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Blair Witch Project, The
Artisan Entertainment

Blair Witch Project, The reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 81 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
6.5 out of 10
based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 56 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for language

Starring Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard

On October 21, 1994, Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams hiked into Maryland's Black Hills Forest to shoot a documentary film on a local legend, "The Blair Witch." They were never heard from again. One year later, their footage was found. The Blair Witch Project is their legacy. (Artisan Entertainment)


GENRE(S): Suspense/Thriller  
WRITTEN BY: Daniel Myrick
Eduardo Sánchez
 
DIRECTED BY: Daniel Myrick
Eduardo Sánchez
 
RELEASE DATE: DVD: July 11, 2000 
Video: July 11, 2000 
Theatrical: July 16, 1999 
RUNNING TIME: 80 minutes, BW / Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
Chicago Tribune Marc Caro
Many of us may have thought that with the world offering so much vivid horribleness every day, movies had lost the power to give us a good cathartic scare. It's a shock -- and a pleasure -- to discover we were wrong.
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100
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
At a time when digital techniques can show us almost anything, The Blair Witch Project is a reminder that what really scares us is the stuff we can't see.
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100
Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Ingenious in its simplicity.
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91
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
It breaks so sharply from the practice of contemporary horror film that it requires us to return to the most basic understanding of what it is to be frightened by a movie.
90
Washington Post Lloyd Rose
The Blair Witch Project is terrifying. It's also an exuberant prank of genius.
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90
Variety Todd McCarthy
An intensely imaginative piece of conceptual filmmaking that also delivers the goods as a dread-drenched horror movie.
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90
Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson
It might be the scariest movie ever made.
90
Dallas Observer M. V. Moorhead
Easily the scariest horror picture of the '90s, a movie that can take a place among the most potent and inexorable of modern shockers.
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90
The New York Times Elvis Mitchell
A nifty example of how to make something out of nothing. Nothing but imagination, and a game plan so enterprising it should elevate its creators to pinup status at film schools everywhere.
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90
Film.com Gemma Files
Man, I just can't recommend this enough.
90
TNT RoughCut Christopher Brandon
The what-you-don't-see element makes this an excellent film for people with overactive imaginations, and if that's you, it will scare the living crap out of you.
88
New York Daily News Jami Bernard
The inexplicably terrifying ending is good for a month's worth of nightmares -- no small thing for a movie in such a saturated field.
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88
San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris
Blair Witch forgoes a literal boogeyman in favor of the unseen, which, in this case, is as scarily bone-chilling as anything they could show you.
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88
New York Post Jonathan Foreman
May be the creepiest and most original horror film since John Carpenter's classic "Halloween."
88
ReelViews James Berardinelli
Caused a major stir with Sundance, and for good reason -- it was perhaps the most offbeat, energetic, and eye-opening motion picture to screen there.
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88
USA Today Susan Wloszczyna
The suspense becomes so unbearable that it's easy to overlook questions about whether anyone in such circumstances would continue filming.
80
Salon.com Mary Elizabeth Williams
The most inventive and genuinely frightening horror movie to appear in years.
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80
LA Weekly Ernest Hardy
It's a small film whose power is derived from its stripped-down scale.
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80
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
It's as chilling as Algernon Blackwood's elegantly unnerving "The Willows," played absolutely, unsettlingly straight.
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80
The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
A truly scary horror film, something akin to a lost art these days.
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80
Slate David Edelstein
No part of us is allowed to relax. Ever.
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80
Village Voice J. Hoberman
Paranoid, hysterical, and programmatically subjective, the movie is in every sense a psychological thriller. Although the payoff is ambiguous, the experience remains in the mind. It's an absolutely restrained and truly frightening movie.
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75
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
As a horror picture, Blair Witch may not be much more than a cheeky game, a novelty with the cool, blurry look of an avant-garde artifact. But as a manifestation of multimedia synergy, it's pretty spooky.
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75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
An ultra-cheap movie, ingeniously promoted through the Internet -- is notable primarily as a model of guerrilla-style niche-marketing.
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75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
As amateurish and fumbling as it is in every department, the sum total of the movie is pretty darn scary.
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75
San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann
Certain to nauseate a portion of its audience.
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70
Film.com Ernest Hardy
The great power of the film lies in its simplicity, in the slow-building tension and psychological melt-downs that are the result of stark, bare-bones film-making.
70
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
A pretty impressive horror film.
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70
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Low-tech inventiveness at its best.
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70
Newsweek Jeff Giles
A fairy tale reminding us that childhood fears are deep and tangled as tree roots.
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60
Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
A clever, entertaining stunt, no more, no less.
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50
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The movie would be better as a 30-minute short, though, since its shaky camera work and fuzzy images get monotonous after a while, and there's not much room for character development within the very limited plot.
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50
Film.com Peter Brunette
While it has its scary moments, and while its central conceit is refreshingly imaginative, there's ultimately not much there there.

