08/16/00: I've enjoyed all these postings...

Posted By: john_willie


...more than I enjoyed the actual movie. A point as to why the hikers didn't have a cell phone with them: I seem to recall it was supposed to take place in 1994, when cell phones weren't quite as commonplace as nowadays--maybe that's why it took place then? My opinion of this movie remains what it was at the time: it would've been so much better if told in a "conventional" narrative format as opposed to the supposedly-found-footage shtick. As I was watching it I kept thinking of "Cannibal Holocaust" from the 70s, which had the same format but was much more convincing. During "Blair" I kept thinking "Who's filming this particular section? And why?" e.g. when Heather was screaming at the guy for having lost the map, would she be pointing the camera at him while screaming at him? Wouldn't she have thrown the damn camera at him instead? Such thoughts while watching it kept me at a distance from the action as opposed to getting immersed in it. I guess the best sequence was the last one which achieved the quality of certain dreams I've had, but even that was spoiled for me because I was sitting there thinking (a) "I feel like I need to go to the bathroom & throw up, but if I do, I may miss something significant" & (b) "She's running for her life, she's hysterical, her world's about to explode--but she WON'T PUT THAT DAMN CAMERA DOWN." Being a cynical sort, I suspect the supposedly-found-footage format was an excuse for a low-budget flick not to "show us" anything. Yeah, I know it wasn't supposed to be about witches or monsters or hillbillies or whatever was out there, it was supposed to be about being afraid per se, but "good intentions" aren't enough. The post about Cliff's Notes (which cracked me up) made a good point: as Cliff's Notes are to a novel, so this movie was to the movie it could've been.


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