Blair Witch Project (5 Stars)

My local cinema showed "Blair Witch Project" today to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Huh? 25 years already? It seems like yesterday when the film was being given rave reviews as the start of a new genre.

The genre is the "found footage genre", usually considered a subgenre of horror films. Logically, it doesn't have to be a horror film, but I can't think of any found footage films which aren't horror films.

"Blair Witch Project" follows three young people, a woman and two men, who go hiking to do research on a witch who allegedly lives in the woods. They film their activities on two cameras, one digital and one analogue. It's intended to be a weekend expedition, but they get lost and they're wandering in the woods looking for a way home for six days. They argue with one another. They never find the witch, but unusual things happen around them, and eventually they stop filming. Are they dead? Probably. The film shows the footage when the cameras were found a year later.

The film is spooky and scaring. It's original. The film's plot was planned, but the dialogue was mostly improvised. Curiously, many viewers thought the film was a true story. Maybe they were fooled by the cinematography, in which the cameras were shaky. The film looked amateurish, but please, it should have been obvious to everyone that it was fiction.

The film was a huge success. It's often claimed that it was the film that made the biggest income, compared to its budget, 248 million dollars from a $200,000 budget. That's not true. "Vixen" earned 26 million dollars from a $20,000 budget.

Success Rate:  + 1241.0

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