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 6.5 (out of 10) based on 56 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Matt gave it a10:
This is, by far, the scariest movie ever made. Its like going to a strip club and seeing completely naked women vs. going to the beach and seeing women in bikinis. You get more turned on by the bikinis because you want to know what is underneath and you can form in your mind what you think they would look like naked. That is an analogy my friends. No, I'm not saying I would rather see the Blair Witch in a bikini rather than completely naked, I'm saying the movie does not blatantly show the boogy man, you can only imagine what the witch looks like, you can only imagine how it actually attacks its victims.. and that makes it great raw, unknown fear. Those who hated this movie would rather have things spelled out for them and lack imagination.

Shawn D. gave it a1:
Ok, I came to check out the rating of this movie after finding out that Bio-Dome was the absolute worst rated movie. My jaw hit the floor when i saw the MC score for this. i really expected this movie to have under a "10". The only points i could give to this movie was for originality.

A. Nonymous gave it a10:
Utter genius. Pure utter genius. The most original move in the horror genre. It's only flaw is that it leaves too much to the imagination.

Beak B gave it a10:
Great movie. Those who gave this a bad rating are probably too used to simple movies like Transformers. Know a real movie when you see it.

Andie V. gave it a10:
This movie scared me, even though it doesn't have all that "girl in white dress with long black hair standing in middle of road" effects. I'm a horror freak, i know a scary movie when i see one, and this movie is the one. now,my movie rental money didn't get wasted this time!!

Riren gave it a10:
I watched this movie for the thirteenth time last night, and was still creeped right out. Watching it on DVD in my house, I still felt as though someone might be watching me from down the hall. This is the effect of great atmosphere, and the Blair Witch Project has it. Every financially cheap aspect helps it. It's shot in a real environment, not a sterile set or against a CGI backdrop; its actors improvise their dialogue rather than read from scripts; the lighting is completely natural, and all the sounds are ambient. Instead of a soundtrack, this movie has whatever the microphones picked up in the woods - much scarier than a bunch of licensed music or orchestral tones. By shooting this movie over six straight days and camping in the woods, these college-level actors access real fatigue and real emotion that blows away Hollywood performances because even though their premise is every bit as fictional as a blockbuster, their feelings are real. Minimalism is the name of the game, hiding or only showing a little of any scene - only what was caught on the characters' cameras. Outside of those people who can't stand student film to begin with or can't appreciate something filmed with shaky cameras (something most people get used to in a matter of minutes, and something that is a huge part of modern news reporting), nothing can draw an audience in quite like this movie.

josak gave it a10:
Scariest movie I've ever seen, period. This is one of those love-it-or-hate-it things; your either going to get the piss scared out of you while watching this, or your gonna laugh thru it with your friends, and rant about how stupid the movie was afterwards. But if you actually let yourself go and allow the movie to suck you in, your in for one crazy ride. As Ebert said, this movie is a testament to the fact that what really scares us is the stuff we don't see. It's the suspense that does it, and the extreme realism and believable characters only make it that much more frightening. This is a horror masterpiece.

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