#292 – The Blair Witch Project – (73%)

This movie had to be scored based on what I felt of the movie and I watched this in the cinema and knowing too much about this movie ruins it but knowing lots of marketing about this movie made it fifty times more terrifying than anything that had come before it. It has a score on the board of IMDb 6.5/10 and 87% from the Rotten’s. This was released in cinema’s in 1999 and has rumours of its budget from $200k to $750k please note the ‘k’ is correct there not an ‘m’ in site until you get to the box office figure of $248.6m. If this shoestring budget movie did something it made a massive profit. It also gripped the American public and unfortunately for the rest of the world you had a choice of reading lots about the movie or just watching lots and going into cinemas to see what the found footage actually revealed.

The story of this movie begins with a webpage dedicated to three missing students who vanished from Burkettsville Woodland when they went to film a documentary about the ‘myth’ of the Blair Witch. There were missing posters and police requests for information or leads to call them on a phone number of the police department heading up the investigation. The three had gone off to film a documentary and was anticipating a 2 or 3 day jaunt into the woods and when they did not return the family and friends raised the alarm. After searching the woods, the police found tapes that they have recorded during the trip. It has them walking through the woods and night time noises and follows them on their journey. Once the tapes were released a film company offered to edit the tapes together to follow the timeline of the journey and then release the tapes as a movie at the cinema with the aim of showing the world the footage to be able to see if anyone could see or recognise something that could help them find it.

If you do not know any else about this movie than the paragraph above and then stops reading this and go and watch this movie. Not only will it give you the opportunity to see if you can help find those still missing people but it will also scare the s**t out of you. Seriously! Do not read on and go watch the movie.

Ok with all suitable spoilers alerted now, if you know enough about this movie to read on then you will know it’s just a movie and a movie that gave birth to umpteen found footage movies that tried to follow in its footsteps with many of them falling by the wayside as it failed in one simple aspect this one got spot on. That being the marketing or creating a website and having a phone line coming to their desk where someone answered as Burkettsville Sherriff’s office and the myth was born. America apparently swallowed this hook line and sinker. Which meant they were scared out of their wits with this and I went to see this at the cinema with two good friends one believed one didn’t and then there was me that had read too much and new all about it. And as the guy in front of me as the lights came on, he said and I quote “Was that it?!” and the answer it yes, he was not much happier after the answer. On the other hand, I was with someone who was properly spooked by this and then I spent the night on a mate’s kitchen floor. They had no curtains or nets up and I spent the night looking at the white branches of a tree and shadows reflecting back off the lit tree.

All.

Night.

Long.

So it must have got me somewhere down the line and that’s enough for me to appreciate how bloody clever this movie is and how well it worked. Well done you crafty buggers who now have their own pool in their garden.