Ruggero Deodato's Young Nephews??

Rating: Null/10 (9 August 1999)

Good movie, well-written, well-executed. The acting of the three principals was totally convincing and the film very economically established their individual personalities and the relationships between them. In total, the film was 100% believable. So far so good.
Fundamentally, however, it is little more than a sanitized retread of Ruggero Deodato's 1979 exploitation classic 'Cannibal Holocaust'. Deodato's film is gory and dubious as hell. Especially hard to stomach are its scenes of real animal slaughter as its team of beleagured documentarians find food where they can in the dense tropical jungle.
But the plot of Deodato's film develops thus: an expedition into the jungle finds the remains of a group of missing documentary film-makers. The remaining three-quarters of the film consists of their unedited rushes, replete with scratches, lab marks etc. Shots are out-of-focus, without sound or damaged. All these elements are shamelessly plagarised by the makers of 'Blair Witch'.
Likewise, Deodato's actors do all the camera work using two cameras in much the same way as the 'Blair Witch' teens. The use of alternating video and 16mm is 'Blair Witch's single technical innovation.
Blah blah blah, I could go on. The point is that I feel that the 'Blair Witch' boys owe a significant debt of gratitude to Deodato, who was himself no monkey, having worked as Roberto Rosselini's assistant for many years and worked his way up the neo-realist ladder. His career peaked with the brilliant and highly original 'Cannibal Holocaust'.
I am sure the same will finally be said of the makers of the brilliant, highly unoriginal 'Blair Witch Project'.
On the other hand, God bless them for kicking the ass of 'The Haunting'.