Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9069 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-06-30
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Black & White, Colour, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 78 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Anyone who has even the slightest trouble with insomnia after seeing a horror movie should stay away from The Blair Witch Project--this film will creep under your skin and stay there for days. Credit for the effectiveness of this mock documentary goes to filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, who armed three actors (Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Josh Leonard) with video equipment, camping supplies, and rough plot outlines. They then let the trio loose into the Maryland woods to improvise and shoot the entire film themselves as the filmmakers attempted to scare the crap out of them. Gimmicky, yes, but it worked--to the wildly successful tune of $130 million at the US box office upon its initial release (the budget was a mere $40,000). For those of you who were under a rock when it first hit the cinemas, The Blair Witch Project tracks the doomed quest of three film students shooting a documentary on the legend of the Blair Witch from Burkittsville, Maryland. After filming some local yokels (and providing only scant background on the witch herself), the three, led by Heather (something of a witch herself), head into the woods for some on-location shooting. They're never seen again. What we see is a reconstruction of their "found" footage, edited to make a barely coherent narrative. After losing their way in the forest, whining soon gives way to real terror as the three find themselves stalked by unknown forces that leave piles of rocks outside their campsite and stick-figure art projects in the woods. (As Michael succinctly puts it, "No redneck is this clever!") The masterstroke of the film is that you never actually see what's menacing them; everything is implied, and there's no terror worse than that of the unknown. If you can wade through the tedious arguing--and the shaky, motion-sickness-inducing camerawork--you'll be rewarded with an oppressively sinister atmosphere and one of the most frightening denouements in horror-film history. Even after you take away the monstrous hype, The Blair Witch Project remains a genuine, effective original. --Mark Englehart, Amazon.com

Special Features
4:3 Full Frame
English
Region 2
Dolby 2.0 Surround English
Dolby 2.0 Surround
Unseen Footage
Excerpts From Psychological Experts
TV Spots
Scene Access
Interactive Menus
Director And Producer Commentary
Interviews With Directors
Cast And Crew Information
Theatrical Trailers
Web Site Access

Synopsis
Made for $30,000 by two young filmmakers from Florida, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT wowed festival audiences for several months before finding distribution at the 1999 Sundance Festival. It is an ingenious creation which makes effective use of its lack of budget and cast of unknowns. The film is composed entirely of reportedly "found" footage shot by three missing college students who made a journey to the woods of Western Maryland in 1994 with the purpose of making a documentary about a "witch" of local legend who is linked to murders and mysterious occurrences spanning 200 years. It begins with footage of the crew leaving their homes and testing their equipment, but before we know it, they are lost deep in the endless woods, with the voices of screaming children piercing the blackness from off in the distance. Things get worse from there. The experience is disorienting and frightening as well as the most rewarding horror film experience to come along in many years, as it wisely chooses to prey on our vulnerable imaginations rather than bombard us with graphic images.

Customer Reviews

Absolutely brilliant and genuinely frightening
The Blair Witch Project is the most brilliantly creepy movie I have ever seen. I can no longer say just how many times I've watched this film, but I become more and more impressed with its production with each viewing. I can't really imagine how so many people can claim that this film didn't scare them in the least. I am a long-time horror fan, inured long ago to almost everything the movie studios throw out there on the big screens with a "frightening" label. The Blair Witch Project, I am delighted to say, creeped me out quite impressively. It may well be that this is a different movie experience depending on the venue of its audience. Those watching the film for the first time at home can turn off all their lights and watch the movie in the dark, but there is really no way to recreate or equal the powerful mood and atmosphere that came rushing in icy waves on to a theatre audience. When I go to see horror movies, there is almost always some laughter to be heard from time to time, and usually I am the one doing the laughing. Once Heather, Michael, and Josh got into the Maryland woods and the spooky meter began to rise, an eerie, almost unprecedented silence took over those of us sitting in the theatre. There was no laughter; I heard no one sucking on a straw or chomping on popcorn; no adolescents whispered back and forth. There was no longer an audience around me; I and the film were locked together in a mortal embrace, and as the suspense built up at the end I felt as if some force were pushing me farther and farther back into my seat. When the movie ended, I don't remember anyone really talking about what they had just seen; I think we all just wanted to get the heck out of that darkened theatre. That kind of experience, I must say, is what my horror dreams are made of. Viewing the film at home just cannot recreate the movie experience.

