Criminally underrated.

Rating: 10/10 (18 May 2017)

I say 'criminally underrated' because there seem to be two schools of thought concerning this movie. The first appreciate how much this film does with so little resources, i.e. these people take the time to enjoy it and become engrossed throughout by the well structured tension... The second school switch off early because of the lack of a horrific CGI witch flying around tearing people apart for the sake of it, thus dubbing it as 'boring' because 'nothing happens'... i.e. those people don't appreciate how this film rejects visuals in favour of a well-thought out developed story.
Blair Witch Project (BWP), is absolute minimalist genius when you consider how little happens in it... yet so much happens! It's a slow build up of tension based around reasonable sounding lore in an environment that we could all imagine ourselves being in. Horror films have regressed so much in recent years, mainly because jump scares become too commonplace to be scary, the visuals are too far-fetched and the back stories are horribly written. BWP addresses all of these by putting the audience into such a real scenario, at no point is there any hard evidence of the supernatural...and it is that very insecurity that keeps things interesting!
You need only read the wealth of trivia to appreciate what the writers and actors went through to make this all happen. One piece of trivia claims that we were supposed to get a flash of the Blair Witch herself at one point for a brief moment but due to a cameraman error this didn't happen... personally I think it's better that way and always believed that part of the mystery was not being able to see her.
Found footage films haven't had a good hit in a while, personally I don't think any could top this one. Say what you like about all the fancy visuals in Cloverfield, they just can't give you what the BWP provides... IF you take the time to sit, put your smartphone away and watch it.