MantisToboggan posted:

I'm watching The Blair Witch Project on Netflix right now and I'm reminiscing about the first time I saw it. It was 1999, I was 13, and I saw it on its first day in theaters. I hadn't been spoiled by the countless parodies that would follow the release; the only thing I knew going in was that it was a fake documentary that had been well received on the independent circuit.

The movie terrified me. In every scene shot at night, I was literally on the edge of my seat because I had no idea that I would never see the titular character. I fully expected that, at any moment, some horrible spirit of the deep dark forest would pop up and scare the poo poo out of me. That never happened, but the mysterious incidents that occur throughout the film - the sounds of branches snapping in the middle of the night, the laughs of children as the tent is attacked, the fate of Mike and Heather - were more than enough for my teenage imagination. To this day The Blair Witch Project is one of my favorite films, along with classics like The Seventh Seal, The Big Lebowski, and Apocalypse Now.

I know we have a horror thread but since it's now the twentieth anniversary of those three students disappearing in Burktisville I wanted to make this thread on the week of Halloween and talk about the movie. Regardless of anyone's opinion there's no denying how much this film changed the landscape of cinema since its arrival at theaters. Did you enjoy it, think it was okay, hate it? Talk about it in this thread.