In a bid to document more on a local Blair witch legend a group of college kids decides to travel to a forest while entering the world of voodoo and witchcraft in the process.
The very crudeness of the film stock and technique contribute mightily to the feeling that things are out of control, disoriented and possibly subject to unnatural laws.
No doubt part of the reason that the film has affected some viewers so intensely is because it requires them to fill in a lot of blank spaces, to exercise a perceptive muscle which, especially among younger viewers, may have grown flabby from neglect.
Easily the scariest horror picture of the '90s, a movie that can take a place among the most potent and inexorable of modern shockers, like Night of the Living Dead or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
The abrupt, unforgiving way the film ends is still shocking despite all the film's imitators, and it's a strong finish to a film that spends a little too much time wandering.
You can dismiss The Blair Witch Project as a trick. Or you can give in to the treat and savor that rarest of accomplishments in a field notorious for tedium and repetition -- an original horror movie.
The thought that Blair Witch Project just might be real makes it much scarier than any of the teen horror flicks that have stumbled along in recent years.
Florida Times-Union
September 29, 2014
Feel free to admire it: As a cheeky, clever stunt, it deserves it. Enjoying it fully might be a bit more difficult.
Whenever night falls, the movie takes off, but in a slow creep, with all your childhood fears of the dark suddenly revealing themselves as absolutely reasonable.
