Creepy but not as scary as a big rubber shark

Rating: Null/10 (26 August 1999)

As you may have guessed from my one line summary, Jaws scared me more than this. I find this an interesting comparison because much of the scares in both movies comes from never seeing the shark/witch/whatever. However, in Jaws this was scary, whereas here there's just not enough clarification. NO, I DON'T WANT THE WITCH TO MORPH FROM A TREE DRIPPING BLOOD AND ALL DONE UP LIKE LINDA BLAIR IN THE EXORCIST, BUT I would like to know just what the heck it was. About the best clarification in the movie as to this is "No redneck would think of this" or something. Yay. Early on, we get a description of the Witch that very much matches the ending, BUT I decided to disregard this because all the other interviews at the start suggested something totally different and really seemed more funny than scary, apparently intentionally. Indeed, we all know from ads and hype that there are many Scary Weird Noises In The Night sequences, but only late in the movie do these sections become scary. Why? Because the early ones are at the longest a minute, and in daylight there just isn't anything quite strange enough to scare you. And believe me, there's a LOT of daytime in this movie. And 95% of it is them arguing, usually two characters screaming at each other "f--- this" and the other countering "f--- that," culminating in "f--- you" while the third party member screams "shut the f--- up." At one point, when one character turns really cruel, not violent, but mean, the confrontation is fairly tense, but really more at home in a soap. The end, yes, it's quite creepy. No, not the final shot. Just the last few minutes. Not everyone will agree--as the movie ended, the entire audience sat silently--for three seconds. Then some brave and obnoxious souls offered "You've gotta be kidding me," and, more to the point, "That sucked" and "Boooooo..." Is it worth seeing? Well, yeah, if only out of curiosity. It's still a pretty good movie. But Scary as Hell(TM)? No.