If you're over thirty and haven't yet read _Catcher in the Rye_, don't bother. You won't get it. Conversely, same rule of thumb states that you shouldn't read Henry James' _The Turn of the Screw_ until you're past 30. You won't get it.

Same is true for BWP. Some things just get better with age. Like one's mind. You should have waited another decade or so.

You can't easily classify its genre--psychological horror, thriller, occult, Hitchcock, MTV "real world". What's bad to you is in actuality just different. If you showed someone a movie like _Pi_ to an audience from 1950 they'd think the creators were schizoid.

You didn't know what to expect. What you saw defied any former paradigm. So it's an easy and shallow intellectual escape hatch to dismiss it. This was a predictable reaction from you.

Alas, subtlety is lost on youth. Keep going, MB. You'll get there!

As for your comment that, "The makers of this film want the viewers to create their own film," I'd have to agree with you on that. But it sounds like you slept through English Lit. 301. That's what happens with any art form--movies, books, sculpture. You can only get out of it what you bring to it. And as I said before, you appear to be too young to have brought anything to it besides a bag of popcorn.

Finally, with BWP, you have an adult horror film--you have something besides Buffy and Freddy and Jason. Any intellectual children will just have to grind their teeth because they just can't get it...and that burns them up after forty years of being the ones that "get it" while the adults scratch their heads.

Several people I know(incliuding myself) have seen TBWP, and so far everyone has fallen into 2 categories: those who liked it, and those who got motion sickness/headaches from the camera action. From the moment I started reading your review, I had a feeling you were in the latter group. I find it rather disturbing that there are that many people out there with weak stomachs, and it really disturbs me that they let their sour stomachs determine their opinion of a movie.

TBWP set out to do something that isn't done very often, translating a campfire ghost story to the screen. Ghost stories deal with "regular" people. In this story, it's a group of uppity film sudents. And damnit, they acted like uppity film students. A ghost story has repeating moments of suspense, building up over time, and always bringing various elements that seemed innocuous when first introduced. This movie pulled that off spectacularly. For the first time in a very long time, I was genuinely tense during a movie.

Take some dramamine and some PMS medicine and see it again. Maybe that'll help you see the movie, not think about your weak stomach.

--Jat

Dammit! Just tonight, I blew 7.50 on what my friend Saxan and I are now reffering to as the Blair Shit Project, and, oh, what a load of shit it was! First of all, how anyone could think this movie is incomprehendable because of its intricate subtleties astounds me. Not understand the twists and turns of the plot? The only twisting and turning I saw were the camera angles as little miss Heather tried to cross yet another unecesarry log while carrying her rolling camera. Considering there is no plot which to twist, I think we are pretty safe in the I'm-too-chikenshit-to-fully-grasp-the-intellectual-content-of-this-incredible-piece of-cinematic-glory department. This movie is the media's golden calf, pure and simple.

I can say that, because, like a once proud hero of war, I too finally fell to the deadly blade of Blair Witch hype. I read the article in Spin, I eagerly studied each two second commercial, and the only reason I didn't watch the Sci-Fi special was because I don't have cable. I eagerly explained concept and design to anyone who would listen, and waited poised and ready for my chance to finally see the movie. I enter the theater expecting a two and a half hour odyssey of psychological horror (my favorite kind of movie) to stand side by side with Silence of the Lambs, (I say stand by side with, because, quite frankly, nothing can top Silence of the Lambs) and what do I get? Three complete and total fuckheads who go traipsing off into the woods, backpacks and all, like some fucking nature trek, despite repeated warnings.

Eventually, after a little drink and some fucking marshmallows they come across some carefully placed piles of stones. In fact, as Heather so cleverly notes while taping, seven carefully placed piles of stones. Now, if little miss Heather and her two sidekicks, with her as always are Mike and Josh, had been paying attention earlier, when they were interviewing all the hicks and old people who inhabit their happy little town, they might remember that one man mentioned that there was a hermit who lived out in the woods. That's right, waaayyy out in the woods, in the heart, in fact. But this was no ordinary society hating, unshaven, spindly legged hermit, oh no. No, this happened to be the crazy one who just happened to torture seven small children to death. Seven. Now, at this point, simple math still might have saved them. A little math and some good old fashioned common sense would have led them to come to a conclusion: seven small children are tortured to death, and there are seven happy little piles of stones arranged neatly in the middle of the woods.

