Another film defeated by hype.

Rating: 4/10 (31 July 1999)

I was really hoping for the best from this movie. Everything I read was exceptional about it. I thought this would be the horror movie to add quality to an otherwise sagging genre. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
At best, there is 30 minutes of "intense" film here. The rest feels like MTV's The Real World Meets Indie Film Fame. Watching Josh, Heather, and Mike get the crap scared out of them in the middle of the night is very intense, and the ending will stick with you for a while. However, watching the three "break down" and argue in between those moments starts to wear thin after the second day of filming.
It's not as riveting as the hype would lead you to believe, nor is it as "original" or "groundbreaking" as I had hoped. Most of the time I was sitting there feeling like I was just watching some inconsequential home movies that led nowhere. In all, The Blair Witch Project is a quaint little film that may have worked better had it actually been real, or had it not been leaked out that it wasn't real. It certainly reads better on paper and in all the magazine articles than it actually plays out on the screen.