Atmospheric but derivative

Rating: 4/10 (18 July 1999)

This may be a spoiler, but-- While this film has been compared numerous times (and rightly so) to Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, why has nobody remarked on the fact that the so-called "original" and "chilling" final five minutes are swiped shot for shot from the French film Man Bites Dog - a film which also, oddly enough, passed itself off as a zero-budget cinema verite horror film told entirely from the point of view of amateur documentarians? While Blair Witch isn't bad, it's just not terribly scary; it spends so much time appropriating elements from other, stronger films and trying to pass them off as fact that it becomes increasingly clear that the filmmakers had no idea what they were trying to "suggest." In films like The Haunting and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, your imagination can fill in the blanks and scare you because you can conjure up what's behind the door, what's lurking in the trees, etc. In Blair Witch, the menace is so inconsistent and poorly drawn that it just becomes ultimately frustrating. It's not important that you find out what happens to the kids, but shouldn't there at least be some rationale behind it? The "creepy" final image smacks more of a script that painted itself into a corner than some kind of artistic ambiguous statement. Too bad -- the film does have some powerful atmosphere and occasionally exploits everyone's fears of the dark quite well, but this is hardly a revolutionary or groundbreaking film. Hopefully the real item will come along sooner or later, because we're all getting starved for real horror films here.