The marketing campaigne for this movie was nothing less than brilliant - Many opening weekend viewers thought they were watching genuine footage of an amateur documentary crew that disappeared. It helped spark legit intrigue that the official website was loaded with police reports and interviews documenting the disappearance of said crew. The crudeness of the footage and the performances also really helped sell the illusion that you were possibly watching the final moments of three human beings.

However, that's about as much praise as I can muster for this flick. IMO, the last 15 minutes are really creepy...... if you watched it in a packed house on opening weekend back in 1999. It has almost zero rewatch value - everything up until the final 15 minutes works like Nyquil - and the intense hype and curiosity that fueled it's incredibly successful release has long flickered and died. The unsuccessful sequel actually holds up better, in my opinion.

It also doesn't help that the concept was lifted wholesale from Cannibal Holocaust - A 1980 Italian produced found footage film (the first of it's kind, I believe) about......wait for it............ a documentary crew that disappeared while filmming the indigenous tribes of the Amazon rainforest. Switch Cannibals with a witch, and you've got The Blair Witch Project; only Cannibal Holocaust still holds up surprisingly well, and will personally always be viewed as the Real McCoy.