A terrific little scare

Rating: 8/10 (10 July 2000)

"The Blair Witch Project" will long be remembered as an incredible marketing success story: Ultra low budget film makes gazillions at the box office - sort of an anti-Ishtar.
But what should be remembered is that this is a pretty darn scary movie. It's a bit of a gamble: 99% setup for a 1% payoff, but the whole eighty minutes fly by (inane dialogue and poor acting notwithstanding) pretty fast. Without a single frame of special effects or a single suspenseful note of music, the filmmakers manage to create an unmerciful sense of dread, and the final scene becomes among the most tense I can recall.