One thing that can't be overstated is the talent of the actors involved. Most found footage movies these days rely on jump scares and special effects and the acting is so terrible, it's just distracting. These three unknown actors were 100% in the moment and fully believable, even as they were literally making up the film as they shot it. It's like that old saying about Ginger Rogers, how she did everything Fred Astaire did, but in heels and backwards. The three actors did everything that normal horror actors would do, but without effects, carrying their own equipment, and without a script.
in fairness, most of the time they actually were lost in the woods, had no idea what was going on, and were being psychologically tortured by the filmmakers
Pretty well, yeah, apparently they were told "your safety is our first priority, your comfort isn't". As such they'd be kept up at night with recordings of laughing children, would be given less and less food each day so they were hungry as hell and so on so by the time the end of the shooting occurred they were genuinely in a really uncomfortable place.
+xingcat This film was so boring it sent me to sleep when I saw it in 1999 as a teenager. There is nothing clever about it, the performances are hammy and it is dull.
I went and saw a screening of this when it was still in limited release in the 90s. People thought it was 100 percent real until those credits rolled at the end. Even then, people didn't understand. I will never forget the guy behind me. He was a big, football player type, and he started to scream, "What the f*ck?! What the f*ck?!" halfway through, he was terrified. It was a really singular movie experience. My brother used to torment me by standing in the corner of my room, lol. A year or so ago I saw a documentary on the 90s, and it said that Blair Witch was the first commercial use of GPS technology. The director had learned about it doing documentary work during the Gulf War, and he used GPS to direct the film, leaving locations and notes for the actors every morning. He'd leave a note for Heather saying, "You have to stay in control. Do not let the others spin out of your control." And at the same time he'd leave a note for, say, Josh, "Heather doesn't know what she's doing. Take control of the group." He'd give them the GPS coordinates where they had to end up, and that was it; that's all the actors knew! So the movie really was on the forefront of technology at the time. I revisited the old website a while ago, and it looks so silly now. At the time, it was "proof" this was real.
Delondra Williams seeing him show shots of the website was like a childhood flashback lol, I remember when all websites with creepy or unusual themes looked EXACTLY like the Blair witch one!!
I remember freshman year in high school mere months before the movie was released (we were all super into it) being in web design class building sites like these with angelfire haha
Dang, how old is he? I was 13 when this came out and thought it was real until I saw them at the MTV awards. I didn't realize he was that much younger than me.
Speaking as someone who was there when this all went down...yeah, this scared the shit out of us, it was like nothing almost anyone had ever seen or experienced before.
I remember knowing that the movie was a fake, but after seeing one of their specials on the SciFi Channel, honestly wondering if this was real because of how the special was presented.
you a sad fuck then.. i knew it was fake even then.My guess is you lieing or you just dumb. Most of knew it was fake even then.Only the plebs thought it was real. We used to make fun of people like you.
It's strange, I only saw this film around two-ish years ago after already having seen a few found footage horror movies. Yet this still scared the shit out of me. The ending, to me, is genuinely horrifying. It did come out at the perfect time but I honestly believe it can still freak people out. Unlike many found footage films, this one builds and builds its dread until it all culminates with her screaming "MIKE".
See this is why I don't get the "It's boring." I can understand if someone said "I didn't like it because I like movies that have more action and lots of stuff going on." But boring? It's a slow build with minor things coming in to build up your sense of dread and fear. It was amazing at making you freak out the moment those kids were giggling and pounding on the outside of their tent. When Josh was moaning and screaming the next time I was terrified!
Waleed Khan I agree, I saw the film for the first time only recently and I couldn’t sleep that night. I’m pretty desensitized to horror movies but something about the Blair witch project deeply disturbed me.
Yeah, I first saw this movie in the middle of the Paranormal Activity craze, and I definitely thought it held up. I find it weird that Hollinger seems to be making the argument that it's not scary outside of the "less cynical" 1999. Sure some movies succeed at scaring because they're new or trendy. But despite Blair Witch's reputation, it's just a super scary film, even if you know every second of it is fake.
Waleed Khan indeed it's an amazingly one of a kind movie to me. I feel like most of today's movies somehow lost something this film had and has to this day
Thrillers with a mystery and no true ending can be great espcialy horror films ..the movie just ends ..we never really find out what occured ...its vague and that's its true appeal and why many think its real ..what other movie at the time would end like that ...it has no ending
Dude, The Blair Witch Project is still the best of its genre. My first viewing was only a few months ago, and it was seriously disturbing. So many found footage films take advantage of the easy-to-shoot style and putting zero effort into scares, characters or creating myths, because the genre is so easy to manipulate. Paranormal Activity is secondary to The Blair Witch Project (sequels aside) but this film still holds after nearly 20 years. Most found footage films can't hold after a year.
Blair Witch is definitely superior in every aspect (acting, story, concept). I enjoyed Paranormal Activity but feel that the acting/dialog was so weak that it took a lot away from what otherwise would have been a great film.
I completely agree with u, (I haven't seen this film yet, watching it now, excited to see it, but nervous as well, haha), I love Paranormal Activity, that film was actually based on a true story, (so we're the sequels btw), if you watch Paranormal activity all the way to the end if the credits, you'll see the pictures of the actual couple that the actors in the film played, I believe it says in memory of, Micah and Katie, it's insanely great, and I'm so excited to see this film for the first time. 😱
I think what's funny about them is that they have this cheesy, 50's styled gilded age way of presenting the internet. Like they were all directed by Reagan or something.
Well it's always fun to read about people reacting to significant technological breaktrough of their time. Internet is kind of special because 1). The 90's 2). It is so all encompassing nowadays. Reaction to anything invented in the industrial era is also golden. Steam vehicles were dangerous because the human body wouldn't be able to handle the reality-shattering speed of 40km/h and any onlooker was in serious risk of psychosis.
The Blair Witch was something that needed to be experienced at its time of release. It was something seriously insane. It's easily the scariest movie of all time....if you were around when it released. I'm happy to say that I got to experience it upon release, and was able to see the hype evolve. It's one of those key moments in cinema history that I'm thankful to have been a part of.
I was around when it released. It wasn't even close to being the scariest movie of all time. Or even it's time of release. It was just the most heavily hyped movie of it's time. There were actually a lot of people that didn't care for the movie. But the state of the internet back at that time a lot of those voices weren't gathered in one place. However the hype and push for that movie was very centralized in mainstream culture and news and treated as something particularly special.
@@Quandry1 I think it depends on whether you'd been exposed to the hype or not. I saw it when it was first released, and I hadn't even heard of it until that day, when my girlfriend and a few friends of ours asked if I wanted to go see this scary new movie after work... I'm so glad I knew nothing about it, and they knew next to nothing about it, because it scared the shit out of us in the best way possible! The unexpected worked.
@@neuralmuteWell that was more the hype anyway. Not that it was super scary or the scariest of all time or any of that stuff we have heard attached to movies since. It's hype was that it was a "new" kind of scary movie. Not a lot about it was technically new but it was definitely different from most of what we got at the time. Which was the typical bottom of the barrel cheaply made and cheapest kind of "scares" there are. So it stood out for those differences and thus was copied heavily enough to form a new sub genre.
i saw this in the theatre when it first came out, i'd heard some of the buzz about it when it came out but no one really knew if it was real or fake. in my head i knew that it couldnt be real because of all the legal restrictions video footage like this would have, but the audience was psyched, and the film itself was like nothing anyone expected. everything was so atypical of other horror movies at the time, no music, characters having believable conversations, and how you never actually see anything. damn the ending stuck with me for awhile after too!
In Blair Witch Projects defense of the whole plagiarism stuff, they filmed the movie in 1997, completely unaware of The Last Broadcast. People say it just did what Last Broadcast did, when the idea for Blair Witch began in 1994, hence that’s why the film takes place that year and for the next three years they developed the movie and it’s lore, then filmed it, then took another year to edit the hours of footage down to a reasonable length, originally it was going to be 2 and a half hours, but they cut it down to about 90 minutes. While it’s not the first found footage film, it obviously is the best example of the genre finding an audience and impacting the film industry for a time.
Even if that weren't true it's still far from plagiarism. There are millions of stories throughout history with the basic premise of people going out to investigate something strange. The Blair Witch Project still does a unique enough interpretation to warrant praise.
I honestly think that people use The Last Broadcast as a way to 1.) Flex their film knowledge (“Oh, you’ve probably never heard of it. It’s pretty underground.”), 2.) Rebel against pop-culture. I’ve only seen The Last Broadcast once and that was back in 2000, so it’s been a while. But I remember it being kind of goofy, especially the ending (the “big reveal”). I really should watch it again. Regardless, the differences between the two films are pretty big. Especially with how TBW leaves everything open and TLB leaves nothing to interpret.
I saw it at the time aged 19 and I was completely sucked in. I didn't have the internet and there was a documentary on Discovery called The Curse Of The Blair Witch the same night I saw it. I was genuinely terrified.
There's one scene in 'The Curse..' which I loved where someone was interviewing 'Mike's Brother' and they asked if he'd seen the film. In a very understated way, he said, "I'm really not interested in seeing my brother's last days thanks." They could very easily have overplayed that line, but the guy delivering it just nailed it beautifully.
