Customer Reviews

The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier

5 star:		(57)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

What a good book. For both my husband and I to read it in 2 hrs or so, sure says something. I love this type of book...suspensful and makes you think. I had to go right out and get the movie that night. The pictures show alot of the movie fottage, but the diary of Heather is the killer in the book. That's what did it for me. I would highly recommend this book, however, until today I thought it was real! So, keep in mind, when I read the book and saw the movie, I beleived it had all actually happened as they said. The killer for me was the part about what it meant in the house when a person was standing facing the wall! Then I saw the last scene in the movie! WOW! Chilling! You'll have to read and watch to find what I mean. Freaked me out! A great book.

The book I read was "The Blair Witch Project" by A. Dossier. It was a amazing book because the author uses a very different way of writing. Instead of just writing about "Blair Witch" the book uses interviews, letters, and police reports. You should read this book.

The power of storytelling, no matter the medium, is for the audience to suspend their disbeliefs for a certain amount of time in order to enter the storyteller's narrative.

The book, expanding on the film, is treated as a dossier: A complilation of events surrounding the dissapearence of three university students while on assignment to create a documentary on an American legend. From backgound reports filed by the Burkittsville Sheriffs Department, a private investigation agency, newspaper articles, and interviews with family and friends of the missing students, the dossier compiled by D.A. Stern gives those that were interested in the film a better understanding of what indeed happened--and will let us, the audience, make up our minds as to the circumstances of three very unlucky people.

The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier is a LOT more than just a movie tie-in- It's a very scary experience in it's own right. Author D.A. Stern uses the same "It's all true" approach as the movie, often to chilling effect. The book starts out as a compendium of facts about the missing filmmakers, but soon becomes a semi-sequel, as the investigators whose reports and interviews we've been reading decide to set off into the Black Hills themselves.

The characters are vividly rendered by Stern, which is amazing, considering how there isn't a normal narrative structure to work with. I was truly worried about the Investigators by the time they made their way to the ruins of Rustin Parr's house. Stern also provides some much-needed insight into the film that makes repeat viewing MUCH more rewarding, and the entries from Heather's journal shed a whole new light on her character. The book is well-done all around, and I especially appreciated the little spot-varnished handprints all over the cover. Nice touch! Overall, I highly recommend this book to any Blair Witch fan; I think even non-fans will appreciate Stern's storytelling style....

I watched the movie and i thought that it was real but to my disapointment it was'nt. I still think that these people did a great job on their acting and it was really scary. They got a great imagination who ever wrote the story!

To add to all of the tie-in books and dead-serious "mockumentaries" comes this - "The Dossier", a scrapbook of the investigation surrounding the disappearance of Heather, Josh and Mike in October of 1994 and the recovery of their footage. By now, everybody knows that our victims vanished while shooting a documentary about a witch who has haunted generations of citizens of Burkitsville (nee Blair), Maryland. Despite an exhaustive search, the footage and Josh's car remained the only evidence left behind. The recovered footage - the film and the videotapes meant to document its creation - depict Heather, Josh and Mike being stalked by an unseen presence, desperate to escape a seemingly endless forest.

Ofcourse, the real fun is how the film blurred the lines between fact and fiction on both sides of the camera (film students go into the forest, believing the witch to be a legend, until the legend comes for them; ads for the flick hinted that the story of the missing students was true when it wasn't). "Dossier" follows tradition - picking up the story from the perspective of private investigators hired by Heather's mother to solve the mystery. Like the film, "Dossier" keeps the tension high by masking its subject well - the "narrative" consists of memos, letters and transcripted phone calls compiled by the Buck Buchanan detective agency. It's obvious that nobody attached to the project believes in the witch legend, though their memos only detail weirder findings, and an enigma whose solution becomes more elusive.

