What is the film that you love, but everyone you know hates?

[curl-6]

The Blair Witch Project.

My friends can't seem to cope with its slow pace, handheld camerawork, and lack of solid explanations.

In my view, it's a masterpiece. Instead of relying on cheap scares, it uses the viewer's own imagination against them, playing on fundamental fears, (the dark, the unknown, the supernatural) and making us fill the gaps with our own personal terrors. It's also a study in how the human psyche breaks down under constant pressure. One of the characters vents his panic early on, gets it out of his system, then is the calmest later on. Another tries to be a peacemaker early on, but wears himself out trying to pacify the others. The blame game splits along gender lines, with the two men blaming their female companion.

The acting and camerawork are so realistic and convincing that it fooled many people on its release that it was real found footage, and the lack of explanations once again leads the audience to come to their own conclusions, with just enough frightening evidence to ensure these conclusions are chilling. The ending is the perfect example of this.

There's a lot more to the film than meets the eye as well. It may seem like it was just made by amateurs, but this isn't the case. Subtle touches abound; colour grading and sound mixing make the woods get gradually bleaker and quieter as the film progresses, enhancing the sense of looming dread. Stick effigies and bloody handprints on the walls of a dilapidated house don't look cheap and fake, but chillingly authentic.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a classic, but almost nobody I know who has seen it agrees.