An idiotic exercise in independent filmmaking

Rating: 1/10 (23 October 1999)

Man...this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I have never seen the movie as bad as the 80s Z-grade movies I watched on USA Up All Night. I'd rather sit through Guccione's integrated version of Calibula than endure this nauseatingly mindless trash again.
The Blair Witch Project is the epitome of the independent filmmaking method that gleefully indulges in the four-letter word to cover up the fact that whenever the dialogues and ideas fizzle out, there always come the obligatory obscene and vulgar language in practically every line of dialogue to make up for the lack of substance and quality. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with the level of profanity as long as the movie is interesting and balanced. But this movie went so far as to get on my nerves and made me so angry I wanted to unleash the fury on the videotape as soon as it ejects from the VCR after the movie ends.
The reason why BWP was made is simple: two amateur filmmakers kicked around the idea, recruited the young people and loaned them with the cameras to go into the woods to make a psychologically scary movie. The result is a mind-numbingly tedious exercise in self-indulgence and bad attitude all the way. This is the reason why I found the movie less scary and more irritating. Heather was so gratingly annoying I wanted to kill her onscreen. I literally had to beg for Joshua and Michael to die quickly and painlessly because they holler and scream and cuss at each other ALL THE TIME after the first half hour. At least they deserve the fateful death in the movie, but the fact that never cease to amaze me is that the so-called actors who relies on improvision comprising mostly of "J***s C****t! F**k! S**t!" are still alive and kicking.
What astounds me is that this overblown, overhyped and overrated film made big bucks at the B.O. and the filmmakers are laughing all the way to the bank. I hope and pray that they (and the filmmaking duo and the Artisan execs) will never work in Hollywood again because of this travesty that undermines the importance of reasonable quality and instills the repetitive use of the F-word and the abuse of the Lord's (whoever the Lord is, depending on your view and belief) name legitimate to make the product even more compelling. "The Blair B*tch Project" would be an accurate title to describe this waste of film.