Title: The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Directors: Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez
Actors: Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael Williams, a.o.
Runtime: 86 Mins.

At the time it came out I did not watch it, because the hype was too big for me, personally. I tend to not like the movies the big audience likes. So when I heard about BWP I was a little put off by the hype and thought it would be bad. Now I was very much mistaken.

I decided to finally watch it, because I recently watched a lot of documentaries and this one is a fake one. I remember at the time people, websites and reviewers believed this really happened. There were, apparently, fake sites about the 'legend' and about these people really disappearing and everything. It turned out to be one of the biggest promotional stunts in movie history. They used internet and the media to manipulate people in a way they had never manipulated people for a movie before.

This all made me wonder what the power of this movie is. How come people were so easily tricked. So, yesterday I watched it and I can see why people would believe it was real, though there were moments that made me say: "Look at that. That is so clearly fake. How can you believe that." But for the biggest part, it looked like a real documentary.

For those who do not know the story yet: Three film students, 2 boys and a girl, who want to make a documentary about The Blair Witch. They disappear and their footage is found a year later. The movie starts off fairly slowly: They interview a few people about the Blair Witch and then they go into the woods in search of this phenomenon. They show a lot of 'footage' of them hiking and bitching and moaning about a lot of things, mostly about the girl filming everything and driving the guys crazy with it.

Then weird things start to happen. They find weird piles of stones and they hear weird noises in the night. Then one time, they really get attacked by something. What is it? We do not know. That is part of the scariness of the movie. It is not the goriness of the movie, in fact the movie lacks real gore, it what the viewer never gets to see. The Viewer does not know what or who is chasing them, why they are screaming and what is driving them crazy, because, and this is my interpretation, I think the Blair Witch is also driving them mad. There just is some weird force in that forest that has a strange effect on these people.

If you like gory horror movies, this is not a movie for you. Skip it, I think you will find it boring. If you like more psychological horror a la The Ring, this is a good movie for you. I like both, so I loved it. There are some inconsistencies in this movie and things that make you think: why don't they just do this or that"? Just do not pay too much attention to them, shut off your mind and wait for that eerie final scene. You do have to admit it is pretty inventive. I give it 8/10.


P.S. It would have made a fantastic documentary if only it were real...