Scary? Not in the Least. Unintentionally Funny? You Bet.

Rating: 7/10 (25 September 1999)

There is a craze that is currently sweeping the country, or maybe it's more like some type of misdirected phenomena. It's called "The Blair Witch Project," and it has received almost as much hype as that long-awaited "first" entry in the "Star Wars" saga. Make no mistake about it; the Blair Witch is definitely something to marvel at, even if it's more for its utter stupidity than anything else. Filmed in 16mm black-and-white, "The Blair Witch Project" is filmed like a documentary. After about five minutes of watching the camera wobble from the ground to the sky and back to the ground again, the viewer is overcome by a splitting headache and a desperate urge to vomit. Actually, much of the film is spent with the camera directed at the ground, leaving the viewer to wonder if the filmmakers were looking for the Blair Witch or merely looking for rare species of ants. With a running length of 87 minutes, approximately 75 minutes of this time is consumed with the student filmmakers, who are the center of this lowly production, running around in the woods, lost, screaming obscenities at each other. One is left to wonder that if they would have shut up and actually walked for a little while, they would probably have stumbled upon a strip mall within 5 minutes. But that obviously wouldn't be interesting enough. So forward we trek with our documentary crew, fully absorbed in the frightening reality of their situation. While the threesome soon run out of food and supplies, the camera continues to roll, as if it's powered by a nuclear generator. I don't want to give away any more details about this "fright-fest," but let's just say that the three leads in this film are intolerable at best, and are representative of everything that the youth of America stands for: incessant chain-smoking and rampant profanity. How proud we are. Do yourself a favor and avoid this movie at all costs. I found myself highly anticipating this film upon its release, due to all the great thing I had heard about it. After about 30 minutes, however, I was hoping that a fellow audience member would feel as cheated as I, and do everyone a favor and go on a mass killing spree in the theater. The producers wish to promote this film by saying that it is "the unseen terror" in "The Blair Witch Project" that makes it so darn scary. After viewing this travesty, though, it is my belief that the witch is never revealed simply because the movie was so damn low-budget. 1.2/5 stars.