One of the scariest movies ever made.

Rating: 9/10 (22 July 1999)

I am not the type of person that usually gets scared by movies; in my opinion, the only film that has come close to being really scary is "The Shining". Until now, that is. "The Blair Witch Project" is honestly one of the scariest movies ever made. More impressively, there are no cheap scares: nothing jumps out of the bushes and startles you, and you're not assaulted with dismemberments or beheadings. You just sit there in silence, with shivers running down your spine and terror gripping you in the belly. But how can a movie that cost $25,000 possibly be scarier than every other big-budget horror-fest ever produced?
It is scary because it is vague. The filmmakers wisely observed that nothing they could put on screen would be as terrifying as what you could imagine. Their tools are a few sticks and 10 lines of well-placed dialogue, but they manage to scare you more than any CG effect ever could.
It is scary because it is so real. The characters are you, or people you know. It's one thing to hear a famous actress's trained scream in the face of some hideous monster; it's quite another to hear a `real' person's hoarse, panic-stricken shrieks when all they can see is trees and darkness. The former may give you a start, but the latter chills you to the bone.
Go see `The Blair Witch Project'. It will remind you how fun it is to be really, truly scared. You'll probably have to go home and turn on all of the lights (as I did), but you'll be back in line the next day, ready for more.