Succeeds on its own terms but let's hope it's not the wave of the future.

Rating: 8/10 (11 August 1999)

When a film comes along with this much pre-release buzz it's difficult to go into the theatre without SOME kind of preconceived notion about what it is and what it's supposed to do. After seeing it, my feeling is that it was a very good film, using a concept that hasn't been done to death and one that served the filmmakers well. Let's hope, however, that this will not now become the cinematic wave of the future. We don't need every bunch of amateurs in the world running around with camcorders doing pseudo-cinema verite documentaries and foisting them on the public!
The appeal of 'BWP' to me was not as The World's Scariest Movie but rather as an examination of what stress and fear can do do people in adverse and extraordinary circumstances. Looking at it this way I think it succeeded admirably. One of my favorite moments in the film comes when the two young men almost get hysterical when they find they've been tramping through the woods all day and have arrived at the place they started. Heather, the filmmaker, repeatedly assures them that they haven't, then out of their hearing breaks down crying, confessing to herself that in fact they are back where they began.
The idea to suggest frightening sights rather than to show them was a good one that works well. There was one point, though, when Heather was running in fear and screams "What the **** is that!" that I thought they could have at least shown a shadowy suggestion of SOMETHING. But I can't criticize the direction the filmmakers took, because it worked. I think they made the film they set out to do. A masterful job was done of building suspense throughout the entire movie and the climax occurs right at the very last moment, like the best Edgar Allan Poe stories. Hype and expectations aside, I thought 'The Blair Witch Project' succeeded on its own terms.