While "Dossier" knows the tricks of the film, it brings less to the legend than the film did. It's a short, thin read, one giving us bits without fleshing much out. We learn of the origins of Blair and of Elly Kedward, the future witch. But Kedward's story never goes beyond one we can label as man's cruelty to man. (A mysterious, if otherwise decent figure, Kedward is driven into the woods, presumably to her death; successive generations are haunted by her.) We also learn more about Rustin Parr who murdered a group of Burkittsville children during WWII. (Parr's story is an oddball footnote to the legend - he's obviously a nut, but devotees of Blair Witch can't divorce themselves of the idea that his actions were a genuine manifestation of the witch. More on Parr, later.)

Unfortunately, the patchwork narrative misses details or at least fails to highlight them. "Dossier" was probably going the subtle route for deep chills and preserving the surface rationale for the story as a record of a professional investigation, but some of the details inexplicably glossed over seem as much as interest to us as to Buck Buchanan. We learn for example that Heather's camera and film were found inside of a wall of a ruined house by a group of students, the implication being that the ruin dated to civil war times, and the sections in which the camera was found looks to have been undisturbed since then. At this point, having only caught the flick on cable, and missed both the "Curse of the Blair Witch" and any of the special editions of the original (and having read none of the books) I naturally assumed at first that the ruin was the abandoned house in which Heather and Josh enter at the end of the film. However, it's soon apparent that the ruin nothing like that house, which closely resembles the one in which Rustin Parr committed his multiple murders (remember all those handprints? Those are supposed to be the handprints of children), a house which no longer exists. Nevertheless, "Dossier" passes the house by entirely, and does little more with the footage itself, even though it's the only tangible evidence of mystery. I thought "Dossier" and "Blair Witch Porject" consciously decided on keeping Parr conspicuously nearby but separate, only adding to the sense of mystery - until Parr became the subject of a "Blair Witch" - licensed video game.

Two things kill the fun offered by "Dossier" - it's a slim read, and it lacks any of the tension suffered by the heroes of the film. Though the heroes of "Dossier" raise and then eliminate various possible solutions, they never seriously consider the fact that they are victims of an elaborate con perpetrated by Heather and crew (sure they're working for Heather's mom, but even so they're still investigators). The "con" idea would have given "Dossier" a severely needed shot of tension, and is only one idea that could have really fleshed the book out. It's clear from "Dossier" that both it and the movie drew from the same inspiration that led to the novel "A House of Leaves" - a huge, dense mystery composed of overlapping narratives (with their own fonts and piles of footnotes) centered around a mysterious documentary about a house whose interiors rebel against laws of time and space. With a bit more effort and time, "Dossier" could have done much to enliven the mystery of "Blair Witch" while providing a great alternative to readers intimidated by the insurmountable size and narrative of "House". Instead, it does neither.

This book was so cool. I have never read anything that I was interested in except this book. It is wonderful especially Heather's Journal. The pictures are wonderful! I reccommend this to anyone who likes horror.

When I first saw the Blair Witch Project (might I note, in an old local theatre whose gothic atmosphere only contributed that much more to the mood) I could have easily believed that it was true. When I left the movie theatre, my stomach was in a knot from the sheer intensity of the viewing.

And to take it one more step and create this 'dossier' only makes the storyline that much more realistic and believeable. And I love nothing more than being able to immerse myself completely in a piece of fiction. Despite what I have heard many people say about The Project, it and this book are two of the best pieces of fiction I have ever encountered.

It was the scariest book I've ever read, and what made it scarier was the fact that it seemed very real.

When I bought this book I knew nothing about the Blair Witch Project, the movie, the legend the marketing ploy. As it stands the book is quite good, light reading - you'll get through it in a day and won't be able to put it down untill you think you know everything there is to know. At the end you'll feel - "Oh my GOD - I have got to go see the movie", just as you are supposed to.

For me - I think I have to agree with Bob from the UK (review below), I don't appreciate being strung along by any author - regardless of topic and I feel that this dossier does a fine job of making idiots out of its readers untill the penny finally drops that it is in fact... yet another marketing ploy ( albeit a clever one) to hype up another movie (albeit a strikingly different one)

I definatley would have enjoyed it more if it was more upfront as to the genre of the story - FICTION