A little note about me. I believe in the supernatural, and, in conjunction with that belief, I also think that there are forces out there that none of us have any hope of comprehending and that we just shouldn't fuck with. Therefore, if I happened to live in this little Maryland town and know the requiste legend of the resident Witch, there would be no fucking way you could get me into those woods. I don't fuck with what I don't understand. But, if for some reason I did go up there with the half assed idea of shooting some crappy documentary for some unfathomable, as yet unexplained reason, I think my application of simple math, instinct, and common sense to the problem of the seven caerns would've sent my ass running for home. But, no. They have to stay and shoot their little movie.

So, what happens next? Well, in some hopes of creating plot so the whole fucking congregation that piled into this shitty theater doesn't demand their money back, Josh, (I liked him. Why? He was the cute one, and gave my eyes something to do for awhile.) manages to knock over a caern. Behold, shit starts happening. Josh diseappears after a few nights of babies screaming, (Ah, the surly crack babies have returned) and getting some kind of slimy goop all over his backpack. Apparently the witch has nothing better to do than slime people all fucking day, when she could've just killed him then. Now, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but wasn't the night Josh disappeared the night Mike was suppossed to have first watch? What the fuck was he doing?! Not whacking off; I don't think even I could manage it in the middle of the woods in a fucking tent when there's a bunch of surly crack babies screaming outside at random times during the night.

Ok, so if you manage to ignore that little plot-hole, (everybody in this movie was a hole. I was hoping Heather would be one so one of the guys would fuck her and I would have someone to cheer for.) the next thing is that, when they wake up the next morning, they find a little present. A bundle of sticks tied together with strips of Josh's flannel. They eventually end up pulling it apart, and inside they find a little present, (that's right, another one) supposedly from that witch-bitch herself. What is? Well, little bloody bits of Josh, apparently. It's like some teeth and an eyeball or something, I don't know. So, in my mind, the guy is pretty well dead.

So, skip to the end of the movie. Heather and Mike end up in--gasp!--the hermit's old hut. They are led there by the voice of Josh, and enter the ramshackle place in the hopes of finding him, apparently. Nevermind they recieved little bits of him in a thoughtfully done up package. But he could still be alive!! To summarize, they end up, of course, in the basement where the hermit shot al the children. Mike goes down first and we see the camera knocked from his hands by some unseen force. Next, Heather, who is shrieking Mike's name, runs downstairs, (camera still rolling, I might add, despite the mortal terror she's apparently in) and sees Mike standing in the corner. The hermit apparently used to take the children down in twos---nevermind there were seven children--and make one stand against the wall. He would then kill the other child and then the child against the wall. So I suppose the fact that the remaining male is standing against the wall is supposed to scare the living shit out of me as I make this astounding conclusion.

The last thing we see is a shot of Mike against the wall and then Heather's camera is on the ground. Apparently she was offed by some pissy ghost with a Winchester or something. The tape spools for a few moments and then cuts out, and the movie is over. The extremely stoned individual behind me said, "that was it?" The man was stoned, it should have been the heighth of entertainment for him. But in response to his question, I say yes my friend, that is it, three drunken fucks who no one feels any sympathy for traipse off into the woods, get attacked by the cries of surly crack babies and find some creepy sticks, rocks, and some blue goop that is suppossed to signify how fucked they are, and then get exactly what they deserve for their stupidity. I tried to amuse myself by the thought that maybe Mike and Josh had planned it all as a means of offing Heather. Now _that_ would've been entertainment.

If you want to waste seven bucks, wipe your ass with it. Either way, you'll get the same end result. Yes, Yes, Yes!

