Almost a decade and a half after it was first released, barely anybody seems to recall The Blair Witch Project with any degree of fondness, quick to write it off as "not scary" and "boring." Time has not been kind to this seminal horror flick, then, though that is not to say that it's dated an inch - the set-up - a bunch of kids go into the woods to make a movie about a local legend, the Blair Witch - is simple, and did not rely on anything other than the raw performances of its underrated actors and its unique method of filming (that's handheld camera) to capture people's imaginations. As soon as other began to copy its style, though, keen to cash in on the gimmick and the low cost of making a movie using such methods, people's memories of The Blair Witch began to sour. What's odd about this particular backlash is that haters seem to wear their "Blair Witch is terrible" hats with a fair degree of pride - here is a movie that it really did become "cool" to hate, as if going up against the critics who had had sited it as of the most terrifying pictures of all time was an achievement. Backlash aside, then, The Blair Witch is bold, revelatory and important. And it is scary.
