The Blair Witch Project

Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, The Blair Witch Project follows three student filmmakers (Heather Donahue’s Heather, Joshua Leonard’s Josh, and Michael C. Williams’ Mike) as they travel into a Maryland forest to shoot a documentary about a local urban legend. Filmmakers Myrick and Sánchez deliver a typically erratic found-footage thriller that ultimately fares best in its opening and closing sections, as the movie, which is certainly never boring, admittedly does suffer from a hit-and-miss midsection that’s focused largely on the protagonists’ less-than-enthralling lost-in-the-woods exploits (ie the relentless squabbling eventually becomes repetitive, to say the least). It’s clear, then, that The Blair Witch Project benefits substantially from the superb efforts of its sympathetic performers and a narrative that’s been suffused with attention-grabbing, distinctly spooky set-pieces, and there’s little doubt, as well, that Myrick and Sánchez do a superb job of initially drawing the viewer into the proceedings with a first act devoted to character development and Blair Witch backstory. The movie is, of course, at its best in its increasingly bleak (and impressively terrifying) climactic stretch, with the now-iconic finale ensuring that the whole thing concludes on as memorable and nightmare-inducing a note as one could possibly have hoped – which consequently does cement The Blair Witch Project‘s place as a strong entry within a notoriously uneven genre.

*** out of ****