If only there hadn't been so much hype...

Rating: 8/10 (17 June 2006)

BE WARNED - BIG SPOILERS HERE!
this is one of my favourite films, i saw it in the cinema here in the UK when it first came out, after feeling intrigued by the trailer. at no point did i think it was real (i heard that for a while after the film came out, the actors decided to go into hiding because so many stupid people in America took the bait and believed it was real. oh dear.), however i was able to really put myself in their shoes, probably because it was shot in such an amateurish way. never before had i seen a film that did not show you what was supposed to be scary, and it is better for that.
so many people have said they thought it was rubbish because they were waiting for some big payoff or for something showy to happen. admittedly, the hype surrounding the film did give the impression of something more spectacular, which did nobody any favours. luckily for me i never read reviews of horror films for precisely that reason, just seeing the trailer was enough for me.
blair witch's dialogue is fine by me even with all the f-words. young people that swear will swear a lot when they're scared, and if you look into the making of this film you find out that there was no script, most of the dialogue was improvised. the bad language was not excessive because the directors had no control over it. they had only certain lines and events pre-planned and so the rest was made up. the young actors did a good job with this too.
as for people stating the characters were idiots for not climbing trees to look for civilisation, surely if they did they would only see the tops of more trees? they were in the forest! also someone said they should have just followed the river downstream and they would have found some way out. IF YOU HAD PAID ANY ATTENTION you would have seen they did that, but with the curse or magic of the witch they ended up in the same place they were before. to quote "that's the tree we crossed, it's the same one" and "we walked south all day, i don't know how we ended up back here" or something to that effect. surely the idiots in films are the ones who know there's someone in the house trying to kill them, so they run upstairs instead of out of the back door or through a window.
the ending was something really special, to find a house in the middle of nowhere like that would be creepy enough, but to hear your friend's cries coming from it is far worse. the things you see inside the house, and the final moments make all the stuff said at the beginning of the film make sense.
i think the guys that did this have made a superb student film, that was exploited far too much, and it was made out to be something it's not. so for anyone who hated it, please take this advice - don't believe the hype about ANY film, ever. try downloading a trailer first and if it appeals to you then go see it. you have a brain, don't let the idiots in the media ruin your cinema experience again, go and make your own decisions about these things. don't forget, the critics thought titanic was awful when they first saw it, but as soon as the public started saying otherwise they changed their tune.