Wonderful -- definitely not "Night of the Living Dead for the Millennium"

Rating: Null/10 (26 July 1999)

No spoilers here, IMO, but read at your peril.
Most of the negative comments about this film seem to come from hard core horror buffs who fail to find it particularly frightening. The problem is that hard core horror fans have been hooked on so much blood, gore and cheap frights that anything that asks them to use their imaginations is going to seem boring.
As someone who is not particularly a horror buff, I thought Blair Witch was brilliant.
I should say that I walked into the theater ignorant of any of the hype surrounding the film. I had seen a preview, and so knew the basic premise, but that was it.
The three principles are more or less completely believable, which is probably due to the fact that their situation in real life was as close as possible to their characters' situation. They really were left to wander in the woods, and they knew only generally what they would find there.
There is nothing profound about the film's content. The 3 film students are typical slacker dumb bells, and they react to their situation with honest fright and little else. There is little time for philosophizing, but you get the feeling that even if there were these three would have little to say.
The brilliance of the film lies completely in its concept: the idea of throwing three actors in the woods and asking them to improvise on their own fear. The result is extremely compelling and convincing. There are little clues here and there that the 3 are acting, but, for the most part, they appear to actually be 3 people lost in the woods being terrorized by a coven of witches!
There is *one* glimpse of blood in the entire film and zero glimpses of the witches (or whatever they may be). The horror is left entirely to the imagination and the oblique ending resists the urge to explain. As the credits rolled, I was really grateful that the film makers hadn't tried to make this a "Night of the Living Dead for the Millennium".
Oh, and one other comment: Some reviewers have complained that it is unbelievable that Heather would keep filming, even when her life was in danger. Actually, that is is not so hard to believe when you consider all of the documentary films that have been done in life-threatening situations during war time. Heather may be a little more professional than you would expect a 20-something film student to be, but she's hardly unique or without example in real life.
J