Unique but disappointing.

Rating: Null/10 (19 February 2000)

My advice - Be glad it's not true, but don't try to find out details about HOW it was made until you see it, or you could ruin it for yourself.
My initial reaction when I first started hearing about this film was, oh my God, that is some scary sh... stuff! I was genuinely scared to even entertain the possibility that this could have been real. So I went and did some research, as I do with films I am frightened to see, yet pique my interest.
Obviously the official site mentions nowhere that the film is neither fiction nor authentic... so that didn't help... but I happened to come across an urban legends site which put my mind at ease.
As a general rule I am not a fan of horror films, but every once in a while a plot line grabs my attention. Once I found out that there was minimal gore, I decided to take a chance on it. Not knowing it was fiction, and had there been showers of blood and guts, it would have sent me into a sheer anxiety and fear... as horror films tend to do with me, and I would still have avoided it like the plague. (Such is the case with Scream 3 - the story intrigued me but I went to others to spoil it because of the hype, and the gore. I only half watched Scream.)
I would only watch Blair Witch during the day on a small screen with friends. Obviously, being in a theater, you are thrust into it and the experience would have to feel "more real". I knew that the story was fiction and so I could reassure myself that it was "only a movie".

However, knowing details of how the film was made also comforted me, yet made me skeptical.
With that in mind, I must say that, while the concept of the film is unique, as you get to see from the victim's point of view, I was disappointed. Perhaps ONLY knowing that the film was false and that there wasn't any gratuitous violence (or aftermath thereof) would be enough for me to almost enjoy this film.
I understand that it was even reported here that the actors were deceased, for a time. It is amazing, and almost sickening, that a story can be so believable that you can forget to mention that it is merely fiction and people will be terrified into near insanity. Credit must be given to the filmmakers on this genius for believability.
But, of course, carrying on with that would be sick. Just hearing how scared people were makes my stomach turn. Why would a filmmaker decide not to clearly state that it was a work of fiction? Even to put someone through the anguish is enough to haunt me. But I'm not here to place blame on the filmmakers.
With other horror films... even though I KNOW they're not true... they terrorize me with the depiction of graphic violence.
So, while this is a great idea... the admission that it was fiction is both a blessing to those who believed it, and, in a sense, a disappointment to those who thought it would be like The Exorcist, which, though possibly quite embelleshed, very well could, and does, happen.
But maybe you should wait until you see the film before you go and find out exactly how it was made.
Although I guess I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to the beginning because the ending left me puzzled and asking alot of questions. It just left me empty. But that's all I'll say about the ending.