Vastly Over-rated

Rating: 1/10 (17 October 2000)

I've loved horror films ever since I was a little boy. I adored anything which starred Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney or Lon Chaney Jr., or any of the other horror greats from my childhood. I later loved Dark Shadows, Night Gallery, and Alfred Hitchcock. I've never enjoyed "splatter" films, although I consider the first Halloween to be a minor masterpiece.
However, I've seen only two films in my lifetime which actually scared me, and those were The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., and the Seven Faces of Dr. Lao. I don't know why they frightened my little-boy self, but they did.
Blair Witch was so unhorrifying that I thought at first that those who expressed fright were pulling my leg. I didn't need to be told that it was a fake; apart from the fact that the F.B.I. would have confiscated the film, and the murders would have been famous, the public outcry of a filmed murder would have been as enormous as if a snuff film had been released. That, and the fact that there are no witches, and never have been (the claims of wiccans and neo-pagans aside), totally devalues the film.
Remember that Dracula and Frankenstein were fictions that were presented as such, so the standards of judging them are different.
Okay, I'll confess that I found Jaws equally boring. No, I'm not jaded, but Blair Witch never once induced the willing suspension of disbelief necessary for a horror film (or any other) to work.
All in all, the biggest cinematic let-down I have ever experienced.