The Blair Witch Project marks a touchstone in film horror, one best remembered for shattering the mold of what to expect from the genre.

No blood.  No monsters.  Just our own imagination tweaked by the single cam format, a sub-genre leveraged years later by Quarantine, Cloverfield, and Paranormal Activity.

Those films wouldn‘t exist unless Blair Witch proved the format could draw audiences in.

Made on the uber-cheap by a pair of unknown filmmakers, Blair Witch was nothing less than a sensation when it hit theaters 11 years ago. It was the ultimate word of mouth hit without recognizable stars, just a savvy Internet campaign that hinted that what you were about to see actually happened. Everything coalesced into a bracingly original experience, something impossible to recapture today.

That makes the just-released Blu-ray release a chance to appreciate a groundbreaking film, but not a moment to jump out of our seats all over again. The scares simply aren’t the same as they once were. That leaves a curious film, one that still commands our attention but cannot help but disappoint when compared to timeless shockers like The Omen and The Exorcist. (more…)

From the time they’re young children, most people are taught that there’s good and evil in the world, along with angels and demons, God as well as the devil. But while many continue to believe in this cosmic supernatural battle throughout their lives, many others also cease to believe.

But what would happen if you stopped believing in the devil – and even felt you had the means and a mission to prove he doesn’t exist – only to find out that you might be wrong and it might be too late to ever regain a strong enough belief to save yourself from his attack?

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That’s the creepy question underlying the new horror film “The Last Exorcism,” in which a former child preacher named Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), who became famous for casting out demons, has grown up to be a sarcastic con artist scamming people out of their hard-earned dollars with fake ceremonies and false promises.

But after years of deception, Marcus has become wracked with guilt after hearing of a young girl who died after undergoing an exorcism, and as a result he’s hired a film crew to follow him on one last job in an attempt to reveal on-camera just how fake exorcisms are and teach people that the devil is just a figment of our collective imaginations. He picks a request by the Sweetzer family, who live down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and heads out to “free” their teenage daughter Nell (Ashley Bell) and prove that her bizarre behavior has nothing to do with possession. (more…)

Last week, in  Parts 1 – 3 of this series, I examined some of the inherent flaws in the Hollywood manufacturing system. This article will suggest how those flaws permeate the system so completely, that innovation is stifled, leading the repetitive creation of homogenized product.

Considering the extent to which fear controls decision-making in Hollywood, it isn’t much of a stretch to assume it also controls how content, particularly film, is marketed. Television isn’t the issue here, quite as much as feature films. If there is any doubt that marketing capital is being flushed down the toilet by the major studios, one need only look in the entertainment section of any major newspaper. Gigantic ads for movies still fill most of the pages. Hollywood doesn’t seem to notice that newspapers are dying a quick death, that their primary demographic doesn’t read newspapers, and that anyone who wants to know the location and time of a movie has a portable communication device with them at all times.

Meanwhile, the percentage of total media spending that the studios allocate to the Internet will be about 7.7% this year.  This is all they allocate — while the Internet has essentially consumed eyeballs across the entire globe. (more…)

Humans like to think they know the difference between truth and fiction. But in the modern media age, even as we feel technology has made us more savvy than ever, there’s always a disquieting edge that makes us wonder what’s really the truth and where are we being manipulated. Is Fox News really “fair and balanced” just ‘cause they say so, for instance? Or is Obama really bringing “Hope” back to America just because his colorful posters say so? 

Back in 1999, a movie called “The Blair Witch Project” burst into the American pop culture consciousness from seemingly nowhere.  It appeared to be (and was marketed to viewers as) a raw documentary film about three student filmmakers and their tragic last days experiencing supernatural forces while lost in the wilderness, but in reality it was a fictional film made for under $30,000 by a team of indie filmmakers and actors and had caused a sensation at the Sundance Film Festival months before.  (more…)