I first saw that documentary on the Discovery Channel and it freaked me out. I kept telling myself it was all made up BS. But because it seemed so authentic that I was still chilled by it. Next: I went to see the The Blair Witch project assuming it would not hold up to the documentary. I was wrong. I walked out of that theater almost in shell shock. It was shortly after that, then the actors and the producers started touring the country revealing how it was all just bogus, clever marketing and unusual style of film making. Outside of the Exorcist- the Blair Witch Project is the end most nerve shattering horror film ever made.
I'll argue that the doc is scarier than the actual movie. But I'm with you, saw the doc first (it was on Sci Fi channel, at least when I saw it) prior to seeing the movie. Just blew my damn mind and I was convinced these were real events. I'll go back and watch the doc and the film still every so often and it still creeps me out to this day. The dark scary woods is something everyone can attest to being afraid of at some point. As the vid points out, this movie just came out at the perfect time and was marketed in a perfect, never before seen way. And it could never be done that way again, not today. It's like a time capsule back to the late 90's.
I watched this movie in 1999 in the theater with a friend of mine, we were both 19 at the time. Honestly, I remember both of us being disappointed. In fact, most of the audience was complaining as we walked out. In hindsight, seeing all the movies it influenced and understanding what the filmmakers and actors were trying to do, I have a much greater appreciation for the movie now. Book of Shadows is still a pile of dog shit.
Ryan Hollinger look at the girl in this movie compared to girls now a days who draw fake eyebrows on and look like powdered donuts because all the make up they use
Nothing in found footage horror beats it. Still the best in its genre to this day. The sense of despair is so real, and the horror is creepy yet subtle.
As someone who experienced The Blair Witch Project in its time. It was terrifying to watch the last moments of some teenagers lives and not know if it was real or fake. I didn't go camping or hiking for months. It was a great time to be alive and view that film in its purist form.
As someone who did experience this when it was first released I can attest, people were genuinely convinced it was all real. I remember walking out of the cinema and people looked shocked and I overheard a woman saying, “so, was all of that real!?” It was an experience that you just had to be there in that time for.
I am really happy that I can immerse myself in any movie regardless of how often I have watched it. To this day every time I watch this movie I am scared to death, disturbed, can empathize 100% with the caracters and feel the tension and everything. I am glad I am not one of these "I find that movie boring." people.
I'm the same way, I've been watching it around Halloween every year for like the last 7 years and it still scares the crap out of me. I'm so glad I'm not alone because seeing/hearing people trash this movie really breaks my heart
yeah I almost lost my shit, thinking they must be in hell, i must be in hell, what the hell...not the smartest stoned watch but good about...right now...October. :) I think that how the actors were made to get in character by experiencing some of the same feelings of isolation, being lost, starving, thirsty...has a lot to do with it.
Tell me how you do it, im the exact opposite, cant take any movie seriously anymore, they all feel predictable and boring except for maybe drama movies and Avant-Garde stuff
@@skepticmonkey6923 I can't speak for cuddler, but for me it helps to either imagine yourself in that situation, or to imagine yourself as a relatable character with a similar personality to yourself. For me this works at immersing myself pretty well. It's only when all the characters are meant to be terrible people or make pretty stupid decisions that my immersion is lost. (not that im perfect or wouldn't make stupid decisions as well in a given situation but still)
I love how much this video is not about the proper film and all the talk about the context. People often forget that every piece of art has been developed in a different time and the circumstances that made it be the way it is now were different. Brilliant as always, thumbs up and I am already longing for the next one!
I’m old enough to have seen it in the theatre, and I sat near the center of a sold out room. It was an extremely unnerving and one of a kind moving-going experience. The ending was so effective. Everyone just seemed drained after it was over.
Personal experience: I went to see Blair Witch when it was in theaters with a group of people. First off, YES, to people not used to the shakey cam experience it was very nauseating - which also added to the feeling of dread. When the movie was over I noticed an interesting thing: the people in the group who were the least imaginative hated the movie and found it boring, and they also didn't get nauseated, while the people in the group who were very imaginative were caught up in the movie and loved it, and for some reason they got nauseated. Maybe it had to do with being so intent on the movie screen, I'm not sure. I hope this might add to ideas about what seeing it in theaters was like.
ah, nothing is scarier than nothing after all. I really prefer the nothing style where my imagination and brain sweat to being beat over the head, especially if it's beat over the head with cg monster
Yeah the part where Heather screams "WHAT IS THAT?!" as they're running is in my opinion one of the scariest moments in any horror movie, precisely because you see absolutely nothing. They give you little bits and pieces: there's a witch, she has fur, her feet don't touch the ground, she murders kids, etc, and then your imagination fills in the rest into something much scarier than any CGI monster.
Sorry to tell you that but I am imaginative, it is actually one of a few things I am good at and I am also a filmmaker...I study film theory and history too...and yet ups, this film is garbage and so it is for my teacher who knows people like David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson...so I dont think if you hate the movie you are unimaginative. I actually prefer films when you see as little as possible and I hate jump scares. I just genuinly think that this movie was horrible as is every found footage out there and it relies on not showing you thinks more than on anything else and by anything else I mean the basic cinematic structures. It is amateurish and it tries to hide it by saying "it is found footage so thats why". I just hate such movies. And I say that as someone who loves horror movies so much that my fellow film studies classmates are making fun of me for that(they love french new wave, italian neorealism etc). So...no...the only reason some people like this movie and some dont is the matter of taste. To be honest, marketing for this film was just amazing. No one can deny that
I'm not in film making but I am an imaginative sort like Naverich. And I didn't care for the movie either. Not even when it came out. I was also part of the internet crowd when it came out. It wasn't as universally loved as it's made out to be. The dissenting voices just weren't gathered together like the hype and push for fake realism that surrounded the movie. I actually had fights with people determined to convince me that it was real when I told them it was not and listed reasons why and had some of those people come back later and apologize once the "hoax" was revealed. But the revealing of the hoax wasn't nearly as mainstream and concerted an effort as perpetuating the supposed authenticity of the film was.
I watched it while home alone in the dark, and I have never really watched a horror movie before, I just don't like scary and dark things. I was not scared at all, untill I woke up around 4 am that night and I just thought the ending of the movie and could not fall back asleep for a long time.
For me it triggers childhood memories of getting lost in the woods while camping. The rising desperation of the characters as they go in circles, cold, tired, hungry... it’s visceral for me, even after all these years. That’s what makes it still one of my all time favorite movies.
I remember the near heated debates we had in our family on whether or not this was real. The online marketing they had, and using unknown actors was absolutely brilliant. It was only when me and my older brother were able to find the imdb pages of the cast that the debate was finally settled but my sister stayed out of the woods for a while just in case.
Ever since seeing the Film Theory that there was no witch and it was all a conspiracy to kill Heather, I can't unsee this as being absolute canon. Every plot point fits that so well and it really makes sense.
@@Chubbasaurus Except the writer/director debunked that as a "theory" on Watch Mojo last September. He was on to celebrate the 20th anniversary by playing a new BWP video game, and he said straight up that they were truly lost, and that the ACTORS were often lost. You should check it out, it was cool.
2:30 The ACTUAL first "found footage" movie credit probably goes to Germany. They did it even earlier. 10 years before Cannibal Holocaust there was a German movie called "Die Delegation" that was made up as found footage by a journalist who looked for alien life on earth including footage of the journalist finding a dying alien etc. It was first aired on TV in 1970 being played like a legit evening documentary about the found footage that the tv station got hands on. They had a lot of people confused and considering the footage to be real. But it never left German borders so no one will know about it and since it is so old if my dad wouldn't have shown me the movie I wouldn't have known about it either even though I live in Germany.
This one of my mothers favorite films. She one day rented it because she thought it was a regular movie but boy were we in for a scare. She says whats good about the movie is that you dont see the bad guy, monster or force. Your just left to imagine what got to them and thats just terrifying.
Unless you were there when it was released it is impossible to understand how powerful this film was. We really did not comprehend what we were seeing and the tension you felt going in and then experiencing this film was like nothing else. It was exquisite. This film haunted me for years. It made me fall in love with horror and cemented my belief that what one cannot see, understand or know is the most terrifying thing of all.
I think most people knew it wasn't real when it was released in theaters. The cat was out of the bag. And people still were creeped out by it. It holds up just as well today.
when i was alone at home, parents at work. i watched this movie and knew that it was fake... but after watching this movie my screen door shut forcibly. i was scared shitless for a moment bc i live near the woods. but when i looked out i realized it was windy outside. but that officially creeped me out
I like the morbid vids haha. I loved Blair Witch when it first came out. It cemented my love of found footage horror. I think I've always wanted to repeat the feelings I had when watching Blair Witch the first time. Though before Blair Witch there was a UK mocumentary called Ghost Watch which did a War of the Worlds type fake out. As a kid I thought it was an amazing experience watching it thinking it was real up until the end.
Watched it back in 2000 when i was 7 years old,was staying at a friends house and his dad had a VHS with both the fake documentary "curse of the Blair witch" and The Blair witch project on one tape made us believe it and shat us right up.Wouldn't go in the woods for a couple years.
