Now here's a movie to get excited about. The Blair Witch Project arrives on Australian shores about six months late, meaning the fuss about it has already been and gone in the States. But that means the local distributors know that they should be able to replicate the enormous success the film had in the US, and have had plenty of time to plan the overkill. Already it seems the backlash has started, with early reviews being predominantly negative.

It's a shame that many of the films' audience will probably make the same mistake as the critics and judge the film against the hype. This is, after all, a small film, made on a low budget. After all the expectations, I fear the simplicity of The Blair Witch Project might get misrepresented as some kind of ripoff, as if elaborate marketing dictates an elaborate (rather than quality) payoff, as with The Phantom Menace. If the film does suffer from this over expectation, it will be shame. Because if you come to this film with an open mind and a willingness to go with it, it's very effective.

The backstory and marketing might be extremely convoluted, but the film itself is based upon a deceptively simple conceit. Three student filmmakers, the story goes, disappeared in the woods while making a film about a local legend. A year later, their cameras are found, and the film itself is supposed to be their footage of what happened.

Despite what some will try to tell you, the film doesn't pretend to be the camper's unedited footage. Clearly some pretty major editing work has gone on in the early part of the film, in particular, to assemble the vox pops sequences the filmmakers shot, and the later sequences are also quite complex in their intercutting between the two sources of footage (the filmmakers shot on both video and film). Yet the fact that the film has had some sophisticated post-production doesn't actually contradict or threaten the key illusion of the film, which is that this is real, genuine footage we are seeing.

The success of the film rests on one simple factor: the filmmakers' ability to sustain this illusion. Convincingly faking documentary/homevideo footage like this is actually very tricky. It requires loose scripting that allows for ad-libbing and overlapping dialogue, without any artificial sounding speeches. It requires genuine performances. The direction and camerawork must be done with great appreciation for the subtleties of what is, in the age of the camcorder, a very familiar type of filmmaking to most people. The triumph of Blair Witch is that the films writer-directors (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez) and cast (Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard all use their real names in the film) so completely convince us this is genuine footage.

It starts out lighthearted, with shopping expeditions, drives around town, and a lot of kidding about. Coincidentally, I had been watching a friend's home videos the day I saw this and I was struck by the similarity of genuine and fake. In particular, the early sequences perfectly capture the way people will play to a camcorder, becoming more smart-arsed and jokey (one of the best kept secrets of the film is how funny it is). Then the camping trip starts, and the tension progressively escalates. There are the kind of conflicts we all know from our own adventures in the great outdoors, but things slowly get creepier and more serious. And the mounting hysteria of the three hikers is all too convincing.

Much of what happens in the second half of the film is embarrassingly lame, and must have looked unlikely to succeed on paper. There is little to the events in the forest beyond creepy noises, and this is probably why the film seems to be polarising its audiences. If you remain detached, the film is laughable. (Oooh: a pile of twigs and stones. We're in trouble now!) Yet for me, the film worked, because the footage is so realistic, and the pressure increased so gradually, that I went with it. These events may seem lame, but they seem lame by movie standards - and because Blair Witch so effectively plays for realism, we can see how unnerving these things would be if they were actually happening to us. The humour and laid-back attitude of the first half of the film are vital to the film's trap, because they make the experience seem genuine and get you to drop your guard. By the end, you're right with them, and share the character's desperation.

The film switches between day and night disconcertingly, and long sequences unfold with the screen completely darkened, forcing us to listen to the sounds of the woods along with the main characters. Even the daytime scenes are unnerving, though, as the cast become increasingly desperate not to spend another night in the woods. There is hardly a foot put wrong by anyone: even the conclusion, I thought, hit the perfect balance between mystery and revelation. The whole film is a fantastic experience and a breath of fresh air. With only a month left to go in 1999, it certainly looks like the film of the year to me.

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For an interesting comparison / contrast, see my comments on Cloverfield.