Video: The Blair Witch Project

Herald rating: * * * *

Running time: 88 mins

In stores: Today

Reviewer: Ewan McDonald


Few films play better on video than the big screen - they're just not made that way. This one does - it was. For those whose short-term memory doesn't go back to just before Christmas and the hype, The Blair Witch Project is presented as a documentary. Opening titles suggest that in 1994 three film-makers went into a wood to search for a legendary witch. The trio - Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard and Mike Williams (the actors use their real names) - took cameras, sound gear and backpacks, and were prepared for two or three nights of sleeping in tents. "A year later their footage was found ... " Their film reveals that they spoke to locals, many of whom had vaguely heard of the witch and other legends; that children have been killed in the woods, that bodies have disappeared, that strange things happened at Coffin Rock. Once they got into the woods, things turned bad. Fear and desperation became panic. What was out there? A great horror thriller, so much more because it doesn't rely on any special effects other than the power of suggestion and the human imagination.