Moviegoing sheep have made this movie a success

Rating: 1/10 (23 August 1999)

It never fails to amaze me what passes for genuine and groundbreaking in our culture. That goes double for film...it seems the American film audience are akin to lemmings, jumping off the cliff at the debut of the latest "masterpiece". This time around, it's the "Blair Witch Project", an innocuous piece of tripe that I wouldn't be so angry about if it was screened in a film class or a free showing down at the YMCA. Instead, I'm bombarded by magazines and newspapers proclaiming it to be "the scariest movie ever made!" Critics I used to respect have absolutely sold out by hyping the film's originality and brilliance in not actually showing the "boogeyman" What that left me with was one and a half hours of watching completely charisma-less actors screaming obscenities and bugging their eyes out. How entertaining. Between the shaky camera (intended to convey the fright experienced by the actors, but actually succeeded in making the woman next to me vomit)and the extreme closeups of the principals, I was starting to feel queasy...queasy that I plunked down $7 for this amateurish home movie. Scary? Frankly, I'm more frightened by the prospect of a sequel!