Horror And/Or Hype?

Rating: 6/10 (13 May 2003)

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is one of those films that made history by shooting to the top of the box office while being made on a very paltry budget of just $40,000. It also benefitted from all the hype surrounding its story of a group of teens who venture into the desolate Maryland woods to find out if the legend of the Blair Witch is fact or fiction. As a result, this film went on to gross $130 million during the late summer of 1999.
But while the premise of the story and the inventive "Shaky-Cam" work of the filmmakers suggest a very chilling and suspenseful film, I am only able to give this film a '6' rating out of 10.
The reason? Even for $40,000, you think it would be easier for filmmakers Eduardo Myrick and Daniel Sanchez to come up with a better use of dialogue than you'd get in an average teen-slasher pic. The pacing of the film is unquestionably inventive, and the atmosphere, the further the teens venture into the woods, begins to resemble John Boorman's 1972 classic DELIVERANCE. The stick figures used as the signs of the Blair Witch's presence (the witch herself, in a thoroughly brilliant move, is never, ever seen) are also good; and the lack of explicit gore is quite refreshing. But the dialogue is so profanity-ridden that it gets tired after a while. It is worse than any of the screaming done by the film's lead heroine (Heather Donahue) or her "I'm-so-scared"-by flashlight scene.
Unlike a lot of people, I wouldn't call THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT an overhyped low-budget disaster; in terms of premise, it more than lives up to the hype. Even the acting of this amateur group is worth sitting through. But unlike others, because of the dialogue (the one and ONLY reason this film has its 'R' rating at all), I can't quite call it a masterpiece. Still, it is a worthy film, if frustratingly uneven.