Supremely effective horror movie

Rating: Null/10 (21 July 1999)

"The Blair Witch Project" is one of the most terrifying and effective horror movies I have ever seen, hands-down. It is not scary because it throws lots of gory, expensive special effects at us, or had characters who do idiotic things like walk into a house occupied by a chainsaw-wielding madman or hide in the closet when a killer is stalking them. It is scary because of what it doesn't show us, because it knows that the things that make the noises in the night are never as frightening as the noises themselves.
I guess the term "horror movie" isn't quite right for this film. That is better reserved for the kind of movie I have described above. This is more like an experiment in fear, in tapping the nameless dread we feel when we hear...something...moving around in the darkness outside our flimsy tent. When you are lost, and just can't find your way back. Those are fears I can relate to. I think almost anyone can. "Horror movies" place characters in implausible situations, so we can distance ourselves from the action. "Blair Witch" draws us further in, so we are fascinated even as we can barely stand to watch.
The movie's setup involves three student filmmakers who gather in the little Maryland town of Burkittsville to shoot a documentary about a witch that used to live in the woods at its borders. They never return, and their footage is found a year later. The "movie" consists of the footage pieced together in chronological order to show what happened.
They interview several people about the witch; some are ambivalent, some disbelieving. The conversations are believable and not contrived; they are like something you would see in a documentary. They are also a warning, although the students do see it as such (one woman is asked if she believes in the Blair Witch, and she grins and replies "I believe it enough not to go up there.")
They head into the woods to shoot footage of famous places in the witch legend, where unspeakable horrors were visited upon children and hunters. Gradually, things begin to get ominous. Strange piles of stone turn up outside their tent. At night, they can hear the noises of something moving around, something that refuses to show itself. At one point, they stumble across a grove filled with bizarre, frightening stick figures, which hang from trees, twisting silently in the breeze.
They plan to spend only a weekend there, but the map disappears, and they appear to be going in circles. They are out of food, and worse, cigarettes. Every night they are harrassed by whatever is stalking them. Heather, the project leader, tries to maintain order but the cameraman, Josh, and sound man, Mike, begin to question her ability to get them out of the woods, leading to gender struggles and a gradual breakdown of nerves. I have been in situations like this, although far less dire, and people generally behave as these students do.
This is not a movie where things jump out at them in from dark corners or where gore and slime drips all over the screen. It is presented as a documentary, in a simple, realistic fashion, but with the growing realization that the characters are being hunted by supernatural forces. At first they react by simply not believing it; they seek rational explanations ("Did you ever see 'Deliverance'?" asks Josh, suggesting they are being preyed upon by unwelcoming locals). Soon scientific postulation gives in to fear, because they simply can't ignore the evidence.
A movie like this is deeply unsettling in its implications, but it is exhilarating in its boldness and message that lots of money and big name actors are not needed to make a scary film. It was shot on a shoestring budget by a little-known film company and directors. The characters are given the names of the actors. Everything is "real" as far as the movie is concerned, and that was real enough for me to decide I won't be camping again for awhile.