...And if it were released today, people would hate it even more

Rating: 10/10 (2 July 2011)

How you'll respond to The Blair Witch Project depends on two factors, really. Firstly, if you like your horror movies filled with jump in your seat shocks, tangible glow-in-the-dark monsters, etc...this film is not for you. Also, if you missed it in 1999-2000 as the rock you were under was a tad too cozy, you'll find it to your benefit.
That's because, without overstatement, TBWP is really a publicity stunt wrapped around an urban legend. To say that it's "of its time" is a massive understatement, and Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick have got to be two of the luckiest punks to ever stagger down a pike --- the movie's marketing campaign, based around the at-the-time newly "hot" Internet phenom was packed with more elaborate detail and nuance than was the film.
No, what really sells TBWP and makes it somehow work are the performances of the three principals (Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard, and Mike Williams). They completely sell their snide cut-ups, bitch-biting arguments, and escalating tension and fear very well, and, believe me, they had very little to work with.
Although the filmmakers do an OK job at constructing creepy tableaux, it's only the reactions of the actors that send it home. There are absolutely NO effects here --- just three young people running for their lives, holding cameras. If they didn't do so good a job, it's doubtful so many people would have been fooled the first time around.
In ten years, audiences have gotten even more ADD-texting-Twittering crazed and the simple atmospherics of creep don't cut it. Personally, I prefer more psychological horror films, and TBWP takes a nicely creepy story (with some truly unsettling details) and realizes it in a nicely chilly, uncomfortably eerie backdrop.
There's a lot to like, if you look.