There's nothing worse than shaky camcorder footage

Rating: 1/10 (27 February 2013)

This "movie" is a "documentary" about the so-called Blair witch legend. It was marketed and hyped up as a true story, that three teenagers went into the woods in search of the Blair witch in October 1994 and never returned. Then their camcorder footage was found a year later.
The whole idea behind this movie was to scare its audience with the concept of making the audience get frightened of things they don't see. It's called psychological horror. Other horror movies of the past have accomplished this goal. The Haunting (1963) is a perfect example. The Haunting was a professionally made movie with a musical score, the whole nine yards. In contrast, The Blair Witch Project was filmed with a camcorder and a shaky one at that. There is no music in the film. It's raw. It has a skeletal budget. It has the sounds of the day and the sounds of the night and the sounds of profane teenagers. It's basically a "reality" film about some teens who are lost in the woods in search of a legendary witch that supposedly lives there. The fact that they're looking for a witch and lost at the same time makes them increasingly frightened and frustrated as the movie progresses.
The main problem I have with this film is that the footage is so shaky and amateur-ish. This movie is unwatchable. It'll make you dizzy and give you a headache. It's fine to use a camcorder. I thought it was a unique way to film a documentary "movie". But at least make the footage watchable. I can understand the camera shaking at times when the kids are running away from something that's scaring them, but to have shaky footage when they're just sitting around and talking or when planning their trip is really inexcusable. If I want to watch really bad and I mean REALLY bad and shaky camcorder footage, I can watch any one of the countless lame and shaky videos that people I know have made throughout the years. I don't know what's so hard about keeping a steady camera. This film would have been better if the camera-work was better. Instead of feeling scared, I found myself being distracted by the terrible camera-work and feeling dizzy with a headache, also. The bad camera-work robbed me of any scared feeling I was supposed to have when watching this film.