Still Shaking...

Rating: 7/10 (1 August 1999)

I've read some of the negative reviews for this film, and I can't believe they even exist. This is an incredible movie, perhaps the only movie to ever really /scare/ me. I'm a programmer by trade, and it is thus quite easy for me to dissociate myself from characters in a movie. I can look up there and see the characters of your average movie as fake. They appear to me as mere collections of pixels, slapped together on a piece of celluloid and displayed for my amusement. It was not this way with the Blair Witch Project. I saw this movie about 3 hours ago and I'm still scared senseless. I'm still shaking just a bit. I drank a couple shots of bourbon just to try to calm down. Nothing works. This movie is *that* scary. I don't know if it was faked or not, but if it was then I must say that it is a masterpiece. The characters are so afraid and their emotions are so real that even the most jaded among us can't help but empathize with them. And that, really, is the true power of this movie. It's not scary in the way that someone jumping from behind a door and saying 'BOO!' is scary. It's more the kind of scary you feel when you walk down a dark hallway and feel like someone is following you. Or the fear you feel while walking through an unfamiliar alley on a dark, cold night. It is primal fear, a fear which can't be shaken. A fear which is bred into you for your survival. That is the fear that this movie brings out in you. And that, good people, is one of the hardest fears to shake.