Dude me too. I snuck into the movie, because I had been investigating the website for several weeks before hand. Destroyed me, and changed the whole trajectory of my career choice.
Yep, I was ten too- and ten year olds are children first off so yes it seemed incredibly real.... and didn’t help that my friends and I spent every daylight moment in woods just like those in the movie 🤭
You sound really intelligent. Your videos expressing your opinion with concepts, human emotions, or film in general sound very correct on a higher level than an average thinker.
I was lucky enough to see this movie when it came out in theatres and honestly you hit the respect I still have for what this movie did out of the park. Regardless of what people think now the movie is a way in which horror is sorely lacking a tell don't show approach, ultimately its what you don't know or see that terrifies you more than anything. When you go into a movie knowing what it is you are expecting when you go in knowing that something happened and that's all you have no idea what happened. This movie is still one of my favorites not just from a story and narrative but for how it is presented. Every found footage film since has been trying to emulate what this movie did and is unable to.
Excellent video, Ryan. This film I special. I recently made a found footage video essay and praised this heavily too. I love how you delved into the Internet and how this film manipulated that to promote believability. Great stuff.
I remember when it first came out. It was all anyone could talk about. I was excited to see it, so I rented it the day it came out at my local Blockbuster. I enjoyed it then and I enjoy it now.
I love that movie so goddamned much. The Blair Witch Project is my favorite horror movie. I believed it was real for years as a kid, got obsessed about it the way some people get obsessed about True crime cases like the Zodiac or real mysteries like the Dyatlov Pass. I adore the mockumentaries made around it too. It just makes it so real. I often say you had to be there to truly appreciate it. Although reading some comments I'm happy to see many people enjoying it even after seeing other found footage and having seen all of modern horror.
Watched it back in '99 when it was released. Still my favorite horror movie and I still watch it at least once a year. No shaky camera or raw footage film has ever come close.
This movie was terrifying back then, and it has stuck with me all these years. I still end up watching theory videos or videos like this just to re-live it a little. The only other found footage film I've seen that has been remotely scary was the original REC.
when this came out in '99 it was so crazy the Blair witch hype was insane but really awesome at the same time. I remember going to see it in theaters and feel in love after I got home I went to the website and looked through it all i thought it was real. it's still to this day one of my all time favorite movies...and the marketing for this film was just amazing.
Me, my brother and my dad saw this in theaters. I became very interested on rather or not it was real until the 3 actors 1st appeared on Mtv for an interview. The movie scared a lot of people and for years after every time your in the woods someone would reference the blair witch in order to spook somebody out.
As a general horror film lover, i'm officially obsessed with your channel now. I watched your video about the witch and fell down the rabbit hole. Not sure if you've done one about The Descent or Silent Hill, but i'd love to see that since those are my fav horror films of all time
Some like to say that it’s not scary anymore. But everything you said in your analysis is exactly how I felt the first time watching it. And I knew it was fake going into it! It’s so realistic and raw and has such an air of uncertainty that I genuinely kind of couldn’t help but feel what the characters were feeling. To me, it genuinely felt like some menacing unknown presence was stalking and hunting them. I was crouched in my seat cringing over what I was possibly gonna see.
I love this film. One of my all time favorites, and as a huge horror fan, one of the only horror fans to scare me. It makes me wonder if films like this or The Evil Dead can still be made. Of course, we have great films like The Witch or It Follows, but those aren't nearly as groundbreaking or singular as Blair Witch or Evil Dead.
I've watched it on theaters (damn I'm getting old) and I couldn't sleep properly for a couple of days.. The end shot just stuck to my mind, it was incredible. I had heard about the movie and although I was suspicious that it was all fiction, it all had such a raw quality to it that you are definitely knocked my defenses and got under my skin. In that regard, it was truly a "you had to be there" situation. Kudos for your great video, I believe you nailed it really good :)
Really enjoyed the video man! I watched the film recently and while I found it enjoyable I didn't find it to be "amazing" as it is made out to be. I understand how the movie changed things now and I guess it must have been real scary to watch it when it first premiered.
I truly experienced this in its time, as you put it, and it was awesome. What sets the Blair Witch apart from other found footage movies is exactly that raw quality you mention. The fact the actors were really scared and unsure of what was to come next makes all the difference on the final result.
A little late to this, I just discovered your channel and binging on it. I was 16 when this movie came out. It was AMAZING! Me and my friends obsessed over it and kept looking online to find out anything we could about it. A lot of people talk shit about movies that don't resolve anything and don't show you the monster which I can understand to a point, but the lack of clarity was what gave me nightmares for years after seeing it... Your mind fills in the blanks and what it comes up with is infinitely more terrifying than some costume or CGI monster. Love your videos man!
I watched this for the first time myself recently and I am a big horror fan and nothing could really scare me or stay with me but this film with its raw and realistic feel to it absolutely messed with my head. I can only imagine not knowing whether this was real or not watching it for the first time back in the 90s audiences must have been terrified. Great video as always keep up the great work.
I saw Blair Witch in theatres when I was in high school. At the time, I was disappointed by how little it scared me and how staged it seemed some of the time. Most people seemed to love it, and I was sad that I wasn't able to enjoy it the way most others did. I've been panning this film since I was a teenager, but your video just changed my entire outlook. Thanks so much. I feel like you gave me something really special.
Alhazred01 it came out around what '97 or '98? I remember seeing that shit at 6 or 7 and being scared as shit and my dad always took me to scary movies and thought they were funny as a kid until I seen The Blair Witch Project lmao
I knew it was fake saw it a few years ago..still made me get chills...its really solid...its unsettling ..you can tell the actors had no idea what was going on ..their reactions are genuine ...the clealry felt like they were being haunted
I was 15 when it was released and we had a fucking blast with all the hype and marketing. My friends and I all thought it was real and it is one of those rare cinema moments of watching it in theatres that I will always appreciate being able to experience in the moment.
Saw it in the cinema, I had to leave briefly because I felt a bit nauseous from the shaking camera. And YES a lot of people thought it was real, and YES it seemed at the time that everyone and their grandmother went to see it. Everyone was talking about it so it was a must see.
I remember being 11 years old watching the mockumentary of this movie and thinking, "there's no way video footage of real people dying is going to be released into the theaters, this movie is either fake or nothing happens." And this is because of the really good mockumentary they had on the Sci-fi channel (red flag right there) and they interviewed "family members" of the characters and their anger that the final moments of their loved ones was going to be viewed by the world. I believed it was trueish but I smelt bullshit. Because realistically those families would have fought harder to stop the films release if it was legit.
Even though I never had the pleasure of seeing this gem in theaters (Hell, I was born in '98 lol) I remember the first time I ever saw it very fondly a few years ago. My parents were away on vacation in Hawaii or Italy (can't remember) for a couple of weeks, and my brother was staying at his girlfriend's house for the weekend. So I was all by myself in my house. I was flipping through movies to watch on Netflix in my parent's room and saw that this movie was on there. I never saw it before, but I never really liked found footage movies. I thought Grave Encounters was a boring mess that tried WAY too hard to be scary and Paranormal activity never lived up to the hype. But I decided to watch it because I wanted to give the genre another try since the concept can be so chilling. I was not disappointed to say the least. It scared the shit out of me. It also didn't help that it was 1 in the morning and I was all alone and had to walk my dog after the movie was over (which my house is surrounded by the woods so that doesn't help either lol). Even though I knew it was fake, the performances, the concept, and the execution was really something else. I loved how little it showed and did, but it conveyed so much to me. It's sad to hear that some kids don't find the movie to be scary and really boring but they're missing the point of the film. This generation is sadly so used to seeing the CGI ghostface and jumpscares that that's what they labelled as "scary" now. It's a damn shame that a movie like this that comes so close to what would happen in reality isn't scary to this younger generation.
The website was my first introduction to this movie, before it's release. At first little blimps would pop up at the bottom of sites. Eventually you started looking into it, then you'd find the site, you read about the "events", now you're trying to do detective work. Then you find out about the "documentary". Crazy smart marketing.
Watching this as an 11 year old after being told by your friends older sister that it was a video found in the local woods made the whole thing that bit more traumatising!
The best thing about Blair Witch Project is....there is no actual monster on screen but you (as the audience) feel it. Note: also the directors cited The Shining, Alien and Jaws as primary influences of the film, and you can note that
A lot of horror movies say they’re based on true stories... The Conjuring, for example. Not a bad film, but you can see how a good chunk of it is extremely exaggerated for dramatic purposes. My point is that, even if horror movies are based on true stories, it doesn’t really make them any more or less believable.
Even though the excorcist was based on a true story, I think they showed too much of the paranormal aspects to the point in which it didnt feal real. I personally like the blair witch more due to leaving more to the imagination and feeling more grounded to reality. Excorcist is a fantastic film though, dont get me wrong lol!
Yeah. TBWP is far scarier than The Exorcist because of that but it also better in other aspects... The Evil Dead for example has a paranormal theme but it does not detract from its stifling, it is still good and scary even though its theme is such a cliché.
Yes. I saw this film in the theater on opening night. I was uncomfortable as the film progressed and genuinely terrified during the last ten minutes. To be a true horror fan, you have to envy those that experienced such films at the time of their original release. I wish I could have watched cultural phenomena of The Exorcist back in 1973 or Psycho in 1960.
