Without big name stars and a mega-mogul studio behind it, The Blair Witch Project must stand on its hype. Unfortunately, not even the movie's questionable "reality" can help keep the audience from dozing in their seats. 

Anyone not living on the Space Station Mir for the last few months knows the story behind Artisan Entertainment's latest horror flick. Three film students intent on unearthing the truth behind the myth of the Blair Witch venture into the woods of Burkittsville, Md. -- and never return. Their video footage, unearthed a year later, documents the horrors the students endured during their nature trek. This footage comprises the film.  

No one can fault the excited beginning of the film students' journey or the movie's mind-riddling, goose bump raising end. Unfortunately, in its need for verisimilitude, The Blair Witch Project lingers far too long on the middle. Never-ending shots of forest foliage bombard the audience, and one shot looks almost exactly like another. Only dialogue and mood differentiate between scenes, and nine times out of ten the flat dialogue does sadly little to further the plot. Nevertheless, if it weren't for the dialogue, the audience could be forgiven for thinking they'd stumbled into a nature documentary rather than a horror film.  

In short, the filmmakers took the idea of starting small and building a bit too far. 

Lost in the mind numbing moments of "Adventures in Wildlife" is the complex unraveling of three people as their isolation and desperation tear down the thin walls of sanity and reason. Heather, Josh, and Mike (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams, respectively) go from sharing campfire roasted Vienna sausages and discussing the orgy possibilities of the Gilligan's Island crew to cowering and crying in their tent.  

It's like watching one of those laboratory experiments with rats. As the walls of hopelessness close in, the three little rats start gnawing at each other, turning on each other. But weaving this devolution through sleep-inducing forays into nature photography lessens its impact and, on occasion, renders the characters' destruction almost invisible.  

At one point in the film, after the situation dissolves into anarchy and the three campers realize they are totally screwed, Josh turns the camera on Heather and asks, "Are you going to write us a happy ending?" The audience doesn't need a happy ending for The Blair Witch Project. But they would be most grateful if they could stay awake to see any ending at all. 

Diana L. Marsh

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