The Blair Witch Project

Three young filmmakers go out into the woods to film a documentary about the legend of the Blair Witch. They are lost and never heard from again, until someone finds all of their videotape footage. This film is a compilation of their footage from the woods.

This film simply did not “do it” for me. I thought it was an original idea with an extremely authentic look and acting from its main characters, but God help if I didn’t really find it all that interesting, scary or even entertaining. The last fifteen minutes of this film get a little creepy, and certainly leaves for an impression, but unfortunately, you have to sit through an hour and more of watching these three kids walking, talking shite, getting creeped out here and there, and whispering in the dark. I am assuming that all of this activity absorbed others into the characters and their plight, but I just thought it was pretty boring. It was like watching a camping trip video of some friends that I could care less about. I felt little tension, little suspense and absolutely no scares whatsoever. This is definitely NOT a scary movie.

If there was ever a film to which you could stick the motto “Don’t believe the hype”, it would be this one. And I’m not saying that the film is garbage either. It’s like I said, I thought the style and premise were interesting, the actors believable and solid in their roles, with funny moments here and there, but overall, the film just didn’t do much for me. It got a little spooky near the end, and certainly tied itself nicely to a story told at the beginning of the film by a town person, but don’t go into this film thinking that you are going to get your pants scared off of you, cause that’s not its primary intention. In fact, if you have a problem watching a camera jittering about for an hour and a half, you may just get nauseous watching the film stock shot here.

Did Mrs. JoBlo like it? Nope. I even caught her staring at the ceiling of the theatre every now and then. All in all, you obviously needn’t take my word for it, since there are many huge fans of the film surfing the Web as we speak, but in my humble little opinion, the movie did not make any special impression upon me, and certainly did not entertain my sorry ass for its duration. And I think that is ultimately the main criteria of any film– was it entertaining? In this case…no. See it on video, if interested.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian