Curse of the Blair Witch

Curse of the Blair Witch (1999)

*** (out of 4)

This is the TV special, which ended up leading to one of the biggest blockbusters of all time. This documentary build up the "legend" of the Blair Witch and also made people think that three filmmakers went into the woods to do a documentary on it and disappeared only to have their footage found later. This "footage" was released into theaters as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, which of course became a huge hit. I must admit that this feature was a lot more effective back when it was originally released but watching it all these years later at least kept me entertained due in large part to nostalgia. With that said, you still have to give this fake documentary credit for at least making up a good story to play along side the actual film. I thought there were some good stories here and the most important thing is that it actually built up interest in the film and that still rings true when viewed today. I thought the best aspect was the backstory on the legend of the Blair Witch as it managed to be quite creepy and the story itself is just so well told that you can't help but get caught up in it. What doesn't work so well are a few of the interviews and especially the stuff from a 70s TV show. At just 44-minutes the film sets itself up like one of the countless reality/docu-dramas that are all over the place today. For the most part it succeeds but once you know the truth it's hard to see it in the same way.

Released to TV in the summer of 1999 three weeks before the premiere of the found-footage film "The Blair Witch Project," "Curse of the Blair Witch" is a mockumentary (fake documentary) that goes over the mythology of the Blair witch and interviews people who knew the three amateur filmmakers who supposedly went missing in 1994.

How do you review a documentary that's phony? I suppose by how real it makes its topic appear. As far as that goes, this is a quality mockumentary that inspires interest in the non-subject. I say "non-subject" because there never was a Blair witch; there wasn't even a town of Blair; nor are any of the people in the film real. It's all fake. But "Curse of the Blair Witch" was an ingenious set-up to fool people into believing (or, at least, MAYBE believing) the found-footage of "The Blair Witch Project." With the hysteria of that movie far behind us "Curse of the Blair Witch" is still entertaining for what it is and you can't help but respect its cleverness.

I helps that the "documentary" only runs 44 minutes.

GRADE: B

I saw the movie before Is aw this TV special, though now I wish I had done in in reverse order. I was far more scared and intrigued after watching the TV special than I was after I saw the movie, which was good but fairly disappointing. Even if you hated the movie itself, please give this TV special a chance. It has many details and answers many questions than the movie does not.

I haven't seen the blair witch project yet.At first I thought it was real but later found out it wasn't.When I watched this special I began to forget this.It was very well staged and almost appeared real.It was almost like a mini movie accompanying the film.I know have a better understanding of this fictional myth.So when I see the movie I might better understand it.

It is a favourite sport among 'sophisticated' Europeans to laugh at gullible Americans, and it is a pastime, I'm ashamed to admit, I've indulged in myself. Ho ho! we chortle when we read about audiences feeling sick at such a tame film as THE EXORCIST. Hee hee! we titter as reports come of spectators needing psychiatrists after THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. But I for one envy American faith. Sometimes cynicism can be so tiring, and I'm really jealous of Americans who were genuinely scared watching BLAIR.

Apparently this mockumentary played a large part in the film's mythology - I don't know how true this is. As I mentioned in my review, I was scared witless by BLAIR, and felt great anguish for some time after it. Watching CURSE was of great therepeutic value - shorn of the big screen and the mechanics of the horror film, I was able to dominate the material, to emasculate its very real hold on me.

I think this mockumentary both weakens and strengthens the film. Without having seen it, the film is extraordinarily rich and suggestive, playing havoc with the viewer who carries no preconceptions (like myself). Being not quite sure what to expect only increases the tension and the terror. If I'd seen this mockumentary, I don't think I'd have been as scared. I'd have known too much, many things would have been explained (or at least graspable), overarching theories would have been more easily explicable.

Not knowing too profoundly about the legend helps the film. However, it is also chilling in that the students therefore move from one set of bearings (map, compass), to another (the forest's enchanted circle, the signifiers of the Blair Witch myth). The mockumentary strengthens the film by showing us the outside world of the events, the context and apparatus from which the students disappeared, making their trauma less abstract, more real. It is so rational and comforting, filled with family, friends, and experts, that it makes the disappearance all the more bewildering and shocking.

It is alleged that this mockumentary was shown for real on a factual US television station. While I find this hard to believe, I've been asking myself how I'd have dealt with it in those conditions. I'm not surprised people were taken in - it's brilliantly made and acted, a spot-on recreation of a certain kind of programme-making, right down to the amusingly portentous music, used like double spacing after a paragraph. The only false note is the 1940s footage of the killer, which clearly looks like it was filmed recently.

If I'd seen this mockumentary - and I generally avoid UNSOLVED MYSTERIES-type TV - I don't think I'd have been as moved as I was at the film. The story itself is very compelling, and I love the whole creation of a myth to the extent that I can't believe now that the Blair Witch never existed.

But only fiction can created the character and empathy needed for true horror to succeed; the film reclaims the personal absent (necessarily) from this 'documentary'. CURSE has other points to make - the idea of both history and documentary (the recording of that history) as fabrication; the persistant cultural fear of independent women; the tensions and perversions of small town life; the Gothic strangeness, regardless of the supernatural, or life on the US margins; the deep failure of American masculinity, from Heather's film school teacher to the Sherrif. A lovely document, vastly preferable to THE X-FILES.