The Blair Witch Project

Whenever night falls, the movie takes off, but in a slow creep, with all your childhood fears of the dark suddenly revealing themselves as absolutely reasonable.

The very crudeness of the film stock and technique contribute mightily to the feeling that things are out of control, disoriented and possibly subject to unnatural laws.

Blair Witch is the most dangerous film in captivity. It's a no-excuses horror show with an emotional wallop like falling headlong into a bear trap.

You can dismiss The Blair Witch Project as a trick. Or you can give in to the treat and savor that rarest of accomplishments in a field notorious for tedium and repetition -- an original horror movie.

The thought that Blair Witch Project just might be real makes it much scarier than any of the teen horror flicks that have stumbled along in recent years.

Easily the scariest horror picture of the '90s, a movie that can take a place among the most potent and inexorable of modern shockers, like Night of the Living Dead or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

It is a triumph of intelligence over special effects, guerrilla filmmaking over Hollywood spectacle.

Feel free to admire it: As a cheeky, clever stunt, it deserves it. Enjoying it fully might be a bit more difficult.

The abrupt, unforgiving way the film ends is still shocking despite all the film's imitators, and it's a strong finish to a film that spends a little too much time wandering.

No doubt part of the reason that the film has affected some viewers so intensely is because it requires them to fill in a lot of blank spaces, to exercise a perceptive muscle which, especially among younger viewers, may have grown flabby from neglect.

Scary without being explicit, it's a 1990s cinematic landmark, and best judged away from the hype.