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Months before The Blair Witch Project debuted theatrically, its want-see had been accelerated because of early-word proclamations of "Scary as Hell!" and the like. And when it finally hit mainstream screens, it scored big at the box office but left a decidedly-mixed bag of judgments. Add to that the fact that Artisan Entertainment's promotional campaign (which suggested that the film was based on true occurrences) garnered a host of cynical backlash. Horror fans don't like to be deceived, just frightened. And did the actual movie The Blair Witch Project do that? Well, yes and no. There are three main characters to this picture: Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard and Michael Williams. They are played by the following three performers, respectively: Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard, and Michael Williams. In other words, the players were assigned their real names as the characters. This was to further the notion that they were real people on a real project. None of them survive; that's not a spoiler, just an ascertainment that needs to be established before the story goes any further. The entire film is presented as pieces of documentary footage, all in choppy succession. The first portion has them interviewing locals near the Maryland woods that are supposedly haunted. Then drive to a remote area and park their car, entering the haunted woods and are never heard from again, except in this documentary footage.
The real horror of The Blair Witch Project is in watching the three principles' personal sanities disintegrate as they leave the world of the rational and enter into the outlands of the irrational. What starts out as a cheery, beer-and-Scotch-soaked excursion into a local fable ends up as a frayed and emotionally-charged nightmare in the woods, with all of the panic, quiet moments and unadulterated cussing that you could expect. Characters turn on one another, making amends later when it's too late to realize that it won't save them. The film is deliberately vague on what exactly this Blair Witch is, or how it's terrorizing Heather, Josh and Mike. But once the unanswered conclusion finally happens, the viewer is almost ready to accept violent death as a release for the tormented characters here. I said almost.
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