The best movie marketing - EVER!!

Rating: 9/10 (5 September 2009)

Okay, so the movie was passable at best, and has not aged as well as say "The Wizard of Oz," but that other movie is filled with happy munchkins and painted horses. THIS movie is dark, creepy, and does NOT have a happy ending (yaay!) To truly understand this movie you really have to step back to 1999 (c.e.) and hear the rumors of "the Blair Witch" from friends, the fledgling internet (which has only a few hundred thousand indexed websites anyone really visits, not the billions of pages with youtube and myspace now. In fact, this movie WAS youtube. You see, we all heard the whisperings of some dumb kids who got lost in the forest and got killed. Then the Discovery channel had a special on "The Blair Witch" the day before the movie came out. THAT was what cemented the marketing. The problem with the (fake) "documentary" was hat it was just a little too transparent. It made you want to believe (like you might want to believe in happy, friendly aliens) but it just seemed a bit cheesy and fake. Then there was the website. It was an "almost ran" but the fact that they were selling Blair Witch merchandise BEFORE the movie opened almost killed the entire scam. So you sit down in your seat of a packed movie house and hear the nervous whispers of everyone else asking "is this real?" and then the movie starts - a real documentary. The rest is history. Shaky camera work that gives far too many people nausea, the sudden ending that shocks and angers people when hey realize they just got "punked" (before there was a "Punked" show). This is movie magic at a time when almost all competing movies were [...] formula - and let's not mention television. This movie shocked th public awake and almost - allllmost worked in a BIG way. If they had played their cards a bit closer to their vests and demanded the public believe, instead of hawking merchandise and fake documentaries for a few extra coins, they would have had a PT Barnum worth masterpiece scam on the public. Nonetheless, the movie cost nothing to make, sold for 2 million at Cannes I believe, and made TONS of money in the first two weeks before dropping off the radar and finally becoming a pariah. forget the sequel. The only value the sequel has is to show young filmmakers that YOU TOO can get funding for your second project sight-unseen, if your first project slaps the general public awake. And that is why this movie is priceless. Watching it on DVD you really lose a lot - kinda like watching the Woodtock (1969 - the REAL Woodstock) movie on DVD. If you weren't there, you really missed the whole point - sorry. But it is still a fun way to creep your friends out on a Saturday night.