If running around in the woods for an hour and a half is scary to you, you’re scared pretty easily. The Blair Witch Project, the movie that started the found-footage horror genre, may be inventive, but there’s something that’s inherently not frightening about a pile of rocks sitting in the woods. While movies like Paranormal Activity were able to bend the audience’s perception of reality enough to be truly frightening, it’s very difficult to watch The Blair Witch Project and shake the feeling that it’s just a movie about three idiots with a $400 camera who went camping. And yes... it’s as bad as it sounds.
Starring three nameless actors, The Blair Witch Project is the film that supposedly revolutionized the horror genre with low-budget effects and a documentary format. I have a lot of respect for movies that start trends, but the thing is, the trend that this movie started sucks. Found-footage has been done to the death, and nowadays films of its ilk have enormous budgets and insane special effects, making it impossible for this generic original to compete. I admire it for not resorting to jump scares, and attempting to keep up the suspense consistently for 90 minutes, but the result isn’t scary-- it’s terribly boring.
Not much can be said about a movie like this, because there isn’t much to it. It’s just an overload of shaky cam, bad dialogue, and classic horror movie decision-making. “Hey, I have a map. Let’s throw it in the river! What a hilarious prank!” People don’t act like this in real life, so why should they in movies? I don’t ask that all movies directly parallel reality, but people should still act like people, and they should still make decisions based on logic and rationale. And sorry if I can’t imagine a situation where this happens, but I don’t see someone charging out into the woods, dragging along a couple of unqualified morons, to film a documentary on something as nonsensical as the “Blair Witch.”
I watched this movie at 10:00 at night, in the quiet of my room, and I wasn’t remotely frightened by a moment of it. If you’re willing to allow yourself to be immersed in the ludicrous world the movie creates, then I’m sure you’ll be scared. But for the viewers who actually have taste, and don’t find close-up shots of someone’s runny nose to be scary, this is not a good movie by any standard. The most frightening moment comes when the characters stumble across a grouping of human-shaped effigies hanging from the trees. But even here, I couldn’t shake this lingering thought in the back of my mind: “Wow, the budget on this movie must have been ten bucks.” Not to say that good movies require big budgets-- far from it. But to have a certain level of quality, a certain amount of money must be invested in the final product. And here, it felt like they grabbed three people off the street and said “Do you want to be in a movie?” Then they got some interns to set up rocks in little piles, and WHAMMO! A horror classic!
No effort was put into this movie, so I’m not going to put any more into my review. Final Score for The Blair Bitch Project: 2/10 stars (official anus-of-cinema seal of approval)! The acting is bad, the characters are dumb, and there’s not one moment where you are emotionally invested in the movie whatsoever. The iconic line in this movie, “I’m so scared,” is monumentally misguided. Sure, you’re scared! Show us instead of tell us! Anyway, this movie isn’t watchable even as a timewaster. If you want to get the same effect, take a cheap camera from Best Buy, then flush it down the toilet. After a week, go down to the sewers, recover its memory chip, and watch the video it took. It’ll probably be better than this piece of shit.
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