The more I think about it, the more it stinks

Rating: 1/10 (10 August 1999)

This is a brilliant bit of movie business! I don't mean the movie, I mean the savvy marketing plan executed by the film's makers and distributors. They actually got me to see this piece of crap, and I gotta tip my hat. Now for the movie itself...
It's a cool idea. The legend, the cocky naive kids, the "cinema verite" techniques, etc. Hey, I Wanted to see this thing. But it all comes apart in the execution. There are a host of problems, many noted here by others, but for me the biggest problem is that the movie makers didn't give me a reason to care about the characters or what happened to them. Donahue is an annoying brat, which would be fine, except that's *all* she is; the other two characters barely register at all. And they're so stupid! I'm willing to suspend my disbelief somewhat for the purpose of the movie, so I tolerated the otherwise non-sensical dragging around and constant use of the cameras. But these three pinheads walk into the woods without any idea of what they're doing. Umm, anybody know how to follow a watershed downstream? Read a map? Bring a cellphone? Mark a trail? This ain't rocket science.
For me the movie basically ended when Mike admitted that he threw the map away. There's no reason given for him to commit such a spectacularly stupid act, and there's no justification for it except to advance the plot and let them all say f*ck another 40 times each. At that point I was just hoping that the supposedly terrifying presence lurking just offscreen would spring forth to devour the three knuckleheads posthaste in order to keep them out of the gene pool and permit me to do something productive with what remained of my evening.
What bothered me more than anything was the laziness this evidenced. Glaring weaknesses in structure like this are not that hard to work around -- why not have them find the map torn to bits and stuck in one of those hanging stick figures? At least that would have made *some* sense. If the directors had put half as much thought into the actual movie as they did in marketing it, it might have been decent.
I could go on and on, but I have to go watch some paint dry.
Evidence of the success of this hype (aside from the fact that it snatched $7 from my pocket) is the persistent belief on the part of some yahoos out there that this is based on actual events. Can someone please, please get these people a life! For myself, I walked into the theatre believing the film was actually going to be entertaining. As H.L. Mencken put it -- appropriately, in the Baltimore (Maryland) Sun -- "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."