Beth Biscuits CONTAINS SPOILER Well firstly I'm a massive fan of the film Blair Witch project, i first saw it when it was out at the cinema and i thought it was excllent, really scary and to this day i don't think any other horror film has come close to being as cleverly done ( the marketing was genius!) I first saw the curse of the Blair witch on the bonus footage of the DVD of the Blair witch.I was utterly gripped! It was so incredibly eerie it really put the jitters up me (i might add i'm not easily spooked and i was watching it in broad daylight too!).Even from the opening sequence i got chills up my spine, everything about this documentary is spot on for me, even down to the female narrators voice.I thought it very clever how they continued with the whole "this is a true story" angle. I enjoyed the back stories of Eileen Treacle who was dragged into the river by an unseen entity and the letters to the sheriff who supposedly refused to believe there were paranormal reasons behind the students disappearance.I actually found this documentary scarier than the film itself. An absolute must see for Blair witch fans! 13 years after the film was made and i still get shivers down my spine!

alice liddell It is a favourite sport among 'sophisticated' Europeans to laugh at gullible Americans, and it is a pastime, I'm ashamed to admit, I've indulged in myself. Ho ho! we chortle when we read about audiences feeling sick at such a tame film as THE EXORCIST. Hee hee! we titter as reports come of spectators needing psychiatrists after THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. But I for one envy American faith. Sometimes cynicism can be so tiring, and I'm really jealous of Americans who were genuinely scared watching BLAIR. Apparently this mockumentary played a large part in the film's mythology - I don't know how true this is. As I mentioned in my review, I was scared witless by BLAIR, and felt great anguish for some time after it. Watching CURSE was of great therepeutic value - shorn of the big screen and the mechanics of the horror film, I was able to dominate the material, to emasculate its very real hold on me.I think this mockumentary both weakens and strengthens the film. Without having seen it, the film is extraordinarily rich and suggestive, playing havoc with the viewer who carries no preconceptions (like myself). Being not quite sure what to expect only increases the tension and the terror. If I'd seen this mockumentary, I don't think I'd have been as scared. I'd have known too much, many things would have been explained (or at least graspable), overarching theories would have been more easily explicable.Not knowing too profoundly about the legend helps the film. However, it is also chilling in that the students therefore move from one set of bearings (map, compass), to another (the forest's enchanted circle, the signifiers of the Blair Witch myth). The mockumentary strengthens the film by showing us the outside world of the events, the context and apparatus from which the students disappeared, making their trauma less abstract, more real. It is so rational and comforting, filled with family, friends, and experts, that it makes the disappearance all the more bewildering and shocking.It is alleged that this mockumentary was shown for real on a factual US television station. While I find this hard to believe, I've been asking myself how I'd have dealt with it in those conditions. I'm not surprised people were taken in - it's brilliantly made and acted, a spot-on recreation of a certain kind of programme-making, right down to the amusingly portentous music, used like double spacing after a paragraph. The only false note is the 1940s footage of the killer, which clearly looks like it was filmed recently.If I'd seen this mockumentary - and I generally avoid UNSOLVED MYSTERIES-type TV - I don't think I'd have been as moved as I was at the film. The story itself is very compelling, and I love the whole creation of a myth to the extent that I can't believe now that the Blair Witch never existed.But only fiction can created the character and empathy needed for true horror to succeed; the film reclaims the personal absent (necessarily) from this 'documentary'. CURSE has other points to make - the idea of both history and documentary (the recording of that history) as fabrication; the persistant cultural fear of independent women; the tensions and perversions of small town life; the Gothic strangeness, regardless of the supernatural, or life on the US margins; the deep failure of American masculinity, from Heather's film school teacher to the Sherrif. A lovely document, vastly preferable to THE X-FILES.

Michael-76 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.

Rosabel Having seen this without any prior knowledge that it was complete fiction, I have to say that it scared me badly. By the time I got to see the movie, I'm afraid the initial impact had worn off, so if you want to get the full force of the horror in "The Blair Witch Project" I would recommend seeing it first, with as little information as possible, then following it with this special. The documentary style is mimicked beautifully in "Curse of the Blair Witch", down to the Ken Burns-like reading of period documents in various voices. This program could stand on its own as a humorous textbook example of how a standard TV documentary is put together in the 1990s, complete with stock characters: the skeptical historical expert, the stolid, unimaginative police official, the superstitious townfolk, the irrelevant friends and family members. Only occasionally does the story overreach in an attempt to produce shivers; for the most part, this "mockumentary" is thoroughly believable. Even once the trick behind it is explained, it can be enjoyed as a skilful piece of film craft.