Quite an innovative film (for those with an imagination)

Rating: Null/10 (30 March 2001)

Here's why so many people bashed this movie, claiming that it was boring, stupid, and bad.
These people either have absolutely no imagination or have it and are just afraid to use it because *gasp* they might sound a little unique.
I am not going to say that `The Blair Witch Project' was a brilliant film with impeccable actors and genius film makers because its not, but I'll you what it is: Its quite possibly the most artistically creative film of 1999. So many people reacted to this film claiming it was `unscary' and `boring' that it just makes me sad. Sad when I think about how shallow most of today's society is. The fact that many claimed that why they didn't like the film is because it never showed anything, only sounds in the dark, shows that most movie-goers just want to sit in movie theaters with empty minds, not thinking, not wanting to think, with the last thing on their `To Do' lists is to use their imagination. Then they look upon the movie as retarded, even though, for the past two hours, they looked like insipid vegetables.
Another complaint that many people use is that the actors used to many profane words and the amount of the bonafide `f**k' is used quite excessively. Now what moviegoers have to do is put themselves in the shoes of the three kids. In the words of Joshua Leonard.... `You're lost, you're angry in the woods, and no one is here to help you. There's a witch and she keeps leaving s*** outside your door. There's no one here to help you!' I found that this one quote pretty much summed it all up, exposing why the three of them begin to `lose' it.
It is unsettling when a small, $35,000, independent film like this can be nearly 20 (in fact, more like 30) times as scary as something like 1998's `Urban Legends,' which cost nearly forty times as much to make. I will safely say with much confidence that really the main reason that so many people didn't like this movie was because of the hype. Independent films have a long tradition of being self-reliant (in other words, independent) and avoid all of the mainstream hype. That was the one factor that kept it from being a genuine independent film. Nonetheless, it is nothing short of being extraordinarily innovative and one of the top ten scariest films of the nineties. 8/10
One side note: The sequel, `Book Of Shadows,' stands against everything that the first one stood for. I do not suggest it.