One of the scariest films ever made, dragged down by its hype.

Rating: Null/10 (13 June 2002)

"The Blair Witch Project" plays like an experimental film and thereby transcends the horror/suspense genre by being so different. Alas it was ruined by the extreme hype it received. Not all reviews were very favorable in the first place, but the overhype was generated from the belief early on in the film's limited release that what we were watching was real footage shot by three people who were actually missing.
It's too bad. Think about all you have heard after its major release. "It wasn't THAT scary" and "I got motion-sickness" were the two most common remarks I heard, next to "It was the stupidest movie I have ever seen." Why? The first remark is in response to the people who saw it early on and believed it to be the scariest film they had ever seen, causing higher expectations. The second comes from people who sat too close, and the third from people who expected a LOT more than psychological trauma as the true subject of a horror film.
Did they want gut-spilling? Explosions? The supernatural depicted through cheesy special effects, as seen in a movie like "The Haunting?" Please. "The Blair Witch Project" was an exercise in realism, using psychological terror (not what you see, but what you don't see) as its weapon, and it IS one of the scariest films ever made. I saw it in the theatre, still believing that what was onscreen was possibly real. Throughout the film, I was afraid and emotionally horrified, and by the end I was curled up on my seat into a ball, shivering and teary-eyed. That's how powerful it was.
Ignore the hype. Of course, by now it has died down, so folks may not even remember what a big deal the movie was at the time of its release. I only wish the sequel was handled differently. While it was spooky at certain points, its lack of realism (and real acting) had nowhere near the impact of the first. Speaking of the acting...the performances of the three stars of this film truly added to us believing it was real, and therefore are worth the price of a rental alone.