"The Blair Witch Project" is a great success on every level but one. It's a success for its filmmakers, a group of film students in Florida, who made it for $30,000, saw it triumph at Sundance, and sold it for $1,000,000. It's a success for Sony, which for its investment is about to cross the $100 million barrier in just a few short weeks.

Where it's not a success, unfortunately, is as a movie. "Blair Witch" is a pseudo-documentary -- and there seems to be a mini-boom in them this summer, with "Drop Dead Gorgeous" using that approach -- about three young film/video makers who venture into the woods of western Maryland in October of 1994 to document the legend of a witch who's done some horrible things over the years, supposedly including the disappearances of nine children.

We're never terribly clear about whether they want to interview her, disprove her, or maybe just share a joint with her, but off they go with map and compass and high hopes. Setting aside the fact that there's no place in Maryland more than ten miles from a town or highway, we will suspend our disbelief and stipulate that it's possible to get well and truly lost in the area.

The film tells us in an opening title that the three were never seen again, and that a year later their tape and film footage was found and has been put together into the movie that follows.

So what we see is the trek into the woods and what you might call the getting lost. Which they certainly do. In an agonizingly long 85 minutes of screen time we watch numbingly monotonous footage of feet walking over dead leaves, crossing logs over brooks, sitting down to rest, and nestling into the tent at night.

As we watch, they slowly, ever so slowly, even more slowly, and perhaps with an ultimate slowness, start coming apart. They walk south for a day, then they walk east for another day. Then they find they're back where they first camped, though given those directions that seems unlikely to say the least. Mike (Michael C. Williams) blames Heather (Heather Donahue). Josh (Joshua Leonard) begins losing it.

Then, each morning, like little Hanukkah presents, some odd stone piles appear in front of the tent as they wake up. Pretty soon there are stick figures hanging from branches. After a few days of this, Josh can't take it anymore, and I for one don't blame him. He runs away hysterically, which is probably as good a decision as any, given the group he's stuck with.

And now the filmmakers (writer-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez) ratchet up the tension. Half-heard cries that apparently come from Josh, and maybe even from the children, fill the night. Uh-oh. Is it the witch? Is it Josh? Is it the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock telling them that's not the way to make a scary film?

I promised my colleagues I wouldn't give away the ending, but I can give you this hint: Nothing in the first 84 minutes has anything to do with the final shot. It appears to have been tacked on because someone thought it was scary.