my two cents about The Blair Witch Project

Rating: 10/10 (27 July 1999)

Apparently unlike a lot of the people on this site, I'm not some frustrated would-be Gene Siskel who runs out to see every new movie, then races back here to put up a lot of self-important blather disguised as a review...I'm just some schmoe who goes to go see a movie from time to time. It so happens that The Blair Witch Project is one of the best I've seen in a long, long while. A couple of points I'd like to make:
1. I think a lot of your enjoyment (or lack thereof) of BWP depends on the theater you're in. I was lucky and sat among several hundred other folks who were well-behaved through the entire thing, but other people I know went to a showing full of people talking/making noise/laughing at odd moments/etc., which would just absolutely kill the atmosphere for this movie. And surprise surprise, every last one of them came out not liking it that much.
2. I generally make it a rule to avoid horror films as much as possible, simply because I find most of them to be really, really stupid when you get right down to it. I went into this movie thinking that there was a pretty good chance it would fall into this category. How wonderful it was to be wrong. With this plot line and shooting style, it would have been really easy for BWP to turn out either hokey or too contrived, but this cast manages to avoid that perfectly. I walked in knowing full well it was fiction and STILL found myself gripping the armrest.
It's great to see a creative, well done low-budget independent film can still get wide distribution and exposure in today's world. But for those of you that didn't like this movie, fear not. I'm sure Hollywood will come out with another ho-hum, hype-and-tripe, overbudget 'scary' horror megamovie that's more to your tastes, like The Haunting or I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.