Not just that most of the criticisms completely didn't know how to deal with the movie on its own terms ("uh, the character development was a bit shakey",... "uh, the dialogue left alot to be desired, I think hemmingway could have done a better job with it"),<< Okay, here's what I have a problem with. Besides the fact that
I mean people should do psychology experiments on you. What on earth is scary to you then?<< I can tell you what's NOT scary...obnoxious people running around in
A confessional ending that ties up all the loose ends for you, puts your emotions in a tidy little package until the sequel???!!!! I am really interested to find out what you'all think is frightening.<< I do enjoy it when the movie is CLEAR as to what's going on, but oh god,
In Blair Witch, there were no suprises, no sexual exploitation, no special effects, at all, yet if you emersed yourself into the experience, it was absolutely frightening. The film technique was truly inventive and forceful. See it without prejudice. Shed the emotive
Sorry for the double post- and sorry for insighting a negative thread and getting people peaved, but i wanted to give a proper defense of Blair without cheap shots at people who didn't like it. (Intimations of B&S content at the end.) Please don't read if you haven't seen Blair Witch. I think I understand where the Witch hunt is coming from but I still fervently disagree with it because it is not dealing with the movie on its own terms. Ask the question: Why was there no character development? - the movie is a fake. What's it faking. Its supposed to be actual 16mm film reels that a bunch of wankers were shooting for a documentary. There is no real character development, because the footage they are filming has absolutely no interest with the lives of the filmakers. The footage is not supposed to be about heather, mike and josh- its supposed to be enough film and DAT that heather can go into the editing room, do a voice over and put together a documentary for her class. Personally, I liked the non-character development in the sense that you learned about these three people, very similarly in how they would have learned about each other. Heather became more and more annoying as the film went on, so annoying that you just end up hating the dumb-bitch. Same with Mike- you want to chop his head off when you find out the dumb-fuck threw away the map. And josh?- caught some where between redneck and Marilyn Manson. Are any of them likeable? I sure don't think so. which leads, i think to the interesting ethical dimension of the film. We are the forth person along on the hike, and the most disabled of the lot. We see through the limitations of a shitty cameras eye, and hear through a DAT that hasn't been set up very well. We're like some fucked up tag along beast that can't say or do anything but is put through the torment of being at the whimsy of their fucked up decisions. The ethical dimension- I not only felt scared for my own mutant camera/dat body, but I felt really bad for them. I mean I did not like them, but I felt really bad for them. I mean do you really want all those kids like them to die horrible deaths. Really. It was a peversely empathetic experience. Their dialogue- do most people like them speak as if a professional writer were scripting their everyword. of course not. They say fuck way too much. Don't believe, go outside and listen. Which leads me to the point of emersing yourself in the movie and the jaded comments. This movie is very emersable, so much so, that lots of people puke in the theatre because their senses are so disoriented. The movie fucks with the forth-persons (the viewers) ability to form knowledge. Not to go off on a Kant tangent, but, we form knowledge by synthesizing our multiple sensations of an object or experience through time into our intellect so we clearly "understand" an object or experinece. This film incessantly inhibited our ability to "know" things in the movie. Our visuals were almost always poor (so poor that the close up of the bundle couldn't make out whether they were josh's fingers or his intestines) and the sound was constantly inhibited, not being able to decipher sounds and was many times disjoined from the visuals themselves (ie. the last scene, mike gets knocked down, the edit cuts to heathers reel, but the DAT is still with mike in the basement. We see Heathers visuals, but only faintly hear her screams because the recorder is all the way in the basement. As she approaches the basement we hear her screams startlingly louder and louder until she is in the same room with the DAT, sees mike and gets clubbed. It was absolutely brilliant- hitchcock would have loved that sequence more than anybody!). Which is where for me the fright was- not simply in the unknown, but the fact that I was trying so hard to know things in the film with my senses, but the film wouldn't let me, like I was a cripple in some fucked up dream. That for me was petrifying. Back to hitchcock- hitchcock was brilliant and scary. But that was before most of us were born. He set the standard for the horror flick, and his movies were truly great. He made the rules of the genre- and for over thirty years we've been subjected to below average films following these rules like they came from Moses. Can their be another Hitchcock? The genre has become so cliche that in my opinion the best horror movie of recent years was gus van sant's shot-by-shot remake of psycho- weird, yes- postmodern, yes- a final comment on the genre, yes. What I love about the Blair Witch Project is that it was trying to do something new with the emotion "fear". It is inventive. Instead of ripping everything off from the father hitchcock, it set its sight on creating something different. Untimely, yes. Different, yes, Emotive, imo, yes. Sounds a bit like Belle and Sebastian in that slant, doesn't it. .scott Memo from Lana622 on 3 August 1999, 11:36 Tuesday To: sinister cc: (bcc: Scott Turner) Subject: Sinister: In Defense of the Non-Jaded People Hello everybody, I don't get mad very often, but I'm slightly, um, peeved now. If it wasn't for the extremely supportive show of anti-Blair Witch sentiments--we're going to start a club, you know--I wouldn't send this to the list, but I feel the need to defend all the others on the list who didn't like this movie. Sorry if it offends anyone who liked the film, just remember how bad I'll feel tomorrow for sending this, if that makes you feel better. Scott Turner writes: there was NO character development, the dialogue sucked! I hate Hemingway, but at least he wrote sentences that didn't always contain the word "fuck." How can you accept that as decent dialogue? Those actors were obviously running out of things to say, and it was painfully obvious. They'd sort of look around after a while, say, "Um, FUCK!" and then look very pleased with themselves. the woods. I was rooting for the Blair Witch, especially in the case of that Heather chick. She should have been the first to go, she reminded me of too many people I went to school with. that's probably just me being dumb, huh? Have you ever seen an Alfred Hitchcock? He manages to be scary and clear at the same time. programming and feel something fresh for a change. Leave your insulation of jade and irony at home, and expose yourself to something new.<< Heather, you can be honest...we know it's you, darling!! Okay, that's enough of me being bitchy for the day, and now I'm feeling bad and sorry for being mean. Now I'll think of nice things to put me in a better mood. Spunky Flowers (thanx paul) She's Losing It (who needs boys...la la la) Sunny Days Puppies and kittens Mick Cooke Love, Lana +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the reborn Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". WWW: http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "jelly-filled danishes" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ To: sinister@Majordomo.net@Internet cc: (bcc: CN=Scott Turner/OU=PHI-PA/OU=US/OU=JHMarsh/O=MMC) From: Lana622@aol.com +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the reborn Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". WWW: http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "jelly-filled danishes" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+