"Yes, yes, yes! A thousand times, yes! Was that not the lamest, most soul-taintingly bad film ever produced by human hands? And how about that double dose of MOTION SICKNESS that it gave you as a bonus? If I'm going to have all the color drained out of me, I want it to be from a good scare, not from the intense feeling that I'm going to yack up everything I've ever eaten! Only "The Haunting" was a bigger travesty, but at least that had some neat eye candy."

"There is at least ONE other sane person left in the world. So many terrible things to write I don't know where to begin. People are fed this shit about the movie, told that it is "independent" and "different" and they then vomit back what they hear. "Oh, this is a good movie, then. Oh, this must be scary a scary movie, then. Oh, the director isn't a complete and total hack/fraud, then." Fuck the facts. This "underground" "cult" "classic" doesn't need to be good. Its got so many slick insiders billing this movie as an "outsider flick" -- too back some of those insiders didn't have anything to do with the actual PRODUCTION!"

"Uh, hate to break it to you, but the fact that you and the Chick's Suck Guy both updated with advice against seeing Blair Witch on the same day makes it kinda obvious that you are either one and the same or that Shutdown has some irrational beef with this movie. Try and deny it"

"My husband andI wanted to add a couple other points...The barf bags. The ushers were handing out barf bags at the local showing. Agood thought, with the aforementioned jerkiness, but they were clear plastic. If anyone's stomach is so delicate as to get motion sickness in the first place, I don't think the viewing of the contents of the bag after it's been used is going to help a whole lot. We had visions of the pie eating contest from Stand By Me dancing through our heads.

The other problem.. y'know, if there's a big baddie on MY ass, and my vanished buddy's screaming out from the darkness, I am NOT going to beworried about some stupid ass movie camera. Fuck the camera.. I'm hauling ass without the benefit of taping it for posterity. It just wasn't believeable that they would have cameras in their faces at every damn minute. Iunderstand it was necessary.. but it was also unbelievably annoying. If we ever get stuck watching it again, you better believe we are rooting for the witch the whole time."

"I saw the Blair Witch Project last Saturday, and you are the only one that seems to agree with me that the movie is pointless."

"The number one failing point of all of these movies, and in particular The Blair Witch Project (besides that many people, including my moronic roommate, are under the impression that the whole thing is true...though I guess that is his own failing) are that the characters are beyond unlikable. They are despisable.

I hate most film students and filmmakers off the bat, as they are usually pushy artfags that are always trying to prove that they are valid artists, and because they hang out with a lower form of life, actors. These three pantywaist white kids though, were worse than most filmmakers and in fact, college students, and furthermore, people.

I don't care about some pasty-faced bitch and her fanatical need to film trees.

I couldn't care less about a hotheaded fat kid and his need to be accepted by artsy types.

And the lanky "Shaggy" guy and I would have come down to fisticuffs in real life. If I see him on the street, I am going to kick his ass."

"I've never heard of a movie this bad...last night April and I spent all night just talking about how much it sucked. It sucked so bad that we cannot stop talking about it."

"I'm glad that people are speaking up about this horrible movie. This is as bad as when Slacker came out, and all the critics were slobbering all over themselves about how good it was."

"Jesus, what a bad movie. And I can't think of any genre of horror that it could even fit into. There's no gore, so it's not a slasher flick. There's no real thinking, so it's not a psychological thriller. And there's no real suspense, so it's not an edge-of-your-seat. So they run from noises in the dark. I did the same thing when I was about 6 and took the garbage out at night. So the guy stands in a corner. I was made to do the same in Kindergarten. Both really hold no fear factor to me anymore.In fact, I have to congratulate the makers of TBWP for creating a new successful movie genre: 'The bitching movie.' Never before have I seen a movie where people just bitched at each other for an hour. If I reallyn eeded to see some people bitching at each other in the woods, I would've gone camping with my friend and his girlfriend."

"Moral of the story - get a fucking GPS (Global PositioningSystem) tracking device!"

"My friend didn't want to see it, but I dragged him to see it because everyone said it was good. That is the reviewers said it was good. No one I know saw it yet. I pleaded with him to go.So he went. I'm really sorry I dragged him along. That movie was FUCKING TERRIBLE."

