Three amateur phukkin filmmakers stumbling around the phukkin woods of Maryland

Rating: 4/10 (26 August 2016)

Released in the summer of 1999 three weeks after the mockumentary "Curse of the Blair Witch" debuted on TV, "The Blair Witch Project" is a found-footage film that covers the last days of three amateur filmmakers who wander around the woods of Maryland bickering and cussing.
I'm not a fan of found-footage films because they're not entertaining by their very nature. Since these types of movies are supposed to be "found footage" they come across as interesting as home movies of family/friends vacations, except that something weird or horrific is taking place. In this case, the three youths are baffled by the evidence of someone (or something) harassing them in the woods, which gets increasingly terrifying. It starts with mysterious piles of rocks and then stick figures; finally someone disappears and they later hear him/her torturously yelling in the distance.
The movie runs 81 minutes and that's just too long for the content. It could've easily been cut in half and would've been more effective for it, but they obviously had to make it "feature length." The Maryland woods and Heather Donahue's curvy butt can only maintain your attention for so long. The mockumentary "Curse of the Blair Witch" was a great set-up for this film and it's entertaining for what it is, but it's only like half as long. Watching three people stumble around the forest in home-movie quality footage cussing at each other is just tedious and unentertaining. For me, it's total dullsville; a snorefest.
A good example of a movie that takes the "Blair Witch" template and makes a vastly more entertaining movie is 2013's "Another Kind," but that's mainly because it's an actual movie and not "found footage."
GRADE: C-