A good evening's entertainment

Rating: Null/10 (27 June 2003)

After intending to see this one for years, I finally did. What had put me off before were all the horror stories-not of witches, but of people running out of the theatre to puke, due to the jerky camera movements. As it turns out, I probably wouldn't have noticed this at all, had I not been looking for it. (Note: I now see, on an IMDb link that this same factor apparently didn't carry over very badly onto video.)
What I did find was an intriguingly simple tale of horror. I assume most earthlings know the basic plot-as I have for years before seeing it: Three college (I assume) students making a class documentary on a supposedly haunted woods near a small Maryland town disappear, their video footage being found a year later. I have heard people berate this as being as simply and cheaply made as the type of school documentary it portrays. Some have called it a total waste of time. I fail to grasp their viewpoint.
Actually there was a fair amount I did NOT know about the movie-even after watching it. (Thank goodness for the IMDb!) I admit I was a tad freaked out when I saw that the actors all played characters with their own names. Also surprising was that virtually the entire dialogue was adlibbed and that the three cast members knew very little of what was going to be happening to them. It was more a case of improvising and reacting than true acting. Yet it worked marvelously. (I enjoyed the note that Heather Donahue supposedly carried a knife with her out of concern for sharing a tent with two strange guys.) I had always laughed at the `stupid kids' who spread rumors that this was a REAL documentary. Now I see that the producers actually claimed it WAS real when it was first promoted! (Hence, I suppose, the reason for using the actors' real names.)
Certainly the movie awoke Hollywood to a realization that big budget, CGI and multi-million dollar directors are not always the answer when seeking a crowd-pleaser. Eeriness, tension, pathos and a good story are all put together for basically the equivalent of a year's salary for many of us. Less was definitely more for Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale and his castaways.