The Blair Witch Project

Synopsis From Back Cover:

The Blair Witch Project follows a trio of filmmakers on what should have been a simple walk in the woods... but quickly becomes an excursion into heart-stopping terror.  As the three become inexplicably lost, morale deteriorates.  Hunger sets in.  Accusations fly.  By night, unseen evil stirs beyond their campfire's light.  By day, chilling ritualistic figures are discovered nearby.  As the end of their journey approaches, they realize that what they are filming now is not a legend... but their own descent into unimaginable horror.

It's not often that I fall in love with a horror movie when it first comes out.  I've never been a big fan of slasher movies, and this move to torture porn, just annoys the hell out of me.  There is nothing scary about those movies, they're just gross.  How anyone over the age of twelve can be scared by those movies, is beyond my thought process.  For that matter, how anyone over the age of ten can even find most of those movies interesting, boggles the mind.   I want a movie that plays with my head, makes my heart race, and keeps me interested the entire time I watching it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that The Blair Witch Project is the perfect scary movie, because it's not.  I can name about ten movies of the top of my head that terrify me more than this one could ever dream of doing.  But, it does what I want a horror movie to do.  It's takes a simple premise, builds a story around it, and allows the imagination to kick in and fill in the gaps.

When it first came out in 1999, I wasn't buying into the fake hype that this was a "real" movie.  I couldn't even tell where that idea was coming from.  I was watching TV interviews with the actors involved, something that would be impossible had they all died in real life.  Despite all the hype, I found the idea intriguing so I finally talked a friend of mine into seeing it with me, and I was it was love at first sight.

To be fair, the theater was not the right venue for this movie.  In a crowded theater, full of idiotic teenager who can't take anything seriously, it's a little distracting.  It's a little hard to focus on the screen, when those same idiotic teenagers are either laughing of screaming.  Even with all the crap going around me, I found my flight or fight response kicking in.  My pulse was racing, my breath was catching, and I found myself jumping a few times.

Where this movie shines though, is watching it on your couch, cuddled up with the lights off, and nobody else around.  This is the kind of movie that really screws with your head when nothing is around to distract you.  The first time I watched this at home, my instincts didn't want me to walk into the basement.  I actually had to force myself to walk down the stairs.  For any of you who have seen the movie, you know why a basement would not be a good thing.  This movie has to have one of the creepiest endings to ever grace the silver screen.  I watched this movie the other night, and that ending still scared the crap out of me.