I'm going with No Country because There Will Be Blood wasn't as impactful like all the critics have said. The ending was...sub par. No Country is a cinematic master class
bob polo Yeah, sure. I think there is more going on with No Country, but i think TWBB is larger and probably more ambitious. And they were doing 2 very different things.
Ian Smart TWBB was ambitious, can't disagree there; but there was something missing, a governing idea or an actual narrative about something specific or topical. The story was really lacking imo. Conceptually speaking, No Country is the better film for its coherency, characterization, and examination of complex themes like fate and determination.
You don't even know how fast I clicked your video. I'm always so eager to see what you have to say about a film, especially those that I've watched myself. :)
I feel very lucky after your conclusion that this was the very first found footage movie that I ever watched. Needless to say that I was blasted away by the incredibly believable reactions of the actors and the filming style.
I was around 18 when this film was released. Yes, there were some who believed that it was real. And then there were others like me who recognized the fact that this was all a marketing campaign. I remember seeing it in a theater with my best friend. He thought it was a brilliant film. I felt a migraine from all of the horrible camera work. To this day I will maintain that this overrated film was just an example of novelty and smart advertising.
The internet was originally a piece of US military technology. Was used as a means of communication and then became part of public trade (much like Hummers lmao)
Oh man i remember being scared shitless when this came out. One of the few horror movies i got to watch on halloween that actually had me scared for years.
I actually grew up in ''the woods outside of Burkettsville'' and was living there when the movie came out. It was insane the amount of people who came to what was (and is still) a very small town looking for ''the witch''. We even had people wander into our yard a few times.
all due respect to anyone who likes these films personally i can never enjoy them not because they don't scare me. they do. but because my sense of reality always spoils it because i know that if someone was that afraid they would never be bothered with a camera. your instinct for self preservation is far too strong to worry about filming the experience and if you wanted to escape a threat you would drop everything you were carrying and run because it would hinder you. so frankly whenever i see these films where people never ever drop the camera i just end up thinking they deserve to die.
i really have to say that Blair Witch opened my eyes for this Genre of films, since then i absolutely fell in love with Movies such as: Exists, Troll Hunter, The Bay, Cloverfield, Afflicted, Rec and even Grave Encounters i would say
I saw the movie in the cinema at 19 and It was a unique experience. The construction of the characters and the story, the tension increase and the brutal finale, generate sense of real danger in the audience even after the credits. The crowd copy the feelings of the caractes, going from total and plain skepticism to total terror. It was a great time to the cinema
I remember when this film came out and my older cousin snuck me in with her, it was an amazing experience but scared the holy jingle bells out of me at the time. And I agree, the film came out at the perfect time and used the rise of the internet to make it even greater. The impact of this film is definitely apparent in today's social media strategy to promote films. Continue the amazing work you do with the videos! They are greatly enjoyed.
i live around 30 mins away from the town and forest where this was filmed. as a child, my family would have to drive through it quite often, and one day my father decided to tell me the story of the blaire witch. i didn’t believe him, but was interested. when we got home he showed me the movie, and i cried my eyes out. i had no clue it was fake until i was much older and asked him. hats off to him for making me believe in something so outlandish for so long
I didn't get to see it when it came out, but roughly six years later. I'd say that it is still extremely effective because of the rawness of the emotions... plus, anyone who has gotten lost in the woods while camping will understand the building panic that occurs in the film. I got lost in the woods as a young kid, so the movie still has an effect on me. It's one of my favorites to this day.
i was a somewhat sheltered kid and didn’t really enjoy watching movies outside of disney princess ones, so when i saw this movie for the very first time at my grandmother’s house, you couldn’t tell me that it wasn’t real until i looked it up. hell, i watch it now and it still feels real.
I was not aware of the found footage genre. My sister came to me with this movie and basically said nothing except that it was true. I am 16 and for some reason was taken up on the idea of a truly true horror film. As I watched I was supremely scared and almost cried in several points. I was shocked as to my brothers reaction as he was not that taken up by the film. I then for ten minutes after was in pure shock and then I was finally told the movie was fiction. Then I watched this video.
Great video. I was 13 when this movie was in theaters and I remember seeing it with my brother and my parents. Neither my brother or my parents were impressed with the film, nor really scared by it at all, which was a shock to me. As someone who loved to play in the woods as a child, this movie had a profound effect on me and how I view isolation. It has lost most of it's appeal over the years due to the countless imitations of the medium, but I still think about it when I hear an unexplained noise in the woods.
Just watched this film again for the second time since I was 13. I’m 30 now. It’s a lot more scary now that I’m older. I think the acting was superb. I could feel the tension and stress in their arguments and screams of frustration. Even I felt helpless watching it and putting myself in their shoes and just how scary it would be. All the emotions felt so real to me. Those screams were deafening at the end. There was a story told by Albert Fish about how he lured a little girl into house and when she walked into the room he was stripped naked and killed her. The ending made me think of that.
Thank you for this video, loved it! people these days are too quick to judge and bash this film not taking into account the context of when it was made. For its time it was really terrifying!
I remember being 11 when this film came out and the hysteria that surrounded it. It really was a magical little film and the hype was outstanding. A lot of people thought it was real, and it was unlike anything we had quite seen at the time. It really does bother me when younger people don't show appreciation for things like this, or talk down on them. Some things you really just had to be there for to fully grasp. And I still think the film holds up quite well.
I saw this movie when it came out. Me and a friend bought two tickets and he ended up bailing at the last second so I went in alone, at about the age of 14. THERE WAS NOBODY ELSE BUT ME ATTENDING THIS SHOW (which was a 7pm I think). Imagine my sheer horror watching this movie alone, not knowing what to expect and suddenly one of the cinema workers creeps up to me from my left, scaring the shit outta me, asking me if I want a break I clearly remember myself walking home absolutely terrified, looking back every 5 seconds. So sweet and innocent.
Best explanation and description of Blair Witch Project I've ever seen. There truly will never be another film like it. Makes me proud to be a filmmaker. Thank you for this Ryan Hollinger!
One thing that can't be overstated is the talent of the actors involved. Most found footage movies these days rely on jump scares and special effects and the acting is so terrible, it's just distracting. These three unknown actors were 100% in the moment and fully believable, even as they were literally making up the film as they shot it. It's like that old saying about Ginger Rogers, how she did everything Fred Astaire did, but in heels and backwards. The three actors did everything that normal horror actors would do, but without effects, carrying their own equipment, and without a script.
in fairness, most of the time they actually were lost in the woods, had no idea what was going on, and were being psychologically tortured by the filmmakers
Ah the Stanley Kubrick method
Pretty well, yeah, apparently they were told "your safety is our first priority, your comfort isn't". As such they'd be kept up at night with recordings of laughing children, would be given less and less food each day so they were hungry as hell and so on so by the time the end of the shooting occurred they were genuinely in a really uncomfortable place.
what better way to make your actors convincingly a mental wreck than by torturing them yourself! real horror > acting sometimes.
+xingcat This film was so boring it sent me to sleep when I saw it in 1999 as a teenager. There is nothing clever about it, the performances are hammy and it is dull.
I went and saw a screening of this when it was still in limited release in the 90s. People thought it was 100 percent real until those credits rolled at the end. Even then, people didn't understand. I will never forget the guy behind me. He was a big, football player type, and he started to scream, "What the f*ck?! What the f*ck?!" halfway through, he was terrified. It was a really singular movie experience. My brother used to torment me by standing in the corner of my room, lol.
A year or so ago I saw a documentary on the 90s, and it said that Blair Witch was the first commercial use of GPS technology. The director had learned about it doing documentary work during the Gulf War, and he used GPS to direct the film, leaving locations and notes for the actors every morning. He'd leave a note for Heather saying, "You have to stay in control. Do not let the others spin out of your control." And at the same time he'd leave a note for, say, Josh, "Heather doesn't know what she's doing. Take control of the group." He'd give them the GPS coordinates where they had to end up, and that was it; that's all the actors knew! So the movie really was on the forefront of technology at the time. I revisited the old website a while ago, and it looks so silly now. At the time, it was "proof" this was real.
Delondra Williams seeing him show shots of the website was like a childhood flashback lol, I remember when all websites with creepy or unusual themes looked EXACTLY like the Blair witch one!!
I remember freshman year in high school mere months before the movie was released (we were all super into it) being in web design class building sites like these with angelfire haha
+cole Marie Sorry those websites were unconvincing
Oh noooo, not the corner of the room. That’s the bit that creeps me out the most 😬
maybe you should express your opinion more respectful
The moment Ryan said "I truly wish i could experience this in its time"
Thats when it hit me...
damnit im old
@Zulfadli Bakar HAHAHA i feel u bro
Same. 😓
I was nine years old when this came out. Good times.
@@mitchconnor9748 same here. And I lived in the woods in rural Georgia. Camping wasn't the same for a while 😂
Dang, how old is he? I was 13 when this came out and thought it was real until I saw them at the MTV awards. I didn't realize he was that much younger than me.
Speaking as someone who was there when this all went down...yeah, this scared the shit out of us, it was like nothing almost anyone had ever seen or experienced before.
