Not scary, but interesting

Rating: 5/10 (30 December 1999)

I'm beginning to believe there is a dividing line between those who liked TBWP and those who didn't that is often based on age. The post-25-year-olds seem to, for the most part, view the film as so-so and not scary. Many of the under-25 viewers like it very much and find it innovative and terrifying.
I'm over 25, so you can guess where I fall on that continuum. Blair Witch was interesting primarily as a study of three people freaking out, not as a horror movie. Much has been written about the low budget and primitive technique. Yes, it is primitive, and that adds a certain mystique. It is like watching old home movies. It's so bad it is interesting to see how the filmakers will get a story across with so little apparent ability to do so. But to me, that isn't a point of contention. The quality of the film technique is what it is.
The story itself is basic. Three young film students set out to do a documentary about a ghost legend. You don't learn much about the students beforehand, and they have little depth. Most of what you learn comes from watching the group dynamics of the threesome as their situation gets worse and each individual starts to break down. From that perspective, TBWP was interesting. It also gets very annoying, as they begin to yell at each other and become irrational over what appears to be simply noises in the woods and some related odd goings on.
The lack of reasonable behavior by the threesome is what ultimately turned me off. I'll avoid giving away too much here, but will state a two examples:
1. When the students become lost and lose the map, they show very little ability to reason out an escape route based on the direction of the creek and the position (east - west) of the sun. If they had a map before, and saw the creek on it, and then find the creek, how hard can it be to follow the creek in a direction that gets them to safety? Can't they remember what was on the map, at least the basics?
2. The film lost all believability when the filmakers, especially the female star, continued to shoot video of what were supposed to be horrifying and sudden developments. I could see taping *after* the developments, when a little time had passed for the students to adjust. But *during*? I don't know about you, but if I find bloody remains the last thing I am doing as I find them is filming, and zooming in and out on them while also screaming my head off.
That was the problem. How could a person be calm enough to film something frightening, while at the same time screaming and generally losing it in fear? It is hard to believe that one person is doing both simultaneously. And every time that happened, I remembered I was watching a movie, and these people weren't real, and anything that happened wasn't scary. I suppose if the camera were a small, helmet-mounted unit that taped automatically it would have worked better. But just a little.
In the end, The Blair Witch Project was interesting but certainly not worth the hype. I wonder how many people have homemade "story" videos in their tape collections that include plots of the same quality? Probably a lot.