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Blair Witch Project [Blu-ray]
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Format | DVD, PAL, NTSC |
Language | English |
Runtime | 1 hour and 17 minutes |
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Product Description
This cult movie took the world by storm in 1999, grossing over $200 million dollars despite an original budget of just $30,000. In Burkittsville, in the year 1994, three students - Heather (Heather Donahue), Josh (Joshua Leonard) and Michael (Michael Williams) - head into the woods to investigate the local legend of the Blair Witch, a spirit blamed for the deaths of various children. However, soon after setting out, the trio run into trouble...
Product details
- Aspect Ratio : Unknown
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- Package Dimensions : 6.69 x 5.35 x 0.63 inches; 2.88 ounces
- Item model number : B003YXZH5S
- Media Format : DVD, PAL, NTSC
- Run time : 1 hour and 17 minutes
- Release date : October 4, 2010
- Studio : Lions Gate Home Ent. UK Ltd
- ASIN : B003YXZH5S
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #151,939 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #40,810 in Blu-ray
- Customer Reviews:
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I didn't get to have the experience of thinking it was real; I had heard about it months before the release from other horror fans on the internet who were already blasting as a rip off of The Last Broadcast and Cannibal Holocaust before they had even seen it. I didn't have high hopes for it.
I did see it several times in the theater though, with several different groups of people. Initially I was reluctant but by the time I saw it near the end of its run, at a matinee where only myself and one friend were the total audience, I was a very willing viewer.
Some people complained about the shaky camera. It never bothered me. Most people I went with were True Believers. They just knew it was a true story and the footage was real, no matter how much I tried to convince them otherwise. I'm not sure if they were truly fooled or fooled themselves because they wanted it to be true. I'm not sure which is more disturbing: the film, or the people that wanted to believe these three people in the film were actually dead. Personally I would have been much less interested in seeing a snuff film. I wouldn't have gone to see that.
I can't understand anyone who was angry at the fact that what they had thought was three dead people cringing in terror during the final days of their lives, turned out to be fiction. Seriously, you don't think these kids families would have had something to say about their children deaths being turned in a money-making entertainment? Come on.
But enough of all that, what about the film? For me it's a great nod to films like The Haunting (1963) and the school of horror where the implied is king and your imagination does the job on you. I'm not going to argue with those who hate implied horror or think its cheap. I'm also not going to accuse them of having no imagination. Everyone has their own taste. Whatever.
But I would even include such films as the Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre within the sphere of implied horror. For every shock the Exorcist throws at you, it offers another subtle implied threat. One you have to think about to fully experience. With Chainsaw it's the fact that very little blood or gore is shown, the film lets your imagination do most of the heavy lifting.
Unlike those two films though, Blair Witch does not even share time with more direct horror. It wants to be a mind fueled shadow play through and through, and I applaud it for having the courage to do so...and for me, it works.
Its three main characters are distinct, fleshed out, and most importantly sympathetic. The best horror asks you to empathize with its characters. The characters here are not cardboard cut-outs that the filmmakers can brutalize for the pleasure of the crowd. Some people didn't like Heather, but I saw her more "objectionable" behavior as a coping mechanism, hiding behind her camera and insulting the other characters at times as an understandable attempt to keep the fear underneath at bay.
A lot of their acting is subtle and not shoved into your face. In a normal movie this would not be the case. Character moments would be underscored with music and typical film language which would lead the viewer into what to think. Blair Witch is not interested in leading you by the nose in such a way. They respect their audience enough to allow them to think for themselves.
These characters do bicker a lot, especially as the stress of their situation begins to take its toll. Their situation strips away the façade of civilization. It's not heroic or romantic. It's what happens to real people. Not that it's all pessimism. Once acceptance has come, it allows for truth to come out in a way it rarely does (Heather's confession), and towards the end Mike shows courage as he single-mindedly seeks to find their missing comrade. The best horror lifts the façade of the false goodness of the "civilized" person (with its conditional nature of doing for others only as a means to gain for oneself) and shows humanity's base selfish, frightened animal side. But perhaps buried under that can be found true goodness, or at least some authenticity.
The filmmakers present a rich back story in a short period of time. They pull this trick off by sprinkling bits of information throughout the film from various sources of uncertain dependability. They leave you to fill in the blanks, simulating how such legends grow and spread in the real world. They offer many possible sources for the events in the film, never truly settling on any definitive answer. Observant viewers will notice the tales relevance to the story as it unfolds. (the seven missing children from the Justin Parr story coinciding with the characters finding seven piles of rock cairns in the cemetery later on, for instance)
Despite the supernatural overtones in the film, there are no definitive supernatural events. Nothing that could not be explained away rationally. Even their returning back the their point of origin after walking for an entire day could be explained away by a faulty compass and the very real phenomenon of human beings tendency to walk in circles when lost.
