Excruciating... in ALL the wrong ways

Rating: 4/10 (13 February 2009)

I watched 'The Blair Witch Project' for the first time this evening, almost 10 years after its theatrical release. I've read a lot about this film and many of the commentaries, especially on IMDb, were positive to the point of ecstatic. I wanted to be scared out of my wits, like the original 'Night of the Living Dead' caused me to be. Perhaps this expectation and hope is largely responsible for my deep disappointment.
It starts off fairly promisingly with interviews with the locals of the town on the edge of the haunted woods. There is humor and believability in these first minutes, then it all goes down the tube as soon as the three students enter the woods. The last hour of this movie is boring as can be and I found it very difficult to convince myself that these actors were really alone in the woods without some sort of pre-conceived guidance. How else could they have made their way to the house at the end?
And the bobbing and lurching cameras caused me to have to take a break in the middle to go lie down and relax my stiff neck. The feeling was very much like being in a small launch in the Gulf of Mexico in a 9 foot swell.
The best aspects of this film are the interesting folk art elements scattered around in the woods. Beyond that I give this effort a 4 out of 10 for chuzpah and little else.