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I thought this movie was alright, I was just agreeing with the GE2 love.
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Sep 21, 2016 03:10
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 14:44 |
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The whole 'sun never comes up' bit should have had so much more weight than it did. If they'd developed the characters more and built tension better it could have been so effective. I hate all the wasted potential more than anything.
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Sep 21, 2016 03:19
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I can always gauge how high I am by how much I agree with SMG's posts.
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Sep 21, 2016 03:20
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I thought this movie was alright, I was just agreeing with the GE2 love. For sure, I guess I was taking the agree with everything else in the post too literally.
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Sep 21, 2016 03:25
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a cop posted:The whole 'sun never comes up' bit should have had so much more weight than it did. If they'd developed the characters more and built tension better it could have been so effective. I hate all the wasted potential more than anything. Totally agree. That and the different characters experiencing time differently was pretty creepy concepts but they didn't do anything with it. It was only 89 minutes long, they absolutely could have had a slower ramp up to the craziness at the end and it would have been much more effective. It went from "eh, sorta spooky noises" to "well they're hosed as hell, the tents were just ripped into the sky" in like a minute. I love a quick "get in get out" movie with a lean run time if it is super effective in what it wants to do but here I don't really know what they wanted to do.
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Sep 21, 2016 03:26
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Stan Taylor posted:Totally agree. That and the different characters experiencing time differently was pretty creepy concepts but they didn't do anything with it. It was only 89 minutes long, they absolutely could have had a slower ramp up to the craziness at the end and it would have been much more effective. It went from "eh, sorta spooky noises" to "well they're hosed as hell, the tents were just ripped into the sky" in like a minute. I love a quick "get in get out" movie with a lean run time if it is super effective in what it wants to do but here I don't really know what they wanted to do. I think around the final drone scene my wife said there was 15 minutes left and I remember thinking "huh they're going to wrap this up fast". There were a few things that seemed poorly built up, like the time stuff and the foot wound (it goes from hurt to bad but not gangrenous to whatever was going on in the last scene, I would have expected more of it going up the leg). Also whatever was going on in the last leg scene, it went too fast to get an idea of what I was supposed to be seeing. Even the house scene was, IMO, rushed. I feel that the house was supposed to come across like the geometry was out of whack but it mostly came across like a lot of bland "spooky" corridors.
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Sep 21, 2016 03:49
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The drone was bizarrely underused. Even when they did the obvious "let's look around and see how hosed we are" scene, it didn't really look all that impressively "there's nothing but woods for hundreds of miles". And the girl climbing the tree to get to it kind of made no loving sense. What good was it going to even do at that point? I will say that the design of the witch was absolutely loving terrifying, probably moreso because I've actually had a fear of that exact kind of figure since I was like, 10. 
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Sep 21, 2016 04:35
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I think a lot of people are missing the fact that Ashley was knocked out when they were using the drone earlier, they never told her the crazy just that they crashed the drone. My impression was she thought she could still use it to find a way out.
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Sep 21, 2016 05:12
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^^^ Don't they tell her about the drone at one point and she goes into a crying no-no-no fit? Ashley's entire plot seems weirdly plotted, as if they had another idea that fell through. Her injury basically feeling ok until something inside it moves, which correlates to the moments of intense pain she feels, combined with a little bit of weirdness where she teleports from inside the tent to outside of it, you kinda think there was something else going on. But they couldn't do it, for whatever reason, so she runs off and dies falling out of a tree.
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Sep 21, 2016 05:47
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the witch is actually an alien.