"For weeks, everyone I work with has been masturbating to the Blair Witch trailer they've downloaded from the internet.

I sauntered over to the theater on a Sunday afternoon to see this "brilliant film" for myself. Arriving late, I was forced to sit close to the giant screen (typical of the multi-mega-moster-plex). No one had mentioned this was a bad idea. I gripped my seat, waited through half an hour of lame previews, and was prepared to be enchanted.

Instead, I found myself staring at anything but the screen to stop the motion sickness-- the cap on the frat boy in front of me...the Exit sign...the sticky wad of melted nacho goo on the floor below me.

Half an hour into the movie, I fled. No small task, considering I had to wade through a sea of captivated movie-goers, even tripping and falling in someone's lap. I could barely see straight as I ran across the scorching parking lot to my car. It took me hours to recover from that sick, nasty feeling-- and I am in no way one of those sickly, fainting pussy-types.

My friends say people were leaving because they just "couldn't take the psychological terror". The thing that haunts me most is the money I spent on that lame-ass movie."

"Bravo! Your review of TBWP was par excellance.

Unfortunately, I was forced to endure the sufferings of purgatory,affectionately dubbed "The Blair Witch Project." A few of my friends dragged me to this "film"--I respected them before they voiced their opinions about TBWP.

To be fair by announcing my bias, I generally do not attend viewings of horror and suspense films unless I feel in dire need to heckle something. These films general employ pathetic special effects in ani ncompetent attempt to astound the collective psyche of the audience. TBWP embodies this film production philosophy with the unidentifiable globule supposedly having origins in the inside of a human being.

As for plot, if you like the "boy/girl doessomething stupid, boy/girl gets scared, boy/girl runs, boy/girl does something else stupid or the same stupid things again, boy/girl gets more scared, boy/girl runs more, boy/girl dies" thing, then TBWP is the movie you should see.

Although I concur with you thoughts about and reactions to the "film", you did neglect one aspect of potential ridicule. This movie was based on the pretense that some dumb kids went into the woods and never returned. The police found footage from the excursion. Okay,reality check, if those cops had been forced to view that tape, they would have unholstered their weapons and offed themselves. I just wish .45's were standard issue at the box office."

I'm glad SOMEBODY has the guts to write a scathing review of this movie. I thought I was insane for being the only person who didn't get scared by this flick.

I'll admit that I "tainted" my "experience" of the movie by viewing the website, but I expected to be treated to some sort of clever plot, at least.

Now the creators are being solicited to create a "younger, hipper, 'X-Files'" for network television.

I think I'm moving to the Northwest Territories. I've had it with people.

First of all, I'd like to say you're smarter than me, 'cause you only paid U.S. $3.75 to see this p.o.s. I actually paid $6.25.

Second, like you, I'm already taking heat for 'not getting it.' What, exactly, was I supposed to get, besides motion sickness and a desire to open my wrists? (Vertically, of course, not horizontally.)

The howling banshee in the office next to me (some people here call her 'The Accountant') tore me up one side and down the other because "you're so biased in favor of special effects that you can't just imagine what it's like to be scared. You had to THINK about it." What a crock of BS! I don't need expensive special effects to be scared; in fact, I was looking forward to this movie precisely because the boogums terrorizing the three mouth-breathers was supposed to be implied.

Like you, I read only the barest synopses of the plot, I avoided the SciFi channel religiously, and I didn't even watch the trailers. So I go into said movie completely unbiased in either direction, hoping that the IMPLIED boogeyman would make my heart race just a little. But instead of thinking "Holy shit! There's a demon from Hell tromping around outside their tent!" all I could imagine was "Hey, there's some prop guy walking around in circles outside their tent. I wish he'd stop."

And I don't know about you, but I never found snot gobs on a bloody shirt to be all that terrifying. I guess we were supposed to deduce that the Blair Witch was an evil, hairy old woman with severe upper respiratory problems. Must've used ol' Josh as a handkerchief.

Providing jack-off material for white misogynists since 1997.

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