I remember knowing that the movie was a fake, but after seeing one of their specials on the SciFi Channel, honestly wondering if this was real because of how the special was presented.
PatriceB82 Oh yeah, I forgot about that lol!
I didn't see it in the theater, I saw it alone in the dark on video. Could not sleep for days.
ogenesis My folks rented it on VHS n that's how I saw it lol
you a sad fuck then.. i knew it was fake even then.My guess is you lieing or you just dumb. Most of knew it was fake even then.Only the plebs thought it was real. We used to make fun of people like you.
I can remember looking up the website on my Windows 95 computer.
Took about 45 minutes for it to load. Lol
OMG me too!! Dial-up was the worst, but back then it was normal.
Chat rooms on aol try explaining that to sonebody who doesn't know
That was the true horror
I remember how freaking LOUD dial up was, esp if you were a kid/teenager trying to get online after everyone in the house is asleep.
"To hell if you think I'm showing you footage" two years later he shows us footage from Cannibal Holocaust.
A lot changes in 2 years...
@Ryan Hollinger
Yeah you forgot we weren’t all hardened by years of film research
It's strange, I only saw this film around two-ish years ago after already having seen a few found footage horror movies. Yet this still scared the shit out of me. The ending, to me, is genuinely horrifying. It did come out at the perfect time but I honestly believe it can still freak people out. Unlike many found footage films, this one builds and builds its dread until it all culminates with her screaming "MIKE".
See this is why I don't get the "It's boring." I can understand if someone said "I didn't like it because I like movies that have more action and lots of stuff going on." But boring? It's a slow build with minor things coming in to build up your sense of dread and fear. It was amazing at making you freak out the moment those kids were giggling and pounding on the outside of their tent. When Josh was moaning and screaming the next time I was terrified!
Waleed Khan I agree, I saw the film for the first time only recently and I couldn’t sleep that night. I’m pretty desensitized to horror movies but something about the Blair witch project deeply disturbed me.
Yeah, I first saw this movie in the middle of the Paranormal Activity craze, and I definitely thought it held up. I find it weird that Hollinger seems to be making the argument that it's not scary outside of the "less cynical" 1999. Sure some movies succeed at scaring because they're new or trendy. But despite Blair Witch's reputation, it's just a super scary film, even if you know every second of it is fake.
Waleed Khan indeed it's an amazingly one of a kind movie to me. I feel like most of today's movies somehow lost something this film had and has to this day
Thrillers with a mystery and no true ending can be great espcialy horror films
..the movie just ends ..we never really find out what occured ...its vague and that's its true appeal and why many think its real ..what other movie at the time would end like that ...it has no ending
Dude, The Blair Witch Project is still the best of its genre. My first viewing was only a few months ago, and it was seriously disturbing. So many found footage films take advantage of the easy-to-shoot style and putting zero effort into scares, characters or creating myths, because the genre is so easy to manipulate. Paranormal Activity is secondary to The Blair Witch Project (sequels aside) but this film still holds after nearly 20 years. Most found footage films can't hold after a year.
Blair Witch is definitely superior in every aspect (acting, story, concept). I enjoyed Paranormal Activity but feel that the acting/dialog was so weak that it took a lot away from what otherwise would have been a great film.
I completely agree with u, (I haven't seen this film yet, watching it now, excited to see it, but nervous as well, haha), I love Paranormal Activity, that film was actually based on a true story, (so we're the sequels btw), if you watch Paranormal activity all the way to the end if the credits, you'll see the pictures of the actual couple that the actors in the film played, I believe it says in memory of, Micah and Katie, it's insanely great, and I'm so excited to see this film for the first time. 😱
Okay I know this was 4 years ago but what about [•REC]? I think that's a strong contender for one of the best found footage movies made.
Complete shite
@@User-ge7ni can you tell us why you think that? because I'll assume you're just being an idiot for attention and forget about you in the next second.
Watching late '90s commercials for the internet is one of the funniest things and i don't even know why
I think what's funny about them is that they have this cheesy, 50's styled gilded age way of presenting the internet. Like they were all directed by Reagan or something.
Well it's always fun to read about people reacting to significant technological breaktrough of their time. Internet is kind of special because 1). The 90's 2). It is so all encompassing nowadays.
Reaction to anything invented in the industrial era is also golden. Steam vehicles were dangerous because the human body wouldn't be able to handle the reality-shattering speed of 40km/h and any onlooker was in serious risk of psychosis.
They were all written by people born from the 20s-50s who knew jack shit
The Blair Witch was something that needed to be experienced at its time of release.
It was something seriously insane. It's easily the scariest movie of all time....if you were around when it released.
I'm happy to say that I got to experience it upon release, and was able to see the hype evolve.
It's one of those key moments in cinema history that I'm thankful to have been a part of.
I was around when it released. It wasn't even close to being the scariest movie of all time. Or even it's time of release. It was just the most heavily hyped movie of it's time. There were actually a lot of people that didn't care for the movie. But the state of the internet back at that time a lot of those voices weren't gathered in one place. However the hype and push for that movie was very centralized in mainstream culture and news and treated as something particularly special.
Quandry1 well I guess you’re just way too cool
@@imspoon7188Nope. not at all. I'm just realistic and honest and tired of people trying to rewrite history.
@@Quandry1 I think it depends on whether you'd been exposed to the hype or not. I saw it when it was first released, and I hadn't even heard of it until that day, when my girlfriend and a few friends of ours asked if I wanted to go see this scary new movie after work... I'm so glad I knew nothing about it, and they knew next to nothing about it, because it scared the shit out of us in the best way possible! The unexpected worked.
@@neuralmuteWell that was more the hype anyway. Not that it was super scary or the scariest of all time or any of that stuff we have heard attached to movies since. It's hype was that it was a "new" kind of scary movie. Not a lot about it was technically new but it was definitely different from most of what we got at the time. Which was the typical bottom of the barrel cheaply made and cheapest kind of "scares" there are. So it stood out for those differences and thus was copied heavily enough to form a new sub genre.
i saw this in the theatre when it first came out, i'd heard some of the buzz about it when it came out but no one really knew if it was real or fake. in my head i knew that it couldnt be real because of all the legal restrictions video footage like this would have, but the audience was psyched, and the film itself was like nothing anyone expected. everything was so atypical of other horror movies at the time, no music, characters having believable conversations, and how you never actually see anything. damn the ending stuck with me for awhile after too!
In Blair Witch Projects defense of the whole plagiarism stuff, they filmed the movie in 1997, completely unaware of The Last Broadcast. People say it just did what Last Broadcast did, when the idea for Blair Witch began in 1994, hence that’s why the film takes place that year and for the next three years they developed the movie and it’s lore, then filmed it, then took another year to edit the hours of footage down to a reasonable length, originally it was going to be 2 and a half hours, but they cut it down to about 90 minutes. While it’s not the first found footage film, it obviously is the best example of the genre finding an audience and impacting the film industry for a time.
Even if that weren't true it's still far from plagiarism. There are millions of stories throughout history with the basic premise of people going out to investigate something strange. The Blair Witch Project still does a unique enough interpretation to warrant praise.
I honestly think that people use The Last Broadcast as a way to 1.) Flex their film knowledge (“Oh, you’ve probably never heard of it. It’s pretty underground.”), 2.) Rebel against pop-culture.
I’ve only seen The Last Broadcast once and that was back in 2000, so it’s been a while. But I remember it being kind of goofy, especially the ending (the “big reveal”). I really should watch it again. Regardless, the differences between the two films are pretty big. Especially with how TBW leaves everything open and TLB leaves nothing to interpret.
07foxmulder it’s objectively not a decent movie
I saw it at the time aged 19 and I was completely sucked in. I didn't have the internet and there was a documentary on Discovery called The Curse Of The Blair Witch the same night I saw it. I was genuinely terrified.
There's one scene in 'The Curse..' which I loved where someone was interviewing 'Mike's Brother' and they asked if he'd seen the film. In a very understated way, he said, "I'm really not interested in seeing my brother's last days thanks."
They could very easily have overplayed that line, but the guy delivering it just nailed it beautifully.
I first saw that documentary on the Discovery Channel and it freaked me out. I kept telling myself it was all made up BS. But because it seemed so authentic that I was still chilled by it. Next: I went to see the The Blair Witch project assuming it would not hold up to the documentary. I was wrong. I walked out of that theater almost in shell shock.
It was shortly after that, then the actors and the producers started touring the country revealing how it was all just bogus, clever marketing and unusual style of film making.
Outside of the Exorcist- the Blair Witch Project is the end most nerve shattering horror film ever made.
I stole it from my mum and watched it far to young (Less than 10)
I'll argue that the doc is scarier than the actual movie. But I'm with you, saw the doc first (it was on Sci Fi channel, at least when I saw it) prior to seeing the movie. Just blew my damn mind and I was convinced these were real events. I'll go back and watch the doc and the film still every so often and it still creeps me out to this day. The dark scary woods is something everyone can attest to being afraid of at some point.
As the vid points out, this movie just came out at the perfect time and was marketed in a perfect, never before seen way. And it could never be done that way again, not today. It's like a time capsule back to the late 90's.
Oh! I remember that!
This was really good timing it seems!
Haha very true!
