Most frightening when the mood is right

Rating: 10/10 (2 August 1999)

If you are the type of person who can easily lose sleep on a stormy night by recalling Grandma and Uncle John's sworn testimony that late great Grandpa has been known to phone during thunderstorms, you should be able to appreciate this movie. And it definitely helps if you've spent time deep in the woods at night and don't mind barrages of profanity.

A piece of advice to which all potential viewers should pay heed: Listen to the stories told in the beginning in order to understand the ending! Those who don't are the ones who walk out of the theater afterwards saying, "That's it? What happened?"
I've seen The Blair Witch Project twice, in two very different audiences. The audience made the atmosphere, which I found to be the crucial element in getting into (and therefore appreciating) this movie (or not). The first group was quiet from the beginning, aside from laughter at the funny moments and yelps at the frightening ones. With silence and few distractions, people could lose their actual surroundings and be there with the campers, not to mention decipher the faint sounds that occasionally required careful listening (and good hearing). If only the theater could have been pitch black, like the woods at night. I would suggest closing your eyes at those times when there is audio but the screen is black, and just listening.

Of course, this advice would be useless in an audience like the one in which I viewed this film the second time. There were macho types who had to scoff loudly at every turn, a gum popper to my right, whisperers behind me, four CHILDREN jumping up and down in the front row, and various popcorn go-fers cruising the aisles the entire time. Bad experience- there was no empathizing with the characters or catching the more subtle details, and I doubt anyone in the theater (including the five year old) was all that frightened. The reality of the theater was too all-encompassing.

You have to experience the film as a fourth (or fifth?- evil cackle) camper, who is all too aware of how sinister unusual occurrences can be when there isn't an exit sign nearby.