Blair Witch Project is definitely a great horror film

Rating: 9/10 (8 March 2005)

I watched this film with my girlfriend, on video at home, long after it had come out. We were stunned by the end of the movie, and felt creeping dread in our apartment. We had trouble turning off the lights and sleeping comfortably. The premise of the movie is good enough, an easygoing group of college students investigating local lore, and finding themselves spun into a web of horror in what should be perfectly normal conditions, having fun, shooting an amateur documentary in the outdoors. It's strangely disconcerting that the"witch" in the movie is never quite seen or explained, and overlaps with a murderer in the small town from many years ago. We aren't completely sure about the source of the psychological terrorism inflicted on the students in the woods. It is at once creepily unreal, witch-like, metaphysical, while also realistic, with links to a psychotic murderer from long ago. The imagery in the movie is justly famous. It begins with a simple pile or rocks, nothing more, but oh so suggestive. The vaguely heard children's laughter and cries as the students' tent is molested is an excellent use of sound in the film. The wooden icons they encounter hanging from the trees as the pressure mounts on them will make your spine tingle. The children's hand prints in the horror-classic dilapidated house in the climax are frightening. I've heard viewers complain that the students confusion and the fact that they find themselves going in circles as they try to find their way out of the woods is unbelievable. I disagree. That type of confusion and inability to find your way out of a terrifying maelstrom is exactly what a "witch" would inflict on its victims, exactly what can happen during psychological terror and trauma--like being unable to escape from a terrifying dream. The end of this movie, the heated terror as the surviving students chase a chimera (their captured friend's terrified screams), and their entrapment in the basement (referring back to the tale of the town murderer, told earlier in the film), the final, bleak music after the camera falls, is chilling to the bone. Justly praised. I am pretty sure that true horror aficionados all love this film. I did.