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Sep 21, 2016 07:22
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MisterBibs posted:^^^ Don't they tell her about the drone at one point and she goes into a crying no-no-no fit? They do, but he's saying that they don't tell her about when Lane shows up again with Talia and tells them it's been 6 days. When Ashley wakes up, she asks what Talia is doing there before inadvertently snapping her in half, so she necessarily missed the whole bit about how time and space were being warped around them. So with that in mind, it makes a bit more sense that she thought using the drone might still be a viable option for finding a way out, or at least finding Peter. e: That's not to say that the drone and Ashley's plotline don't just sort of fizzle out together, though. I really enjoyed this movie, but I was disappointed that both of those things had no real impact on the ending. Pepe Silvia Browne fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Sep 21, 2016 |
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Sep 21, 2016 16:11
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This was essentially a soft-reboot of the original film, aimed at people who complained that "nothing happened" in the original. Echoing other sentiments, the original works so well because it's very easy to suspend disbelief that what you're watching is real footage (if you have any imagination at all). This was very much a slick, modern horror film just done in first person with more than normal amounts of shaky cam. The higher production values take you right out of it feeling real. As a modern, fun horror film I do think it works reasonably well, if only because the final 30 minutes are very intense and effective. This would fit right in as a segment in VHS 1 and 2. Another thing that helps drive home the realism of the original is that the characters look like real, average college students. Here, they're very much generic pretty Hollywood horror film types, though i thought the main girl's performance in the final 20 minutes or so of the film was excellent, especially her wavering voice in the final moments. Hated that the black couple was there just to die first, of course. Speaking of those final moments, the decision to have her turn around only a minute after her friend fell for the same trick was baffling, even more so than the missed opportunities with the drone. I was totally expecting an intense, drawn out sequence where she would attempt to slowly make her way out of the house backwards and staring at walls/through the handheld cam, all shot from the ear camera POV, only to have it become increasingly difficult to not look at the witch, but instead it was like, ehh, gently caress it, end it here. I liked that they showed the witch, but just barely. You know if they hadn't then everyone would have bitched about not seeing anything once again. Agreed that the sound design is excellent, but out of place in this movie. If this is supposed to be found footage, then there shouldn't be all these sound enhancements since they, along with the slick video production, take you out of it feeling real. As RedLetterMedia pointed out, its kind of stupid to have them say "I think I heard something outside" and then have a massive explosion noise follow. The feeling of being hopelessly lost and deep, deep into the woods wasn't effectively portrayed here and that was a big aspect of the uneasy feeling in the original, where it took several days and nights to establish, and time and space fuckery is only ever hinted at. SweetMercifulCrap! fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Sep 21, 2016 |
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Sep 21, 2016 20:10
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This movie is the product of a sofie's choice that is itself: If you're going to revive a franchise dead for fifteen years, you can either A.) Change the mythology by adding to it, which will piss off the fans of the original, or... B.) Just make the same movie again with no new information, in which case, why loving bother making another movie? This flick managed to do both of those things, somehow. But everything after the twig snapping was genuinely terrifying, so unlike something like an Episode 1, it succeeds as a movie, if not as a furthering of a franchise.
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Sep 22, 2016 10:23
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The only thing I can think of that they changed/modified was staring at the wall because "she can't get you if you don't look at her" Before, the killer, either the witch or Rustin Parr, forced the other victim to face the wall while they killed the other.
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Sep 22, 2016 20:50
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I can't wait to see this, but I'm curious if I'm the only one who read the tie in books D.A Stern wrote for the first two?
A. Beaverhausen fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Sep 23, 2016 |
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Sep 23, 2016 01:27
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AV Club has an interview up with David Wingard. http://www.avclub.com/article/blair-witch-director-adam-wingard-his-most-straigh-242831
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Sep 23, 2016 16:21
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I think that overall this movie is pretty flawed, and I really didn't like the sound design on it. However, i really like that it provides some insight into the general lore surrounding the witch and proves a longstanding suspicion that a lot of people had: Them woods is a time hole.
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Sep 23, 2016 20:46
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It's a bit weird that Wingard didn't keep the best part of the original: the interviews with random creepy rear end townsfolk.
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Sep 24, 2016 00:44
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Here's the thing I remember about the original that stuck with me vividly over the years. When Josh realized that there were no more cigarettes that's how I knew it was all over for him. The cigarettes were his last lifeline to society. Like, you're not going to find cigarettes in a forest to overcome your nicotine addiction like nuts and fruits. That's why he's laughing about it. The way he acted was perfect for someone who's just given up. And later on, there's a pay-off for it. The movie was full of little details like that. This movie just took every cliche' in the book and put them in a blender. I really dare someone to point out an original thought in the new movie.
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Sep 24, 2016 00:55
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Thundercracker posted:I really dare someone to point out an original thought in the new movie. I can't think of another movie that half-introduces something as weird as a wound with something moving around inside of it with a seeming life of its own, then completely drops it without mention.
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Sep 24, 2016 00:59
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Sir Kodiak posted:I can't think of another movie that half-introduces something as weird as a wound with something moving around inside of it with a seeming life of its own, then completely drops it without mention. Well... gently caress.
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Sep 24, 2016 01:21
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I saw this opening night, and the instant the credits rolled, a dude stood up and announced loudly to the room, "That's the end. Worst movie of the year!" Which sorta made me like the movie more, that it could spur that sort of reaction.
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Sep 24, 2016 04:53
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It's funny that they put in literally 100% more visuals and things happening in this vs. the original but apparently it still wasn't enough for ADHD audiences. It bothers me that people still don't "get" found footage movies after all this time. I don't see how you couldn't enjoy or get a thrill out of the final 20-30 minutes at least.
