Terrifying Final 10 Minutes: GREAT!

Rating: Null/10 (27 July 1999)

Sunday, July 25, 1999
The Blair Witch Project - 30 minutes after seeing it! By, BillStoll@aol.com
Alright I saw it. I had to cross the country to Los Angeles. to find a theater showing it. But I did it. You need to too.
There are a hundred summaries of the film's plot on www.imdb.com, so I'll mercifully avoid restating it. My reaction to all the hype follows instead. Here at a Santa Monica, 800 seat theater near L.A., the show was sold out "seven shows" in advance. We wound up going to Sunday night's 9:50 PM showing (that's about 1 PM, east coast). And it was worth the wait and navigating through the packed (large!) theater's audience. Which I hate to do, generally speaking.
A comment first about movie's quality. The home movie (shaky camera; crappy images) thing got on my nerves eventually, as I thought it might . . . until the last ten minutes or so, when the movie pays off. Trust someone who has seen a lot of horrr films in his day: You will be freaked out by its closing minutes. Oh yeah. . . . it paints the face of fear like you've never seen it before, then goes on to chronicle it, bringing you along for the ride as it wraps up the story in a neat little package.
Great essays open and close to the same central thesis. Listen closely to the opening small town dialog (about the Blair Witch legends) from the Burkittsville MD residents. In particular, to Mary Brown, one of the creepier castings the creators of this film arranged. It is a clean story, from back to front. Stories like that are what movies should be all about.
There are a hundred things to pick apart regarding the film's manufacture, particularly if you're a fussbudget viewer like myself ( . . . did I actually write that about moi?!). But therein lies the genius of the home movie / college-student approach. You forgive the flaws because the participants and their amateur process (in their fear) surely could have taken the tack portrayed. Anyone reading this ever truly get "lost in the woods?" I have (35 years ago albeit) and it is scary. Damned scary! So: to the major criticism assigned by the internet reviewers about it being unrealistic for anyone - under those conditions - to continue filming, my take was that they needed to do "something" to preserve their sanity in their hopelessness and terror. The alternative: to give up, wither and die frightened and unproductive in the woods. The prospective flaws (I saw) were the absence of a cell phone or a search party perhaps. However, even as I write this now (late, after getting back to my hotel,) my own cell phone is miles away in my daughter's car trunk, forgotten by yours truly. So anything's possible.
Do I recommend it? (Fargo Voice) Oh, you betcha Margie! It is only 80 minutes or so long; you get a kick out of it at first . . . well, up until those last ten big ones. And those, my friends, are - all by themselves - worth the trip.
Don't worry about sleeplessness after seeing it. Unless you're prone to camping, hiking or living near the woods now or anytime in the future.
See it when it comes to a theater near you.
BillStoll@aol.com