Ingenious but flawed

Rating: 7/10 (4 August 1999)

WARNING: SPOILERS TO FOLLOW
This was a very cleverly made movie that suffers most from the limits of its own creativity. The actors deserve enormous credit for their work -- the directors somewhat less, for seemingly falling in love with the gimmick and not stitching together the raw footage with a better-developed structure.
Some of the extra-filmic Blair Witch background lore needed to make it into the movie proper; the hauntings don't make sense without it. There are a couple of severe idiot-plot problems: why, oh why, do these three college kids not simply follow the creek, which has to come out someplace, and so escape the woods? And why do Heather and Mike succumb to Horror Cliche Disease and go straight into the Creepy House From Nowhere, there to split up and ensure their imminent doom? (They should have followed the inevitable path to the house down the hill into town.)
It's also mildly odd that there's no sexual/physical chemistry between the characters, especially after Josh disappears and Heather and Mike are left to each other. I am NOT talking about casual nookie or horizontal tango-ing here, but the sort of bonding-under-stress that frequently occurs in crisis situations such as that in the film.
Criticisms notwithstanding, there's a lot to like about the movie (provided you can see it in a properly darkened theater; it *really* needs the blackest possible black to work at its best). But it's not quite the groundbreaker the hype suggests.