I watched this movie in 1999 in the theater with a friend of mine, we
were both 19 at the time. Honestly, I remember both of us being
disappointed. In fact, most of the audience was complaining as we
walked out. In hindsight, seeing all the movies it influenced and
understanding what the filmmakers and actors were trying to do, I have a
much greater appreciation for the movie now.
Book of Shadows is still a pile of dog shit.
lol.
Ryan Hollinger Great video, great movie. It's in my top ten for all the reasons you stated, and I learned a lot watching.
Ryan Hollinger look at the girl in this movie compared to girls now a days who draw fake eyebrows on and look like powdered donuts because all the make up they use
Nothing in found footage horror beats it. Still the best in its genre to this day. The sense of despair is so real, and the horror is creepy yet subtle.
As someone who experienced The Blair Witch Project in its time. It was terrifying to watch the last moments of some teenagers lives and not know if it was real or fake. I didn't go camping or hiking for months. It was a great time to be alive and view that film in its purist form.
As someone who did experience this when it was first released I can attest, people were genuinely convinced it was all real. I remember walking out of the cinema and people looked shocked and I overheard a woman saying, “so, was all of that real!?” It was an experience that you just had to be there in that time for.
I am really happy that I can immerse myself in any movie regardless of how often I have watched it.
To this day every time I watch this movie I am scared to death, disturbed, can empathize 100% with the caracters and feel the tension and everything.
I am glad I am not one of these "I find that movie boring." people.
I'm with you! :)
I'm the same way, I've been watching it around Halloween every year for like the last 7 years and it still scares the crap out of me. I'm so glad I'm not alone because seeing/hearing people trash this movie really breaks my heart
yeah I almost lost my shit, thinking they must be in hell, i must be in hell, what the hell...not the smartest stoned watch but good about...right now...October. :) I think that how the actors were made to get in character by experiencing some of the same feelings of isolation, being lost, starving, thirsty...has a lot to do with it.
Tell me how you do it, im the exact opposite, cant take any movie seriously anymore, they all feel predictable and boring except for maybe drama movies and Avant-Garde stuff
@@skepticmonkey6923 I can't speak for cuddler, but for me it helps to either imagine yourself in that situation, or to imagine yourself as a relatable character with a similar personality to yourself. For me this works at immersing myself pretty well. It's only when all the characters are meant to be terrible people or make pretty stupid decisions that my immersion is lost. (not that im perfect or wouldn't make stupid decisions as well in a given situation but still)
I love how much this video is not about the proper film and all the talk about the context. People often forget that every piece of art has been developed in a different time and the circumstances that made it be the way it is now were different.
Brilliant as always, thumbs up and I am already longing for the next one!
I’m old enough to have seen it in the theatre, and I sat near the center of a sold out room. It was an extremely unnerving and one of a kind moving-going experience. The ending was so effective. Everyone just seemed drained after it was over.
Personal experience: I went to see Blair Witch when it was in theaters with a group of people. First off, YES, to people not used to the shakey cam experience it was very nauseating - which also added to the feeling of dread. When the movie was over I noticed an interesting thing: the people in the group who were the least imaginative hated the movie and found it boring, and they also didn't get nauseated, while the people in the group who were very imaginative were caught up in the movie and loved it, and for some reason they got nauseated. Maybe it had to do with being so intent on the movie screen, I'm not sure.
I hope this might add to ideas about what seeing it in theaters was like.
ah, nothing is scarier than nothing after all. I really prefer the nothing style where my imagination and brain sweat to being beat over the head, especially if it's beat over the head with cg monster
Yeah the part where Heather screams "WHAT IS THAT?!" as they're running is in my opinion one of the scariest moments in any horror movie, precisely because you see absolutely nothing. They give you little bits and pieces: there's a witch, she has fur, her feet don't touch the ground, she murders kids, etc, and then your imagination fills in the rest into something much scarier than any CGI monster.
Sorry to tell you that but I am imaginative, it is actually one of a few things I am good at and I am also a filmmaker...I study film theory and history too...and yet ups, this film is garbage and so it is for my teacher who knows people like David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson...so I dont think if you hate the movie you are unimaginative. I actually prefer films when you see as little as possible and I hate jump scares. I just genuinly think that this movie was horrible as is every found footage out there and it relies on not showing you thinks more than on anything else and by anything else I mean the basic cinematic structures. It is amateurish and it tries to hide it by saying "it is found footage so thats why". I just hate such movies. And I say that as someone who loves horror movies so much that my fellow film studies classmates are making fun of me for that(they love french new wave, italian neorealism etc).
So...no...the only reason some people like this movie and some dont is the matter of taste. To be honest, marketing for this film was just amazing. No one can deny that
I'm not in film making but I am an imaginative sort like Naverich. And I didn't care for the movie either. Not even when it came out. I was also part of the internet crowd when it came out. It wasn't as universally loved as it's made out to be. The dissenting voices just weren't gathered together like the hype and push for fake realism that surrounded the movie. I actually had fights with people determined to convince me that it was real when I told them it was not and listed reasons why and had some of those people come back later and apologize once the "hoax" was revealed. But the revealing of the hoax wasn't nearly as mainstream and concerted an effort as perpetuating the supposed authenticity of the film was.
@@naverich4603 you sound very unimaginative and rigid lol
My favorite thing about this movie is that it doesn’t truly start to scare you until a few hours after it’s over
I watched it while home alone in the dark, and I have never really watched a horror movie before, I just don't like scary and dark things. I was not scared at all, untill I woke up around 4 am that night and I just thought the ending of the movie and could not fall back asleep for a long time.
For me it triggers childhood memories of getting lost in the woods while camping. The rising desperation of the characters as they go in circles, cold, tired, hungry... it’s visceral for me, even after all these years. That’s what makes it still one of my all time favorite movies.
I remember the near heated debates we had in our family on whether or not this was real. The online marketing they had, and using unknown actors was absolutely brilliant.
It was only when me and my older brother were able to find the imdb pages of the cast that the debate was finally settled but my sister stayed out of the woods for a while just in case.
Ever since seeing the Film Theory that there was no witch and it was all a conspiracy to kill Heather, I can't unsee this as being absolute canon. Every plot point fits that so well and it really makes sense.
It really does! And it makes the movie even more horrific.
@@Chubbasaurus
Except the writer/director debunked that as a "theory" on Watch Mojo last September. He was on to celebrate the 20th anniversary by playing a new BWP video game, and he said straight up that they were truly lost, and that the ACTORS were often lost. You should check it out, it was cool.
But the tent scene throws that entire theory under the bus. Who shook the tent? What did Heather see? Who were the kids?
What would even be the motive to kill her? That theory has a ton of holes
@@alysiamerdavid-wasser9165 The word of the writer/director doesn't mean diddly squat. All that matters is what is one screen and heard through audio.
2:30 The ACTUAL first "found footage" movie credit probably goes to Germany. They did it even earlier. 10 years before Cannibal Holocaust there was a German movie called "Die Delegation" that was made up as found footage by a journalist who looked for alien life on earth including footage of the journalist finding a dying alien etc. It was first aired on TV in 1970 being played like a legit evening documentary about the found footage that the tv station got hands on. They had a lot of people confused and considering the footage to be real.
But it never left German borders so no one will know about it and since it is so old if my dad wouldn't have shown me the movie I wouldn't have known about it either even though I live in Germany.
@Verbunden the movie is available on youtube. everything is on youtube nowadays 😂
I thought this movie was spectacular..... Try watching it alone at 3am and then talk to me lol so scary!
just artsy things it's not that scary.. you just over react
The Citizens Honestly if you don't watch that many horror movies it can become really hard to see how TBW is nothing to write home about on itself
i agree with you. its effective in my opinion. some people are just jaded.
y fuck all happens in the remake I expect the same from the original
I did this, sometime around 2005 (while camping..well in an RV park..) But let's just say I hated nature that weekend.
This one of my mothers favorite films. She one day rented it because she thought it was a regular movie but boy were we in for a scare. She says whats good about the movie is that you dont see the bad guy, monster or force. Your just left to imagine what got to them and thats just terrifying.
Your videos are awesome!
Yours not so much
Unless you were there when it was released it is impossible to understand how powerful this film was. We really did not comprehend what we were seeing and the tension you felt going in and then experiencing this film was like nothing else. It was exquisite. This film haunted me for years. It made me fall in love with horror and cemented my belief that what one cannot see, understand or know is the most terrifying thing of all.
I think most people knew it wasn't real when it was released in theaters. The cat was out of the bag. And people still were creeped out by it. It holds up just as well today.
when i was alone at home, parents at work. i watched this movie and knew that it was fake... but after watching this movie my screen door shut forcibly. i was scared shitless for a moment bc i live near the woods. but when i looked out i realized it was windy outside. but that officially creeped me out
I like the morbid vids haha. I loved Blair Witch when it first came out. It cemented my love of found footage horror. I think I've always wanted to repeat the feelings I had when watching Blair Witch the first time. Though before Blair Witch there was a UK mocumentary called Ghost Watch which did a War of the Worlds type fake out. As a kid I thought it was an amazing experience watching it thinking it was real up until the end.
