Suspenseful and scary, but hardly original

Rating: 2/10 (5 August 1999)

For those of you who went to see "The Blair Witch Project" and gasped in both horror and delight at how "original" it was...listen to this.

I saw "Blair Witch", and thought that it was a fine bit of filmmaking. It told it's story well, the performances were adequate, and the film was interesting visually.
However.
This film almost seems to rip it's plot element-for-element from another independent mock-documentary entitled, "The Last Broadcast" released
last year. That story also involved a group of filmmakers who went out into the woods to shoot a documentary and were mysteriously murdered. The film also made liberal use of "documentary" footage taken from video cameras to tell it's story. The problem is that "Last Broadcast" was filmed and released nearly a full year before "Blair Witch". In my opinion, "Blair Witch" is both a blatant rip-off of the same essential plot and construction used for "Last Broadcast", and that irks me.
What irks me more is the fact that so many people have said over and over again just how "original and inventive" this film is. I thought "Blair Witch" was merely adequate. Where "Last Broadcast" was thoughtful and sneaky in it's approach, "Blair Witch" is loud and obvious. I found many of the visuals used in "Blair Witch" to be remarkably similar to those used in "Last Broadcast", to the point where "Blair Witch" almost seems like a sequel or spin-off.
In the end, there will be many copies of "Blair Witch" released by rival studios, trying to cash in on it's success. But in my opinion, the producers of "Blair Witch" cheated. "Last Broadcast" stands as my favorite between these two nearly identical films.