults, and there was not a lot of murmuring or other distractions. The preshow slides were a series of very moody b&w ‘ghost town’ style photos, along with a soundtrack that sounded like having one’s ears underwater in the bathtub while someone knocks on it. Super spooky.

So we all watched the film in silence. At the movie’s end, everyone filed out quietly, there wasn’t really any discussion - I can’t speak for everyone who was there, but the group seemed sort of spooked.

As I emerged from the theater door, I look up and notice - someone’s hung a couple dozen of those stick figures from the lobby ceiling! HOLY CRAP. My brother and I flew out of there and into the sunlight, shivering on an 80-degree day.

I have never had issues with watching shaky-cam type films, so that aspect just added to the tension for me instead of being a distraction.

For the next couple weeks or so, the drive back home from work was extra, extra creepy. Especially when I’d pass the mailbox that was made out of rough stones.

So anyway, I agree with you completely - one could be conditioned to be receptive to Blair Witch to have made it a frightening experience.

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22

Greatest, most original horror ever.
I thought it was genius.

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23

In this case, the cool alternative is The Last Broadcast. It was released just before Blair Witch, with similar themes and aesthetic, but had rather more story, and rather less shaky camerawork.

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24

Not heard of that. Ta. I’ll give it a looksee.
(Edited previous post to reflect).

25

I can’t forgive them for inventing, or at least popularizing, the found-footage/shaky-cam thing.

26

You saw MCU movies in the theater, but not Cloverfield? WTF, mang! Do you have a back-room filled with acid-free long-boxes, or what?

27

Scared the piss out of me. I’ve noticed about half of everybody just didn’t get it, even in the very first week. Guess I’m the other half.

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28

Ugh, those teeth. Scared the hell out of me, too…and the noises of the kids outside the tent? Thought I was going to jump out of my skin. Between the willing suspension of disbelief and being open to all the “lost/found footage” and backstory was what did it for me. I ‘enjoyed’ it tremendously!

EDIT: This bit from the post made me sad:

In what would have been some fun foreshadowing, the directors wanted to have The Animals’ “We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place” playing on the car radio in the beginning of the film, but that was too pricey for the producers to keep. They did manage to get the rights for Heather to quote the theme to Gilligan’s Island, as well as approval to show their Power Bars.

“Approval” to show their Power Bars. That irritates the hell out of me.

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29

This sounds like a pretty cool showing of it.

30

I’m in the category of those who enjoyed/were terrified by The Blair Witch Project, but what I keep coming back to is Eduardo Sanchez’s next film Altered, which I don’t think gets as much press as it deserves. Maybe I need to watch it again–maybe it’s not as good as I remember. It’s more traditional–no shaky “found footage”–but still creeped me out with its subversion of the alien abduction story.

31

In my opinion the reason it made so much money was when the film was released they were promoting it as being based on a true story. I remember there being some much hype around this film before it released because people thought it had actual footage and that there was some truth to it all. They had a website with false police reports and other so called facts to promote there film. Take away the hype and false pretenses and no one would even remember this move. The only reason I sat through the entire film in the theater was to see the witch, imagine my disappointment.

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32

Don’t waste the 3-4 hours required to watch both of those movies. Blair Witch was bloody stupid. They get “lost” in the woods whilst crossing the same creek (which they parked next to, BTW) no less than 4 times. Their lack of outdoor skills was appalling enough that by the time the 2nd one bites it, I nearly cheered. Cloverfield was all concept and poor execution. Basically “what would happen if a kaiju attacked NYC.”

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33

Oh dear,
never mind, you might enjoy this instead, the witch features quite prominently.

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34

I just have no real compelling interest in superheroes (used to think the occasional Spider-Man or X-Men movie was okay, now I’m just bored sick of them). But I have an active aversion to shaky-cam found-footage crap.

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See, that I’d watch in a heartbeat, if the camera isn’t being held by some poor fleeing refugee.

In fact, I have watched that movie many happy times since I was a kid. Even in 1998, which wasn’t even any good.

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Weirdly, TJ Miller, who did most of the camerawork in Cloverfield (more work than his acting, I’d say), doesn’t even get a credit for it.

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37

I have seen Europa Report, but not TBWP. How would you say that the former was influenced by the latter?

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Sadly, it is. Add s/he’s got malfunctioning auto-focus.

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39

I binged on mythbusters recently, and I couldn’t help noticing that car logos were blurred or otherwise obscured. What really bothered me was the thing about the Porsche Nine Twenty Something being more aerodynamic backwards than frontwards, yet they never mentioned the car’s make. It makes the world surreal, and not in a good way.

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40

Yep, so I heard. And that’s why I, the biggest kaiju fan in my family by a long shot, didn’t go see it.

But maybe I’ll Netflix it someday. I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to kaiju.

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