Brilliant! Everything the remake of "The Haunting" isn't!

Rating: 8/10 (31 July 1999)

This is a film that demands attention. It is a brilliant new approach to a tired genre that has issued forth from its withered loins such tiresome instances of schlock as the remake of "The Haunting" (the 1963 original was *amazing*, but the 1999 version was a joke) and "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer".
This film isn't perfect, and I only gave it an eight, but if I were to rate it on sheer inventiveness and outright chutzpah, I would give it a *twelve* on a scale from one to ten. While the movie doesn't exactly deliver on all the promises it makes, it delivers on quite a good number of them, yielding a raw, new, harrowing film ... so different from our usual movie-going experiences that it practically starts a whole new genre!
If I had to compare it to other films (and this is hard) I'd have to say that it most resembles "The Evil Dead" in its inventiveness and brutal paranoia, and "Seven" in its gritty "this is real life" feel.
Also worth mentioning is the clever "is it real" mythology that the marketing guys have built around this movie. Go to http://www.blairwitch.com to see "actual interviews" with family members and a chronology of the Blair Witch. Astonishing!
I whole-heartedly recommend this film, flaws and all. Hell, I wish I had made it myself! :)