Almost a hit

Rating: 6/10 (22 October 2009)

Many factors contributed to the overwhelming success of Blair Witch including marketing, writing, directing and the most crucial aspect, acting. Unfortunately the acting here is sub-par which isn't to say that the leads didn't do their jobs well but on more than one occasion, it felt like a college drama ad-lib class and having just one of those moments, let alone several, destroys any illusion that this is a real documentary. In real life, people talk over each other as they scream and argue. They do not wait for someone to finish speaking. Blair Witch knew and hit this aspect on the mark.
Another real deal breaker was just the immaturity of the lead characters, not to mention any real character development. I honestly got fed up with them both for being both stupid and passive and began rooting for the ghost about halfway through the film. The fact is: no one likes a weak main character in a horror film. The only thing they are good for is fodder for the baddies.
Finally, the pacing of the film was really poor. Sporadic moments of terror and fright that never really felt like anything was building up, especially with so much downtime and extraneous exposition in between the scares.
All in all, a decently creepy low budget film with good effects but substandard writing and unsympathetic, childish characters. C+/B-.