Unlike most films, we can't explain anything away through hallucinations. The nature of the film being that everything is being picked up on camera, we are not allowed the luxury of that. So, something is definitely out there. Something that sounds like small children playing at times. A bit hard to explain that one away, unless there really is a cult living out there in the woods. Could be. Could be ghosts. Could be human agents. Could be the Blair Witch. It largely lets you fill in your own answer, which serves those of the more supernatural bent and those that favor a more rationale answer. Some people don't like question marks in their films, so I guess it loses out with that crowd but otherwise it's great the way the filmmakers have managed to allow the film to have its cake and eat it too.
To me, The Blair Witch Project is simply brilliant in many, many ways. First, of course, Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick used the Internet to build up a hype of unprecedented proportions for this film many months before its general release, creating a thriving fan base drawn deeply into the legend of the Blair Witch and the mysteriously doomed student film project, mucking up the waters of truth and fiction into a bloody froth that attracted horror sharks such as myself from far and wide. Then there was the SciFi Channel documentary Curse of the Blair Witch that was released just prior to the film's release. In this remarkably professional and believable documentary, the fictional story of the movie was given sturdy legs with which to scurry around the truth. The actors used in the documentary were amazingly good, and the use of family photos, old historical documents and letters, newspaper articles, television news features, interviews with law enforcement, family and friends, etc., did a great job of masquerading fiction as reality. Even those of us who knew going into the theatre that this was a work of pure fiction could allow ourselves to wonder if the story could still actually be true, and that suspension of disbelief did much to increase the power of what I saw on the big screen.
Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams were simply brilliant. Their displays of fright, rage, and hopelessness were stunningly believable; of course, some credit for the actors' performances must also go to the geniuses behind the film. I would imagine that the dark woods would become quite unnerving after a few nights, even when you know that whoever or whatever is out there is just someone associated with the film production, and the fact that the characters were forced to endure sleep-deprived nights and grueling daytime hikes over the course of a full week had to do wear down the defenses of the actors and bring to the surface emotions and expressions that lie too deeply to be accessed simply on command. I am still fascinated to read about the way in which things were managed in the filming. The actors ad libbed almost everything they said and did, which is actually quite amazing. At times, though, they had to redo things in order to please the filmmakers; the best example of this comes in the movie's final scene. As I understand it, the scene in the movie is actually a second night's shoot of those events, as things did not go quite the way the filmmakers wanted on the first night. To see that kind of emotion and fear portrayed by an exhausted Michael and Heather on a second night's take is just outstanding.
This horror fan welcomed such a refreshingly new type of movie to the fold. I like blood and gore as much as anyone, but true fright is best achieved by unspectacular yet highly personal events taking place in what looks very much like the real world as we know it. Millions of dollars have never made an expensive, special effects-laden horror movie as creepy as this extremely low-budget masterpiece of mood, atmosphere, and unseen things that go bump in the night.
Top reviews from other countries
I'd never been much of a Star Wars fan anyway so I was really excited about the big horror phenomenon of the year, and yet I can't express how appalled I was by what I saw. I sat and stared with a half smile on my face wondering when the film was going to kick in...after 80 minutes I realised it was not. The air of disappointment, not to mention disbelief, was palpable from my fellow cinemagoers as well.
Months later I was out-voted in a video night at a friends house and The Blair Witch made a re-appearance, this time I was surprised for all the right reasons. With the lights off and the curtains drawn (and essentially not in the company of 100+ other viewers) it takes on a whole different atmosphere (with the emphasis on fear).
Reviewed on the small screen, Blair Witch works exceptionally well. The infamous shaky camcorder footage is, after all, meant to look like a dodgy home video and now it does, all the more effective on the appropriate medium. And, the hype having now died down, the viewer doesn't feel the same pressure to love its "originality", praise its "ground-breaking" style and boast about how long its been since they had a night's sleep.
Blair Witch is a mini-masterpiece of cinematic beauty and breathless creepiness. Many a professional critic has written that this is not an accomplished film and that "cinematically it's shaky" (step up Monty Smith of The Mirror) but the whole point is that this is a homefromhome-video filmed by less than professional kids made all the worse by fear. Mission accomplished.
I've just watched the film again on TV and it was still fantastic, and that remember is coming from someone who was originally its biggest critic. How'd that happen?!
The ending (set up earlier in the film in a scene that isn't highlighted at the time as being important) is truly chilling and made me love the film even more.
So settle down alone or with a few friends and give this film a chance, it may not always shock but as a horror should, it will scare.