To me, The Blair Witch Project is simply brilliant in many, many ways. First, of course, Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick used the Internet to build up a hype of unprecedented proportions for this film many months before its general release, creating a thriving fan base drawn deeply into the legend of the Blair Witch and the mysteriously doomed student film project, mucking up the waters of truth and fiction into a bloody froth that attracted horror sharks such as myself from far and wide. Then there was the SciFi Channel documentary Curse of the Blair Witch that was released just prior to the film's release. In this remarkably professional and believable documentary, the fictional story of the movie was given sturdy legs with which to scurry around the truth. The actors used in the documentary were amazingly good, and the use of family photos, old historical documents and letters, newspaper articles, television news features, interviews with law enforcement, family and friends, etc., did a great job of masquerading fiction as reality. Even those of us who knew going into the theatre that this was a work of pure fiction could allow ourselves to wonder if the story could still actually be true, and that suspension of disbelief did much to increase the power of what I saw on the big screen.

Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams were simply brilliant. Their displays of fright, rage, and hopelessness were stunningly believable; of course, some credit for the actors' performances must also go to the geniuses behind the film. I would imagine that the dark woods would become quite unnerving after a few nights, even when you know that whoever or whatever is out there is just someone associated with the film production, and the fact that the characters were forced to endure sleep-deprived nights and grueling daytime hikes over the course of a full week had to do wear down the defenses of the actors and bring to the surface emotions and expressions that lie too deeply to be accessed simply on command. I am still fascinated to read about the way in which things were managed in the filming. The actors ad libbed almost everything they said and did, which is actually quite amazing. At times, though, they had to redo things in order to please the filmmakers; the best example of this comes in the movie's final scene. As I understand it, the scene in the movie is actually a second night's shoot of those events, as things did not go quite the way the filmmakers wanted on the first night. To see that kind of emotion and fear portrayed by an exhausted Michael and Heather on a second night's take is just outstanding.

This horror fan welcomed such a refreshingly new type of movie to the fold. I like blood and gore as much as anyone, but true fright is best achieved by unspectacular yet highly personal events taking place in what looks very much like the real world as we know it. Millions of dollars have never made an expensive, special effects-laden horror movie as creepy as this extremely low-budget masterpiece of mood, atmosphere, and unseen things that go bump in the night.

The Blair Witch Project
I have to say, I'm not a hardened horror buff. Being under 15 means that I've never seen a truly scary film in the cinema. I have never had the experience of sinking so far into my fold-up chair that I can no longer see in front of me. Or leaving the cinema with a full tub of popcorn and a drink filled to the top becuase I have been too scared to remember I have them. And with the Blair Witch Project, I have to say, I'm glad I'm not old enough. Sitting at home on a stormy night (honest to God, it was dark and the rain was coming down very hard) was scary enough.

An unseen enemy, used correctly, is twice as scary as a big budget, fifty foot creature from Planet X that destroys one of the greates cities on the planet (yes, I am talking about Cloverfield). The slow loss of sanity that are three students face as they spend a week lost inside creepy American woodland, hunted by something that only wishes to toy with them is one of the scariest scenarios ever. Not, as people have told me, boring, laughable and unrealistic. Far from it, the Blair Witch team have strung together an original, relaistic and scary movie that would shock anybody who watched the film believing otherwise.
The film has a total cast of ten. Three students, Heather, Michael and Josh and the locals of Burkittsville. The students are filming a documantary called the Blair Witch Project and are warned by locals about what they are messing with but still head into the woods completely unprepared.
Spending several nights in a woods would unerve anybody but when, every night, you are being observed by a mysterious creature would scare the pants of you.
I'm watching what I say because I dont want to give anything away and I cant go much further than this. All I can say is that this film is defiantely worth a watch. It really is one of the best horrors that has graced our screens. The acting is good, the setting is good, the plot is good, the film is good.

P.S It isnt a true story.
P.P.S The film is viewed entirely through a video camera, just in case that might put you off I had better let you know.

A successful experiment
The Blair Witch Project has something that most "horror" films don't have - horror. It's too easy to assume that "horror" equates to "blood and gore", and yet Hollywood's dark side appears entirely focused on blood and gore as its standard fodder. BWP, however, makes full use of a technique only seen elsewhere on such films as "Predator" (up until "Predator"'s ludicrous ending, of course) in which the audience never actually sees just what is terrorising the cast.

It's a cheap film made extremely well for its budget. Its approach is novel, and extremely effective. It is by no means perfect - but when I can produce the perfect film then I'll start levelling the more trivial criticisms. Contrary to the comments made by some reviewers, the story is very well thought out and there are no noticeable "contradictions" which cannot be resolved by simply paying attention. For "newbie" actors and directors, it's a very fine first effort, and certainly worth a look provided you're flexible enough to believe that there's more to the horror genre than simple flying entrails.

(As an aside, and slightly off-topic - "Blair Witch 2" isn't nearly as bad as people say it is, provided that you're prepared to be open-minded and think about the actual plot.)