justifies all the attention it received upon it's release

Rating: 7/10 (1 November 2007)

This was one of the scarier horror films I've seen and for that alone I can call it a great film. Having seen it many years after it was made, I missed all the hype surrounding The Blair Witch Project upon it's initial release. I had heard many different opinions from different people; it seemed like a 50/50 divide between who liked it and who didn't. That probably levelled my expectations as I simply didn't know what to expect. But I really enjoyed it and some parts of the film were the 'heart-pounding-hard-in-your-chest' moments you expect from all horror films, except that they were amplified by a heightened sense of reality with the documentary-style filming. This is ultimately what the film relies on for it's horror of course; it draws you very close to the hearts and minds of the characters involved and you genuinely feel scared for them. So many horror films simply have characters 'made for dying', that you don't really care about and are just included to eventually become victims.
I am a fan of the low-budget, low-gore style it employs, simply because it still scares you regardless. There are some flaws in the editing style needed to be employed to make it realistic (ie. times when it is unrealistic for them to have their camera switched on, but would be very scary to watch for the audience) and I did feel the film came to a quite abrupt end. But it is also very necessary to applaud the actors, who are part of the reason the film is so believable. Overall, you can't fault the way in which this film helped reinvigorate the horror genre. With the number of mindless slasher films reaching stupid levels in the mid-90s - Friday 13th Part 9 was released in 1993 and A Nightmare On Elm Street 7 in 1994... - I can still feel today, even watching it 8 years later, how important this film was.