A good & creepy modern fright flick.

Rating: 7/10 (9 February 2012)

"The Blair Witch Project" can be seen as a movie along the lines of 1978's "Halloween": it may not be original stuff (think "Cannibal Holocaust", made approximately two decades before this movie, in this case), but it certainly popularized its particular sub genre, the "found footage" sub genre, for better and for worse. This marvel of marketing deserves its props for one main reason, and that's the way it uses its low, low budget to its advantage, placing all of its horrors squarely inside the heads of its viewers, forcing them to use their imaginations to conjure up their own demons. The story hardly needs summarizing by this point, but suffice it to say that it presents itself as the "real" footage of three student filmmakers who get lost in the wilderness of Maryland while investigating a local legend. What this viewer has to say, in his own personal experience, is that repeat viewings have helped him to appreciate it more than he used to. A large part of the appeal is the *very* rural setting, and the idea of being lost in this setting and having no idea where to go, possibly ending up going in circles, which would be an extremely distressing thought. Now, the largely improvised dialogue is no great shakes, but it does offer a realistic enough account of the way that humans under extreme stress may very well speak, alternating between sniping at each other and trying to bolster each others' spirits. Our three protagonists, played by Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams, aren't entirely unsympathetic. The directors slowly increase the sense of menace throughout, with the last act naturally registering as the creepiest. Interview sequences at the beginning are definitely amusing. The arts and crafts displayed by our unseen antagonist(s) are genuinely striking, and do lead to my favorite line in the film: "Rednecks aren't this creative!" Of course, the idea in this film of one character stubbornly insisting on documenting *everything* has already become a cliché; while of course we wouldn't have the movie if this person weren't doing so, it's all too easy to understand how this would annoy other people. Overall, I realize I have been under-rating this for years (watching it late at night or early in the morning with all the lights off would create the perfect effect) - it does have good atmosphere - although *that* scene has always cracked me up, and that was before I even saw "Scary Movie". In the end, it does appear that assessments of "The Blair Witch Project" usually do tend to rely on how one reacts - either it works for the viewer or it doesn't. Seven out of 10.