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Sep 24, 2016 05:27
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Sir Kodiak posted:I can't think of another movie that half-introduces something as weird as a wound with something moving around inside of it with a seeming life of its own, then completely drops it without mention. That really is the appeal of the film: the pure thematic storytelling. The leg wound in the creek has no relevance to the plot, but it's absolutely relevant to her putting on a headlamp and dying in a tree. If anything, it's her specific motivation for climbing the tree: to get away from the ground, to look up into the heavens for an answer. The idea of being infected by a plant is straight out of (the very excellent film) The Ruins, and is a good shorthand for horror towards the materiality of the body. The drone is also a good contrast to the cameras surreptitiously shoved at her wound, to get a good look in there. She's sort-of reduced to being 'the girl with the foot injury' and, in that sense, the weird plant ends up feeding off the attention of those around her. (Note how the paramedic can only perceive a normal infection, while the boyfriend can see this weird pulsing thing.) But if you're looking for the specific innovation, it's in this idea that there's no real connection between events. The foot infection isn't really related to the massive sliver that got jammed in her shin while she was stumbling around blindly, and neither of those things is related to the fall from the tree. It's just death - but people cant help but assign it a name like 'witch'. Ashley herself has made the unavoidable connection between that branch-breaking sound when she took a bad step, and that girl she accidentally snapped like a twig.
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Sep 24, 2016 07:06
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:That really is the appeal of the film: the pure thematic storytelling. The leg wound in the creek has no relevance to the plot, but it's absolutely relevant to her putting on a headlamp and dying in a tree. If anything, it's her specific motivation for climbing the tree: to get away from the ground, to look up into the heavens for an answer. The idea of being infected by a plant is straight out of (the very excellent film) The Ruins, and is a good shorthand for horror towards the materiality of the body. Yeah, as I mentioned in Gen Chat, the film reminds me of the Southern Reach books, where the creature(s) are less the focus than this strange place that twists people, time, space, etc. The creature isn't the cause of this, it's just someone who has been more twisted by this place than the others they encounter. And despite the tone of my comment, I think there's something to be said for doing just enough with the thing in the foot for it to be weird and evocative without getting bogged down in some reveal about okay, it's an eye, and so her body is getting taken over by some creature, and so and on and on. Like how the light through the attic slats near the end evokes aliens and then moves onto the next thing. Though I actually can think of another movie that does something similar to what I mentioned: Prometheus, in which every interaction with the black goo has different results around a common thematic core. This movie isn't as good as that one, but it's good company to be in.
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Sep 24, 2016 07:26
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Ok, so what is her motive. She is a witch. That is what witches do. Witches are basically a form of vampire(or technically speaking vampires are a form of witch since the vampire as we know only really emerges in the 16th century and is heavily influenced by older legends of witches. In some countries the folklore doesn't even distinguish between vampires and witches.) and as such it only exists to harass humans. It is a parasite whose sole purpose is to haunt humans and cause them harm and distress. A movie about a witch succeeding in the world of business by using her dark powers to rig the stock market or something would be pretty rad though.
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Sep 25, 2016 01:35
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That's the route they should have taken with Equity.
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Sep 25, 2016 01:39
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FreudianSlippers posted:A movie about a witch succeeding in the world of business by using her dark powers to rig the stock market or something would be pretty rad though. They should've done that more in The Omen III. The Antichrist manipulating the world markets and governments is more interesting than killing every baby in England because one of them might be Jesus.
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Sep 25, 2016 10:43
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Emissary666 posted:The only thing she keeps bringing up is Ashley (the black girl) and her foot/leg wound and how she thinks it went nowhere. She really wants to know what other people thought about it (probably because it was the only thing she kept her eyes even slightly open for) This is what I came into the Blair Witch thread to look for. Ashley had a foot injury, then it moved up to her shin (by witchcraft or continuity error), and then she pulled a fish skeleton out of it? And it gave her a bad infection and the power to snap people in half? But her powers left after pulling the fish bones out of her leg, which was emphasised by her getting the only mundane "natural causes" death of the film. (And it happens while doing something effortless if she had used The Force.)
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Sep 25, 2016 13:12
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I really really enjoy the original Blair Witch. I'll force any friend who hasn't seen it yet to watch it with me. 1. Grand acting. 2. Full of atmosphere. 3. Clever. This had none of these three qualities. I did squirm at the underground part. It made me take a piece of popcorn out of my mouth.
