Released 1999
Stars Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael Williams
Directed by Eduardo Sanchez, Daniel Myrick

The Blair Witch Project is, in a word, brilliant - and is even more impressive considering that it's the debut effort from filmmakers Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick. Watching this film is a harrowing experience because we accept the characters as completely real and become engaged in their ordeal. In one corner of my mind, I knew this was all fictional, but the verisimilitude is impressive, and results in an experience that is as fascinating as it is involving and creepy.

The Blair Witch Project is presented as a documentary within a documentary. Aspiring director Heather Donahue, a film student at Montgomery College, has decided to chronicle the legend of the supposed "Blair Witch" - a mythical figure that has supposedly haunted Maryland's Black Hills Forest since the late 18th century and is credited for numerous, heinous murders. Accompanying Heather are camera man Joshua Leonard and sound operator Michael Williams. In addition to making a 16 mm black-and-white film, Heather is capturing virtually everything on High 8 video with the intention of assembling a behind-the-scenes look at how her movie, "The Blair Witch Project," was made.

The first images we see are of a group of seemingly normal college students getting ready for a few days in the woods. They mug for the camera, crack jokes, and go food shopping. Next, they proceed to a cemetery where they film the opening scene - a monologue by Heather recounting part of the legend. From there, they travel to the town of Burkittsville to interview several residents about the Blair Witch, including one who claims to have seen the apparition. After that, they enter the forest, tracking the legend. They become lost and are never seen again, but their surviving video and film footage tells of their nerve-wracking and horrifying experiences with the supernatural, and of the tension that grows among them as they blame each other for their predicament.

Summary by James Berardinelli