Interesting Idea...Overblown Film

Rating: 5/10 (6 July 2004)

First of all, I must give high marks to the producers of this movie and to Artisan Films for one of the most imaginative advertising campaigns I have ever experienced. The TV "teasers" and the website - not to mention the various ancillary products (especially, "The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier) associated with the movie were uniformly first rate and whetted my appetite for the movie.
Upon first viewing the movie, I was feeling rather foolish - I (and, apparently, millions of other had been "had). What I saw was a short movie with a great premise and a few really good suspenseful/scary scenes that had been stretched out to feature length by seemingly endless footage of the hapless principals wandering about lost in the woods and - even worse - continually whining about it. I was not a happy camper.
Later, a few other members of my family saw the movie and they literally ranted and raved about how creepy it was and how a woman they saw at a local carnival was the spitting image of Mary Brown. This incident triggered a large number of conversations among their friends and family. The capper came when my wife watched it on Cable and it gave her the major "willies".
I began to think that maybe I had been too harsh in my judgment and that this movie deserved another viewing.
Well, I have watched this movie about a half dozen times and I have good news and bad news. The good news is that it can be spooky fun for a while. The bad news is that the total quality time in this movie amounts to only about 1/3 of the running length.
I am still impressed with the concept and with the genuinely creepy look of some of the scenes but the best score I can muster is 5 points out of 10.
I would really like the originators of this movie (or someone else who sees the potential for a really GOOD horror movie here) to re-imagine the project and , perhaps, include more of the back story (Rustin Parr and the Blair Witch herself). By the way, I do not consider "Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows" to be even close to this idea. The less said about this the better.