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Sep 25, 2016 13:49
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For Ashley and her wound, she gets cut trying to cross a river, has something infect her and she gets sick, and pulls out what looks like a stem with leaves that was growing inside her and kicking. It kind of reminds me a bit about Evil Dead. The forest impregnated her or something.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:14
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Maybe I didn't get a good enough look, but I thought she pulled a giant centipede out of her leg. It's kind of funny how the thing that seems to have the most interpretations in the movie is something that can be objectively verified just by rewatching a single scene.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:31
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That whole thing with the foot seemed like an artifact from a previous draft of the script. I was also disappointed that with all the implied time fuckery Darkweb666 didn't become Rustin Parr and we never saw the village of Blair. I was almost expecting an Evil Dead 2 ending where one of the girls gets mistakenly executed by the village as the original Blair Witch. (Since they foreshadowed that horrible death, the witch protested that she was innocent, and the one girl was developing Sith powers.) As for the "UFO," I think it was supposed to be a single lightning bolt, incredibly slowed down because the house exists outside of normal time when the witch is near. Which I liked as a small detail, and then wish the movie had been given as much care I was also annoyed that the sole purpose of the tunnels was to remind us that The Descent was a better movie. MisterBibs posted:A bunch of rednecks can't build a house that was burned down 50 years prior, or make someone's mechanical compass not work. When a movie has the word Witch in the title, and you don't see people being the culprit, there's a loving Witch in the movie. "Project" was also in the title, suggesting something people worked on. For all we know there was never even a murder house to burn down. As fir the rest, it wouldn't be the first horror movie where people crack under stress and act out roles from a legend. moths fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Sep 25, 2016 |
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Sep 25, 2016 16:10
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moths posted:"Project" was also in the title, suggesting something people worked on. For all we know there was never even a murder house to burn down. ?? It's because they were doing a film project for school.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:37
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 Horror movies have used deliberately misleading titles before.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:44
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This movie felt like it didn't really know what it wanted to be. Kinda was throwing spaghetti at the walls. The body horror stuff felt misplaced and under utilized. The giant stomping sounds felt like it was building to something that never came. Breaking Talia in half scene was one of my favorites, but it was pretty random, same with the tents. I also don't get the point of the scene where Lisa was shoved into the tunnels. I kept waiting for something scary to happen but she just breaks out. All of the elements just seemed discordant and random. I was also disappointed with the time loop from the beginning. So the youtube video they watched was actually themselves? Wouldn't Lisa have recognized herself when the video got stopped on her own face? Bleh. Was the original plan to release this movie without addressing the fact that it is a sequel to Blair Witch? It was originally branded as The Woods.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:49
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NomChompsky posted:I think that overall this movie is pretty flawed, and I really didn't like the sound design on it. However, i really like that it provides some insight into the general lore surrounding the witch and proves a longstanding suspicion that a lot of people had: Them woods is a time hole. Also this, the loud rear end digital noise artifacts were killing me all movie.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:55
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Alternatively, Ouiqa 2 seems to also be similarly (but less so) scattered and random, but that kind of looks good.
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Sep 25, 2016 16:59
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CANNIBAL GIRLS posted:Was the original plan to release this movie without addressing the fact that it is a sequel to Blair Witch? It was originally branded as The Woods. Nope. By all appearances, "The Woods" was them pulling a Blue Harvest to try and get positive buzz without playing their hand fully.
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Sep 25, 2016 17:01
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 14:44 |
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I'm gonna go ahead and agree that there isn't a "witch" per se, and that the antagonist is actually the woods and the character's unconscious. Nothing supernatural begins happening until A) the one dude pranks them by hanging up all the stick figures while they're asleep, and B) they spend the night in the woods, which they were told is what must happen in order for you to become vulnerable to the witch. I've gotta agree with SMG too that the main character mistaking his "friend" in the video at the beginning for his sister is a pretty firm argument for the unconscious theory. It's why the witch's physical appearance comes off like so; because it's a composite of Slenderman, the description the characters heard of how the witch was executed, and a child's archetype of a grotesque monster. The woods give hallucinations physical form and it uses fear as its energy to accomplish that. The metaphysical house is Chapel Perilous of the occult, a term borrowed from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1485) and TS Eliot (there's a connection there between the Holy Grail, a symbol of the divine feminine, and the main character's quest for his sister). It's a state of consciousness where every bit of knowledge a person has proves to be horribly insufficient at navigating/surviving the terrain. A persons hallucinations become reality. The results of entering Chapel Perilous are either 1) enlightenment or 2) insanity quickly followed by death. Anyways, I thought it was a fun movie and I wanna see it again. At the very end the guy sitting next to me said "are you loving serious?", as if it could end any other way. Lil Mama Im Sorry fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Sep 25, 2016 |
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Sep 25, 2016 20:32
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