Rouse me when the action begins, please.

Rating: 1/10 (1 August 1999)

I faltered...I succumbed. I went against everything about which Flavor Flav and Chuck D. so ardently tried to warn me: I believed the hype.
I called the theatre near me ahead of time...sold out. I went to a theatre in a less culturally aware area of town, thinking perhaps no one would have heard of this film...sold out. I waited in line hours earlier to buy tickets for the LATE late show, 11:45 PM. Finally, I held in my sweaty palm, a ticket to The Blair Witch Project.
I had visited the film's website. I read up a bit on the background. I heard the frightful reviews, and boy, I was ready to have the skin terrified from my very bones. I said READY...prepared...waiting...............still waiting.
Oh dear...over ten minutes of COMMERCIALS? Not trailers, mind you--they were still to come--but commercials; ADS. Appalling. This is why I stopped watching television. As I sat in the crowded theatre, nervously checking my watch, I noticed that it was nearly midnight. The fellow of no more than 17 seated next to me, leaned over and muttered, "Is this your first time?" I indicated that it was, and then he provided me with the unsolicited fact that he had seen it just the night before, and was so mesmerized, he'd returned this evening for a second viewing. THIS was why I didn't like people.
The lights went down...AT LAST...and I kept waiting.
"Do we have any weed?" Heather Donahue asks coyly as the other two stooges guzzle beer and liquor in a cheap motel. A silent alarm sounded in my clearly distant Area 39. Surely, I told myself, SURELY this is just a flimsy effort to get the audience in synch with these three kids; make us feel for them. It will get better...won't it? MUSTN'T IT!??
As I was about to catch a catnap, hoping to perhaps wring SOMETHING substantial out of this evening, I realized that there were only TWO idiots now. Whatever happened to the third? Hmmmm. OK--capacity of attention span: MET AND SURPASSED. Next...?
Mucus...a lot of it. Heather, the pontificating, ever-eloquent a la "Mary Brown...I thought she was fu--in' insane" has the camera pointed at herself once again and is crying--not to mention SNOTTING--up a storm. Shouldn't I be feeling something by now...other than the need to use the restroom? Hmmm.

Artisan Entertainment, after a masterpiece like 1998's Pi, why have you failed me? The only difference between the supposed emotion of Heather in her last hours, and say, Deborah Winger as the terminally ill Emma Horton in Terms of Endearment, is...I actually cared about Emma enough that I wanted her to LIVE...and Terms of Enderment was fiction! Enough said?
I chuckled to myself as the THUD was audible and Heather's camera dropped to the ground. Surely this loss of balance was the result of a sharp blow to the head from some disgruntled financier, or an Artisan executive with the horse sense to end production of this embarrassment in time to save face.

If I had been in that house in Maryland five years ago, I might have done the deed MYSELF, just on general principle...just to make her STOP TALKING.

My mother always told me not to follow the herd, because they were likely to end up in the slaughterhouse. I should have listened.
As the credits rolled, I thought less of the "great film" on which I had just wasted nearly ten dollars, and more of an actually pressing issue,

"WHERE DID I PARK?"