Purely Joyful Movie!

just watch it!

Am I Missing Something?

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

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

This stands well on its own. You can enjoy this and never see the movie. How well done is it? Well ... When all of this first started playing out, and "The Blair Witch Project" was being promoted, I saw certain things about it all that, because it was all done so well and because I wasn't paying that much attention, well, I thought it was REAL. Now thats a compliment to both cast and crew. They brought it off in a very real fashion. I think that watching this in conjunction with the Blair Witch movie is a real entertainment treat. As far as frightening goes, and coupling that with a building tension that I would compare to "The Red House" of the 40s, this is wonderfully wicked fun.

I liked "The Blair Witch Project"--didn't scare me, but the young woman who was the star did a fine acting job."Curse of the Blair Witch" however was, I thought, rather poorly done. It didn't work for me as a even briefly convincing "documentary." The "70s Hippy witch" was unintentionally funny and contradicted himself, the Murderer was not much of an actor and there were so many discrepancies that it just wasn't convincing at all. For example: early on in the film there is a short interview with a middle-age guy in Burkettsville, supposedly done by the Lost Teens, in black and white then an interview with the same guy, supposed done a year later--he was wearing the same shirt and his hair had not changed a bit. One of the faked letters, supposedly written in the 1830s by a not-very-literate person of Burkettsvile contained the word "fetish." The word was not generally known in the English language at the time.

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.