Holy cow... Ghostwatch was terrifying... :)
Yes, more morbid videos!
rodster6 Woah yes, remember watching that as a little kid. Pipes!
0:39 I can't breath
Boomers need to get their shit together
lol I was 10 when this came out,thought it was real.Still in my top ten horror films
Watched it back in 2000 when i was 7 years old,was staying at a friends house and his dad had a VHS with both the fake documentary "curse of the Blair witch" and The Blair witch project on one tape made us believe it and shat us right up.Wouldn't go in the woods for a couple years.
Dude me too. I snuck into the movie, because I had been investigating the website for several weeks before hand. Destroyed me, and changed the whole trajectory of my career choice.
Yep, I was ten too- and ten year olds are children first off so yes it seemed incredibly real.... and didn’t help that my friends and I spent every daylight moment in woods just like those in the movie 🤭
Kelli Renee I was 5 my uncle scared me forcing me to watch this in the dark basement facing the woods lol
The experience of watching this movie as a kid was incredible. The Blair Witch Project made me a fan of horror.
You sound really intelligent. Your videos expressing your opinion with concepts, human emotions, or film in general sound very correct on a higher level than an average thinker.
I agree!
I was lucky enough to see this movie when it came out in theatres and honestly you hit the respect I still have for what this movie did out of the park. Regardless of what people think now the movie is a way in which horror is sorely lacking a tell don't show approach, ultimately its what you don't know or see that terrifies you more than anything. When you go into a movie knowing what it is you are expecting when you go in knowing that something happened and that's all you have no idea what happened. This movie is still one of my favorites not just from a story and narrative but for how it is presented. Every found footage film since has been trying to emulate what this movie did and is unable to.
I never found it scary. It more fascinated me, watching them react to the situation and slowly fall apart.
Being someone who lived in a wooded area when this came out as a kid, I can’t even begin to describe the horror watching this movie made me feel
Excellent video, Ryan. This film I special. I recently made a found footage video essay and praised this heavily too. I love how you delved into the Internet and how this film manipulated that to promote believability. Great stuff.
I remember when it first came out. It was all anyone could talk about. I was excited to see it, so I rented it the day it came out at my local Blockbuster. I enjoyed it then and I enjoy it now.
I love that movie so goddamned much. The Blair Witch Project is my favorite horror movie. I believed it was real for years as a kid, got obsessed about it the way some people get obsessed about True crime cases like the Zodiac or real mysteries like the Dyatlov Pass. I adore the mockumentaries made around it too. It just makes it so real.
I often say you had to be there to truly appreciate it. Although reading some comments I'm happy to see many people enjoying it even after seeing other found footage and having seen all of modern horror.
Watched it back in '99 when it was released. Still my favorite horror movie and I still watch it at least once a year. No shaky camera or raw footage film has ever come close.
This movie was terrifying back then, and it has stuck with me all these years. I still end up watching theory videos or videos like this just to re-live it a little. The only other found footage film I've seen that has been remotely scary was the original REC.
when this came out in '99 it was so crazy the Blair witch hype was insane but really awesome at the same time. I remember going to see it in theaters and feel in love after I got home I went to the website and looked through it all i thought it was real. it's still to this day one of my all time favorite movies...and the marketing for this film was just amazing.
Me, my brother and my dad saw this in theaters. I became very interested on rather or not it was real until the 3 actors 1st appeared on Mtv for an interview. The movie scared a lot of people and for years after every time your in the woods someone would reference the blair witch in order to spook somebody out.
It was so believable it wigged me out in the theater I had to keep the lites on....
I watched this movie when I was like 12 at a drive in theater. Outside, in the dark. Very chilling experience.
As a general horror film lover, i'm officially obsessed with your channel now. I watched your video about the witch and fell down the rabbit hole. Not sure if you've done one about The Descent or Silent Hill, but i'd love to see that since those are my fav horror films of all time
Some like to say that it’s not scary anymore. But everything you said in your analysis is exactly how I felt the first time watching it. And I knew it was fake going into it! It’s so realistic and raw and has such an air of uncertainty that I genuinely kind of couldn’t help but feel what the characters were feeling. To me, it genuinely felt like some menacing unknown presence was stalking and hunting them. I was crouched in my seat cringing over what I was possibly gonna see.
I love this film. One of my all time favorites, and as a huge horror fan, one of the only horror fans to scare me. It makes me wonder if films like this or The Evil Dead can still be made. Of course, we have great films like The Witch or It Follows, but those aren't nearly as groundbreaking or singular as Blair Witch or Evil Dead.
I've watched it on theaters (damn I'm getting old) and I couldn't sleep properly for a couple of days.. The end shot just stuck to my mind, it was incredible. I had heard about the movie and although I was suspicious that it was all fiction, it all had such a raw quality to it that you are definitely knocked my defenses and got under my skin. In that regard, it was truly a "you had to be there" situation. Kudos for your great video, I believe you nailed it really good :)
SAME.
Seriously... The atmosphere you manage to maintain during your reviews are just so precious!
Lol. I recently asked for more horror and you've made video about my favorite movie :)
Really enjoyed the video man! I watched the film recently and while I found it enjoyable I didn't find it to be "amazing" as it is made out to be. I understand how the movie changed things now and I guess it must have been real scary to watch it when it first premiered.
I truly experienced this in its time, as you put it, and it was awesome.
What sets the Blair Witch apart from other found footage movies is exactly that raw quality you mention. The fact the actors were really scared and unsure of what was to come next makes all the difference on the final result.
A little late to this, I just discovered your channel and binging on it. I was 16 when this movie came out. It was AMAZING! Me and my friends obsessed over it and kept looking online to find out anything we could about it. A lot of people talk shit about movies that don't resolve anything and don't show you the monster which I can understand to a point, but the lack of clarity was what gave me nightmares for years after seeing it... Your mind fills in the blanks and what it comes up with is infinitely more terrifying than some costume or CGI monster. Love your videos man!
This movie haunted me for years, seriously best found footage film ever maid.
Finally! This movie gets the credit it deserves!
This was awesome man! I watched this when it originally came out. I was wasted but I've always appreciated it in all the ways you laid out. Well done!
I watched this for the first time myself recently and I am a big horror fan and nothing could really scare me or stay with me but this film with its raw and realistic feel to it absolutely messed with my head. I can only imagine not knowing whether this was real or not watching it for the first time back in the 90s audiences must have been terrified. Great video as always keep up the great work.
I saw Blair Witch in theatres when I was in high school. At the time, I was disappointed by how little it scared me and how staged it seemed some of the time. Most people seemed to love it, and I was sad that I wasn't able to enjoy it the way most others did. I've been panning this film since I was a teenager, but your video just changed my entire outlook. Thanks so much. I feel like you gave me something really special.
If you weren't around to see it when it came out then you can't truly comprehend what it was like. How young are you, jeebus
Alhazred01 it came out around what '97 or '98? I remember seeing that shit at 6 or 7 and being scared as shit and my dad always took me to scary movies and thought they were funny as a kid until I seen The Blair Witch Project lmao
so strange i just made this same comment
I knew it was fake saw it a few years ago..still made me get chills...its really solid...its unsettling ..you can tell the actors had no idea what was going on ..their reactions are genuine ...the clealry felt like they were being haunted
Alhazred01 exactly. I was 9 and it messed me up for years haha
I was 15 when it was released and we had a fucking blast with all the hype and marketing. My friends and I all thought it was real and it is one of those rare cinema moments of watching it in theatres that I will always appreciate being able to experience in the moment.
Saw it in the cinema, I had to leave briefly because I felt a bit nauseous from the shaking camera. And YES a lot of people thought it was real, and YES it seemed at the time that everyone and their grandmother went to see it. Everyone was talking about it so it was a must see.
I remember being 11 years old watching the mockumentary of this movie and thinking, "there's no way video footage of real people dying is going to be released into the theaters, this movie is either fake or nothing happens." And this is because of the really good mockumentary they had on the Sci-fi channel (red flag right there) and they interviewed "family members" of the characters and their anger that the final moments of their loved ones was going to be viewed by the world. I believed it was trueish but I smelt bullshit. Because realistically those families would have fought harder to stop the films release if it was legit.
Even though I never had the pleasure of seeing this gem in theaters (Hell, I was born in '98 lol) I remember the first time I ever saw it very fondly a few years ago. My parents were away on vacation in Hawaii or Italy (can't remember) for a couple of weeks, and my brother was staying at his girlfriend's house for the weekend. So I was all by myself in my house. I was flipping through movies to watch on Netflix in my parent's room and saw that this movie was on there. I never saw it before, but I never really liked found footage movies. I thought Grave Encounters was a boring mess that tried WAY too hard to be scary and Paranormal activity never lived up to the hype. But I decided to watch it because I wanted to give the genre another try since the concept can be so chilling. I was not disappointed to say the least. It scared the shit out of me. It also didn't help that it was 1 in the morning and I was all alone and had to walk my dog after the movie was over (which my house is surrounded by the woods so that doesn't help either lol). Even though I knew it was fake, the performances, the concept, and the execution was really something else. I loved how little it showed and did, but it conveyed so much to me. It's sad to hear that some kids don't find the movie to be scary and really boring but they're missing the point of the film. This generation is sadly so used to seeing the CGI ghostface and jumpscares that that's what they labelled as "scary" now. It's a damn shame that a movie like this that comes so close to what would happen in reality isn't scary to this younger generation.
