All of our primal fears are lived vicariously through this movie

Rating: 10/10 (3 August 1999)

The Blair Witch Project is the personification of fear. This is a film or rather an experience that knows what it is that scares the human soul. As one reviewer so perfectly stated, this film brings back what it is that scared us as kids. And what it is that scares us are things that are naturally frightful. When you are five or six years old we are not naturally afraid of men with masks that stalk babysitters or men with hockey masks that haunt horny campers. Those are things that are taught to us by the news or by watching enough scary movies. But what we are afraid of, even though we don't know why, is the dark, strange noises in the middle of the night and our own subconscious. We are afraid to go downstairs when the lights are off because we don't know what is waiting down there to get us. And the reason we are scared of these things is simply that it makes us think of death or extreme pain. The Blair Witch Project preys on those fears. And as long as it takes to get into those primal fears, the setup is worth the payoff. What we witness is three people that could be budds that we went to school with. They are not caked with makeup and set in the perfect light to make them Jennifer Love Hewitt or Joshua Jackson. They are three people that are tired, unshaven, hungry, cold, deprived and scared out of their minds. They are a microcosm of every single one of us put in the same situation. I have never seen a film like this one before and only a handful of times have I felt close to what I did watching this film. First there was Jaws, that made me afraid the water. Halloween made me afraid of the night and Nightmare On Elm Street made me afraid to go to sleep. There are a few others that made me feel similar to this, but no movie has ever made me feel exactly the way Blair Witch did. In here you feel like what is happening is real. 8mm cameras can do that. You are watching a home video and what you can't see scares the hell out of you. We hear what they hear, we feel what they feel and we are prone to curl up in a ball and wait for the inevitable. I have seen this movie twice now. The first time I saw it for myself, the second time I saw it to watch the reactions of the people in the audience. When the nights came and all the ruckus started, people ( audience ) curled up almost into fetal positions, they grabbed onto whatever arm was next to them and their breathing became a little heavier. Male or female it didn't matter. No matter if this film is fact or fiction, it attacks everything that makes us afraid and it exploits it like perhaps no other film has ever done or will ever do.
Now I have read the comments that dismiss this film as fluff and how it is not really scary, and that may be true for some people, but for the majority of the people that have seen this, it hits us with such force that it does cause you to keep the lights on at night. This is ingenius film making and even though it is not exactly what people would consider on par with say Citizen Kane ( only on a technical level ) you will not find a film that manipulates our senses and our primarily our fear more than this one, and on that level, this is one of the best films ever made.
I can't say enough about this film. It is a psychological trip through fear. It makes us feel lost and it keeps us fearing that these people will never get out alive. And it is true what people say: the last shot of this film will scare you more than any shot in the history of film. That is high praise coming from me, I grew up on horror films. You can take a shot of Michael Myers rising methodically in the background in the first Halloween, the opening death of Chrissie Watkins in Jaws, the dinner table scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the shower scene from Psycho, the boiler room scene in Nightmare On Elm Street, the scene where Hicks discovers the aliens in the ceiling from Aliens or even any one of the rape scenes in Last House On The Left ( that is some pretty select company ) and still they will not surpass the raw emotion and primal fear that you will feel in the last five minutes of this film.
Blair Witch is pure fear. It should be seen by everyone at least once. If I could meet any of the five major players in this film ( the three "actors" and the two writer/directors ), I would thank them for showing me that someone hasn't forgotten how to make a scary film. This is what fear should be. Whoever makes the next "Hollywood" horror film has giant shoes to fill. Good luck.