Being hooked is essential to liking this film

Rating: Null/10 (17 August 1999)

This is a one-hook movie. Either it hooks you totally (as happened to my husband Walt) and it's the most terrifying movie you've seen in ages, or it doesn't (as happened to me) and it's unconvincing at best and boring at worst. The hook is that you are watching footage of something that supposedly happened, accentuated by the (necessarily) jerky camera work. If you tend to be aware that you're watching a movie (my husband), it comes off as believable because you're watching "what actually happened". If you normally have fantastic suspension of disbelief (me), to the point where what happens on the screen is what's happening to you, the camera work constantly reminds you that you're just watching a movie and you can't get into it.
I strongly recommend taking motion sickness medicine an hour before watching this movie!!! I'm sure glad I did!
If nothing else, BWP is fascinating as a psychological study of three people breaking down while trying to cope with an intensely unpredictable and stressful situation that they can't leave and that is out of their control. I'll bet that this gets assigned as required viewing in psychology classes.