It's not what you see that's scary, it's what you DON'T see.

Rating: 7/10 (27 July 1999)

Despite what some people say, slasher movies can deliver quite a jolt. It always gives a slight pulse-quickening when Jason drives a machete into his first victim. But for that extended grab-the-armrest-until-your-knuckles-turn-white fear, only three different themes do that for me: religious-based horror, clowns (don't ask), and dread, the feeling that things aren't right and the cause of it is just out of reach, but coming closer. All the best frighteners did it, from the two notes on the cello to denote the appearance of Jaws, to the silhouette of Ma Bates stalking up the stairs, to the wry grin of Vincent Price, to HAL telling his superior that he "can't do that, Dave". The latest addition to this is The Blair Witch Project, which does it so well that almost half the audience I saw it with had difficulty breathing.
The movie is shown as a documentary showing three film students, Heather, Josh, and Mike, preparing a documentary on a local legend known as the Blair Witch. They film their documentary, but also videotape their experiences, too. After interviewing a few locals, they learn, with the audience, that there was a disappearance of some children back in the 1940s in the woods surrounding the town, and that people have mysteriously dying all the way back for 300 years. They then go out into the woods to film some scenes at different sites of the killings, and during this time, they describe the design of twigs that would accompany the killings. Starting on the second day, they realize that they are lost and when they camp down for the night, they begin to hear voices and disturbances, and when they wake the next morning, they find three rock formations outside their tent. Josh and Mike begin to blame Heather for getting them lost, since she was the one who put the whole thing together, and never bothered to scout the area first. After the third night, they change from being a little worried to completely terrified. They frantically try to backtrack out of the woods, until they realize how lost they are....
First of all, I have to give kudos to the plot. Documentaries in documentaries have been done before, but it works very well here, as they are still taping themselves in hope that if they don't make it out alive, at least their film will. The premise of a local legend as the backdrop serves as an overarching fear. Many areas have that urban or backwoods legend like the Jersey Devil, and this will remind anyone who has ever went into the woods as a youth and tried to find the truth in the rumors. The whole trick is, you never actually see it, you just see what possibly is the outcome. The use of a simple black & white camera and a camcorder only heightens the worry, with the lower technology reinforcing the idea of just regular people. There is a scene near the end when Heather holds the camera up to her face and apologizes to Mike's, Josh's, and her parents as she is so overcome by terror she can't speak without crying hysterically and running her nose. The three of them show real fear as they face their own doom, and you can't help but feel slightly voyeuristic watching this.
The main question of movie is if this is real or not, so if this is pressing you, stick around for the end of the credits. This movie draws on the most primal fears we all have: the unknown, the things you can't explain, and the things that go bump in the night. Not seeing what is happening is what creates that feeling of dread. It's the watching of things unfolding and the anticipation that delivers the fear, i.e. the hunt being much more visceral than the actual kill. This delivers one hell of a scare and considering the lack of true horror movies of this decade, I would rank this up there with Jacob's Ladder and It (the whole clown thing) as the best fright-inducers of the decade. It's biggest flaw might be word-of-mouth hype, because if you don't allow yourself to taken into a horror movie as a viewer, then nothing would scare you. I also had to ask myself why would they bother to keep taping if they thought they were in such mortal danger, but obviously, the movie would fall apart if this aspect is noted. I rate this a 7 out of 10, (definitely worth the price of admission) because this is a great original concept executed with great results, not perfect, and it is certainly not the scariest movie ever made, but it does sparkle. This is a movie to see if you want to get a real pit in your stomach, and if you let it, it will. After seeing this, you might think twice before going out in the woods ever again.