In my pursuit to keep the Halloween spirit alive during a truly unpredictable time, I have been consuming all the scary content I can. You may have noticed my attempts to read as many horror books my stressed out college student hands and eyes could get a hold of in brief moments of calm, but I have also been watching my share of horror films too. My latest endeavor was “The Blair Witch Project,” a classic I hadn’t seen before. If there was any time for me to watch it, it was now. And let me tell you…I could have done without it. There are minor spoilers ahead, but they’re nothing special. None of the film was anything special.

So sorry if you’re a cult classic follower or absolutely love the film. It does have its merits! Just a miniscule amount of them. I kept holding out with each minute, waiting and waiting for something to happen. Nothing ever really did. There was some fake blood and a man standing in an abandoned house. There were scenes five minutes too long consisting of characters just wailing in the woods, and a deeply underdeveloped horror aspect to the film that’s supposed to be associated with scary Halloween films. 

And yes, I know, it was 1999 and things are just naturally more graphic nowadays. But it’s not like it was the 80s where a child dummy was thrown down the stairs like “Pet Sematary”. I think it’s okay for me to have expected more. Maybe the entire part of “Blair Witch Project” was to make it not so exciting, to make us look in the dark corners of the video feed in expectation to find a creepy dark figure, but I still feel like I can get the same feeling when watching a film like “Hereditary,” and get a better payoff. I would even go as far to say that “Hereditary,” is what “Blair Witch Project” wanted to be…creepy, disorienting, turning the familiar unfamiliar. 

The one shining quality of the film is the way it was shot. Being a documentary of sorts and being filmed completely on handheld cameras that characters used is brilliant. It really kickstarted and inspired all the future “found footage” horror films we’ve gotten and for that I have to give it props. If you want to see the effects this shooting style has had, take a look at “The Taking of Deborah Logan” for example, which is infinitely creepier. It’s an effective and interesting way to shoot a movie, and does have the potential to make a horror film all the more terrifying. Despite this, we don’t see anything gory that scared our characters except what I think was a tongue. This style makes everything very dark and difficult to see, and this combined with the lack of scary things shown on screen made this film seem like something was simply missing.

I walked away from “The Blair Witch Project” with the feeling that I wasted two hours of my life. The good stuff doesn’t come until the last twenty minutes of the film, and even then it let me down. If the rest of the film was engaging, it may have redeemed itself, but the plot only follows town legend and three young folks screaming at each other for way too long in the woods. If I want to watch a scene of someone shouting about a map I would rather just watch an episode of “Dora the Explorer” with my cousin. 

I would only suggest watching this film if you don’t really like horror. It’s a good in-between with overall Halloween vibes and fright. You’ll be fine watching this if you hate scary films. But if you’re like me who actively watches horror films throughout the year and don’t mind them, feel free to cross it off your list. Watch Eggers’ “The Witch” or Aster’s “Hereditary” instead. 

Rating: 4 rock piles out of ten.