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Number 6 said:
The most unsettling for me is still the crucifix/head turning scene.
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I mean, watching a little girl stab herself in the crotch was horrible, but the head-turning dummy took me right out of the moment. :lol: Apparently, the mother screaming after she's thrown to the floor is genuine, the actress hurt herself during that stunt.

Really, the director is the most unsettling part of this film, he did some pretty nasty stuff to his crew. I guess it worked, though.
 
Number 6 said:
The dummy itself was ridiculous, but I can get past that sort of thing if the situation is disturbing enough — which, in this case, it is.
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That is a good point you've got there, I can look past shoddy practical effects in any film as long as the material is good enough. I think it was just because the crucifix moment was so shocking and... real that I found the dummy so silly. It's like I snapped out of it and remembered that it wasn't real, you know?
 
Saw The Blair Witch Project for the first time and my god is it a great film. Everything in it works and it creates a pretty claustrophobic, horrific atmosphere of suspense that builds and builds right up until the end. One of the strongest films I've ever seen.
 
Diesel 11 said:
Saw The Blair Witch Project for the first time and my god is it a great film. Everything in it works and it creates a pretty claustrophobic, horrific atmosphere of suspense that builds and builds right up until the end. One of the strongest films I've ever seen.
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Saw an advance screening in the theater prior to its' release not knowing anything about it. As the 1st found footage film, it was strange to watch but by the middle I was hooked and loved the end
 
Number 6 said:
Funny. It was one of the weakest, most boring and frustrating experiences I've ever had.
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Really? The pace was great, the building fear of what’s to come just ramped up with each moment, and I thought the whole thing was excellent. Forty some minutes elapsed and I thought only twenty had gone by. Not many films can do that for me.
 
I thought the characters were extremely one dimensional, thus they failed to resonate with me. In a horror film, if I can't relate to the characters in any way, shape or form, everything just goes south. They actually mostly annoyed me throughout the film, and I just reached a point where I couldn't give 2 craps about whatever happened to them.
 
The thing is, they’re literally just three teens who went into the woods to shoot a documentary and ended up in dire straits. They may not have deep characterization, but that wasn’t the point of the film in the first place. The point was to make this film seem as realistic as possible, and I really think it succeeds.
 
I get that, and I'm not talking about deep characterization, but some kind of characterization. They kinda were just... there, you know? They didn't feel the tiniest bit real. Everything felt so artificial that any of the good ideas the film presented were just thrown out of the window.
 
I dunno, I thought it felt realistic. The kinda shit that could happen to anyone. Headstrong leader thinks she’s right when she isn’t and everything collapses around that.
 
While a good film at the time. The Blair Witch Project has not aged well and it was surpassed and supplanted by the Paranormal Activity franchise.

It was reportedly filmed on a $6,000 budget in under 30 days with rented equipment which was returned to get their money back. The "actors," were only given basic outlines as to where to go and what to say, they improvised the rest and it shows.

I mentioned it before and like a few here, I was hooked 20 minutes in and loved it, but it doesn't hold up upon repeated viewings. I found the clearly one story shack suddenlty having about 10 stories including 3 basements ridiculous, but the ending is still one of my favorites in horror movies.

The Exorcist is my favorite movie and book and I know both inside and out. I'll never forget when I went to the 40th anniversary showing in theaters with a pretty diverse demographic. As expected the teens in the audience laughed here and there, but when the movie got rolling you could here a pin drop. Few movies can captivate such a diverse audience after 40 years... simply magnificent.
 
Completely agree with your points on The Blair Witch Project. Despite my negative views, I have tremendous respect for it, as it pretty much consolidated the found footage genre and cleared the way for films like Paranormal Activity and (my favorite) Cloverfield to come about. It hasn't aged well at all, but I understand and respect its importance to the horror genre.

As for The Exorcist, it might have lost the horror aspect it once had, but it's heavy enough on the drama department that it doesn't quite lose its grip and remains relevant.
 
Number 6 said:
it might have lost the horror aspect it once had
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Oh I disagree. I still think that The Exorcist stands up well as a "horror" film, it just isn't as scary as a lot of other films (Blair Witch, for instance :innocent:). I mean, the idea is still horrific (girl gets possessed by a demon... holy shit!), but thanks to films like The Exorcist itself, which broke a lot of boundaries in the horror department, people have been able to make scarier films since then, and that's what makes it less impactful than it would be if we were watching this for the first time in the '70s.
 
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