Why BWP's unconventional approach makes it a winner

Rating: Null/10 (3 August 1999)

I was out of the country throughout June and July, and subsequently missed out on the advertising and hype for "The Blair Witch Project." After being extremely disappointed by "The Haunting," I caved in to the word-of-mouth about BWP and decided to give it a try.
I went into the theater not having seen the Sci-Fi channel documentary, not having seen a commercial, and not having been to the BWP website. I knew _nothing_ except that the story involved three college kids who go out to make a documentary about a witch.
I am _never_ scared by horror movies. I nearly slept through Scream, and Friday the 13th movies don't do much for me either.
Blair Witch had me sleeping with the light on.
Why? Because you could _believe_ that the events on the amateur video were real. They _could_ happen. To you. The power of this movie lies in it's ability to make you _believe_ that something is after these kids. And this isn't Jennifer Love Hewitt or Courtney Cox being chased around, this is Heather, plain Heather, who cries into the camera and has a visibly runny nose and we can see how scared she is. She's real. She really looks cold and scared, and it's details like the runny nose that do it. As the days of the expedition pass by and the group gets more and more on each others nerves, the infighting, the stress, the blame, the spooked nerves, all of the dialogue and actions are things that you or someone you know would have done in the forest.
I love Star Wars. I love digital sound. I love special effects. But this movie neither needed nor used any of them. It didn't have music. It didn't have the distracting, ill-used eye-candy visual effects if "The Haunting." This has the believable camera shakiness of somebody who knows there's something out there. They're shooting this on amateur video. It looks clunky. It looks cheap. This doesn't have the fine look of film, that refined look we're used to. This is gritty, seemingly real-world footage.
Then there's the sounds at night that we've all heard outside the tent. And the possibility that there's a witch behind them. It's in the possibility, the ambiguity, that "Blair Witch" is masterfully done.
That, and the last two minutes of the film, which I want a freeze frame for very badly. The last camera shot is one I'll not be forgetting for a long time.
Those who've not seen BWP, read no further.
Was there really a witch? Obviously there was a murderer, but was there truly effective use of witchcraft? Was it a spell that caused Mike to kick the map in the water, or did he really think it was that useless? Was it sorcery that made them come back to the same point in the river, or did they do as most humans do when walking without landmarks and walk in a huge circle? Was the slime on Josh's gear supernatural? Was that Josh's voice calling them to the house, or was it the The Murderous Old Man?

We just don't know. At least, I don't, not until I see it again. And that's what makes this movie great. In real life, you really don't know if witchcraft is real- deep down inside, when we go camping at night we're slightly spooked by the snapping twigs or rustling leaves outside. And after having seen suspended effigies, ritual rock piles, and hands beating on the tent, we're all a little more willing to believe the unbelievable.

It's this belief in the unbelievable that "Blair Witch" begins by poking fun at and slowly begins to nurture until, abruptly, it ends without giving an answer.