What is that gloomy acoustic guitar song in the video?
The website was my first introduction to this movie, before it's release. At first little blimps would pop up at the bottom of sites. Eventually you started looking into it, then you'd find the site, you read about the "events", now you're trying to do detective work. Then you find out about the "documentary". Crazy smart marketing.
Watching this as an 11 year old after being told by your friends older sister that it was a video found in the local woods made the whole thing that bit more traumatising!
It still seems real in 2017, to me at least.
8:03
hey ryan, what was the music that you used in this bit? heard it on my dad’s PS4 theme and i’ve been trying to track it down since
I watched this movie alone back when I was eleven and it left a very uneasy feeling that I still remember 15 years later. Truly a horror classic
The best thing about Blair Witch Project is....there is no actual monster on screen but you (as the audience) feel it.
Note: also the directors cited The Shining, Alien and Jaws as primary influences of the film, and you can note that
The Exorcist, unlike any, WAS based on a true story
A lot of horror movies say they’re based on true stories...
The Conjuring, for example. Not a bad film, but you can see how a good chunk of it is extremely exaggerated for dramatic purposes. My point is that, even if horror movies are based on true stories, it doesn’t really make them any more or less believable.
Even though the excorcist was based on a true story, I think they showed too much of the paranormal aspects to the point in which it didnt feal real. I personally like the blair witch more due to leaving more to the imagination and feeling more grounded to reality. Excorcist is a fantastic film though, dont get me wrong lol!
Yeah. TBWP is far scarier than The Exorcist because of that but it also better in other aspects... The Evil Dead for example has a paranormal theme but it does not detract from its stifling, it is still good and scary even though its theme is such a cliché.
I don't get it. I know for s fact that PA came out in 2009 in October I still have the ticket.
Yes. I saw this film in the theater on opening night. I was uncomfortable as the film progressed and genuinely terrified during the last ten minutes. To be a true horror fan, you have to envy those that experienced such films at the time of their original release. I wish I could have watched cultural phenomena of The Exorcist back in 1973 or Psycho in 1960.
I was seriously traumatized by this movie. I legit thought it was real and felt genuinely relieved when I saw the actors giving interviews on TV.
what's the track playing aroung 8:42?
Which do you prefer? The Coen's NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, or P.T. Anderson's THERE WILL BE BLOOD?
I'm going with No Country because There Will Be Blood wasn't as impactful like all the critics have said. The ending was...sub par. No Country is a cinematic master class
bob polo Sure I'd say it's better, but the ending is great. No Country is a little better, but not by much.
Ian Smart TWBB has the better opening, probably the best opening I've ever seen
bob polo Yeah, sure. I think there is more going on with No Country, but i think TWBB is larger and probably more ambitious.
And they were doing 2 very different things.
Ian Smart TWBB was ambitious, can't disagree there; but there was something missing, a governing idea or an actual narrative about something specific or topical. The story was really lacking imo. Conceptually speaking, No Country is the better film for its coherency, characterization, and examination of complex themes like fate and determination.
You don't even know how fast I clicked your video. I'm always so eager to see what you have to say about a film, especially those that I've watched myself. :)
I feel very lucky after your conclusion that this was the very first found footage movie that I ever watched. Needless to say that I was blasted away by the incredibly believable reactions of the actors and the filming style.
I was around 18 when this film was released. Yes, there were some who believed that it was real. And then there were others like me who recognized the fact that this was all a marketing campaign. I remember seeing it in a theater with my best friend. He thought it was a brilliant film. I felt a migraine from all of the horrible camera work. To this day I will maintain that this overrated film was just an example of novelty and smart advertising.
It definitely was XD I don't consider it that great, but I still enjoy it. Though, no one can deny the effect that marketing had.
Ramon Suarez pretty much the same for me, though I think it was a touch better than you.
I have to agree with ramon.
I understand about the internet became public in 1991 but the internet started in 1969.
Yeah... That's what I said.
Okay if you say so.
The World Wide Web 1991, DARPAnet or the Internet 1969
The internet was originally a piece of US military technology. Was used as a means of communication and then became part of public trade (much like Hummers lmao)
Oh man i remember being scared shitless when this came out. One of the few horror movies i got to watch on halloween that actually had me scared for years.
I actually grew up in ''the woods outside of Burkettsville'' and was living there when the movie came out. It was insane the amount of people who came to what was (and is still) a very small town looking for ''the witch''. We even had people wander into our yard a few times.
Wait, are people really scared of this movie? Nothing happens in it
Squidwards Anus that's how I felt too watching the movie
all due respect to anyone who likes these films personally i can never enjoy them not because they don't scare me. they do. but because my sense of reality always spoils it because i know that if someone was that afraid they would never be bothered with a camera. your instinct for self preservation is far too strong to worry about filming the experience and if you wanted to escape a threat you would drop everything you were carrying and run because it would hinder you. so frankly whenever i see these films where people never ever drop the camera i just end up thinking they deserve to die.
i really have to say that Blair Witch opened my eyes for this Genre of films, since then i absolutely fell in love with Movies such as: Exists, Troll Hunter, The Bay, Cloverfield, Afflicted, Rec and even Grave Encounters i would say
I saw the movie in the cinema at 19 and It was a unique experience. The construction of the characters and the story, the tension increase and the brutal finale, generate sense of real danger in the audience even after the credits.
The crowd copy the feelings of the caractes, going from total and plain skepticism to total terror. It was a great time to the cinema
I remember when this film came out and my older cousin snuck me in with her, it was an amazing experience but scared the holy jingle bells out of me at the time. And I agree, the film came out at the perfect time and used the rise of the internet to make it even greater. The impact of this film is definitely apparent in today's social media strategy to promote films.
Continue the amazing work you do with the videos! They are greatly enjoyed.
i live around 30 mins away from the town and forest where this was filmed. as a child, my family would have to drive through it quite often, and one day my father decided to tell me the story of the blaire witch. i didn’t believe him, but was interested. when we got home he showed me the movie, and i cried my eyes out. i had no clue it was fake until i was much older and asked him. hats off to him for making me believe in something so outlandish for so long
I didn't get to see it when it came out, but roughly six years later. I'd say that it is still extremely effective because of the rawness of the emotions... plus, anyone who has gotten lost in the woods while camping will understand the building panic that occurs in the film. I got lost in the woods as a young kid, so the movie still has an effect on me. It's one of my favorites to this day.
i was a somewhat sheltered kid and didn’t really enjoy watching movies outside of disney princess ones, so when i saw this movie for the very first time at my grandmother’s house, you couldn’t tell me that it wasn’t real until i looked it up. hell, i watch it now and it still feels real.
I was not aware of the found footage genre. My sister came to me with this movie and basically said nothing except that it was true. I am 16 and for some reason was taken up on the idea of a truly true horror film. As I watched I was supremely scared and almost cried in several points. I was shocked as to my brothers reaction as he was not that taken up by the film. I then for ten minutes after was in pure shock and then I was finally told the movie was fiction. Then I watched this video.
Great video. I was 13 when this movie was in theaters and I remember seeing it with my brother and my parents. Neither my brother or my parents were impressed with the film, nor really scared by it at all, which was a shock to me. As someone who loved to play in the woods as a child, this movie had a profound effect on me and how I view isolation. It has lost most of it's appeal over the years due to the countless imitations of the medium, but I still think about it when I hear an unexplained noise in the woods.
Just watched this film again for the second time since I was 13. I’m 30 now. It’s a lot more scary now that I’m older. I think the acting was superb. I could feel the tension and stress in their arguments and screams of frustration. Even I felt helpless watching it and putting myself in their shoes and just how scary it would be. All the emotions felt so real to me. Those screams were deafening at the end. There was a story told by Albert Fish about how he lured a little girl into house and when she walked into the room he was stripped naked and killed her. The ending made me think of that.
Thank you for this video, loved it! people these days are too quick to judge and bash this film not taking into account the context of when it was made. For its time it was really terrifying!
I remember being 11 when this film came out and the hysteria that surrounded it. It really was a magical little film and the hype was outstanding. A lot of people thought it was real, and it was unlike anything we had quite seen at the time. It really does bother me when younger people don't show appreciation for things like this, or talk down on them. Some things you really just had to be there for to fully grasp. And I still think the film holds up quite well.
I saw this movie when it came out. Me and a friend bought two tickets and he ended up bailing at the last second so I went in alone, at about the age of 14. THERE WAS NOBODY ELSE BUT ME ATTENDING THIS SHOW (which was a 7pm I think). Imagine my sheer horror watching this movie alone, not knowing what to expect and suddenly one of the cinema workers creeps up to me from my left, scaring the shit outta me, asking me if I want a break
I clearly remember myself walking home absolutely terrified, looking back every 5 seconds. So sweet and innocent.
Best explanation and description of Blair Witch Project I've ever seen. There truly will never be another film like it. Makes me proud to be a filmmaker. Thank you for this Ryan Hollinger!
I'm from Baltimore, and even though people can't agree if the Blair Witch actually existed or not, people were genuinely shook up by this movie.