Heather Donahue

It is really hard to convey just how friggin' scary this movie is without being able to scream, "Ahhhhhh!!!" in your ear through a toilet-paper tube. Having seen it in a packed theater, the fear within the audience was palpable and if not for the fact that I wear a colostomy bag, I would've crapped in my pants on several occasions. Simply put, The Blair Witch Project is amazingly original, well crafted and down right spookifying.

What exactly makes The Blair Witch Project so terrifying?

1. The amazing actors (Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard) were so natural in their roles and reacted so authentically to every bizarre mind game they were subjected to, you cannot help but believe in their performances. This is due, in no small part, to the unusual way in which the movie was filmed.

The actors (much like their characters) were literally stuck in the middle of the woods for days on end, left rations and vague notes every morning about where to walk and camp and instructed only to film everything that happened. Then, at night, the filmmakers and crew would visit the actor's camp while they were asleep and do everything possible to freak 'em the hell out. Since they knew little about what would happen and nearly everything that they did was as much a surprise to them as it was to the audience, the actors delivered some of the most terrifying performances ever filmed, because they were actually scared themselves. Now that's what I call method acting.

2. The film's hand-held, video style plays off the simple fact that people really do believe anything they see if it is on tape. In this day and age of reality-based television, like Cops, The Real World and America’s Funniest Videos (not to mention its more dangerous Telemundo counterpart, Camera Inflagrante), we the viewers consistently surrender doubt to the almighty power of the captured image. Point blank, this movie wouldn't be half as scary if it were shot on film. The stagy, cinematic look would have killed the gritty reality that video lends to it.

3. The writers/directors (Eduardo Sanchez and Dan Myrick), without ever even providing a physical witch onscreen, have created a film filled with more genuine horror than all the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies put together. With simple pacing, sound effects and the fact that the most frightening thing in the whole world is your own imagination, they capture that same spine-tingling feeling you got sitting around a campfire, listening to ghost stories. Even though you knew that the tale of the phantom hitchhiker, or the one about the guy with a hook for a hand hiding in the back seat of the car, wasn't real, there was still that little pang of doubt in the back of your mind that could scare you witless if you let it. And boy do these guys let it, and how!

It is quite possibly the scariest movie I've seen since I stayed up late to watch The Exorcist on TV as a young'en and then refused to go to bed without a night light or my two pairs of Superman Underoos on for a month afterwards. It is even scarier than the time my dad took me to see Raiders of the Lost Ass in Times Square when I was 12 to teach me about sex. Images from those movies (a demonic Linda Blair covered in green vomit; seeing my first 250 lb. porn actor make love to three women) are forever tattooed on my mind and The Blair Witch Project has now joined their ranks.

The scariness of the movie, however, is a good, exhilarating kind of scary. The kind that gives you a funny feeling in the pit of your stomach, like riding a roller coaster, or the first time you asked someone out on a date. Speaking of which, The Blair Witch Project has got to be one of the best date movies ever. Forget about Runaway Bride, what better way to get to know your intended than to help them piece together their shattered sense of reality after their psyche has been reduced to a boiling puddle on the sticky floor? The Blair Witch Project just screams out, "Girls, hang onto your boyfriends!" or "Same-sex lovers, hang onto your same-sex lovers!" but most of all, it is unlike any movie you have ever seen in your entire life.