Blair Witch Review

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     Seventeen years ago, amongst the wreckage of terrible 90’s horror movies, a tiny little film called The Blair Witch Project arrived on the scene and proceeded to scare the crap out of everybody. Shot on what appeared to be home video and backed by a marketing campaign that seemed too real to make up, America was convinced that this film about three teens making a documentary was one hundred percent real. Of course, it wasn’t, but this film was so influential that it kicked off the so-called “found footage” era of horror films that gave us such gems like Paranormal Activity and the entirety of Blumhouse Productions’ output. However, after a secretive campaign of its own, Blair Witch is back to reclaim its rightful place as king of found footage, but does it succeed? Let’s find out if this trip to the Black Woods is worth it.

     Set years after the original film, Blair Witch follows a young man named James (James Allen McCune) and his friends, including young documentary filmmaker Lisa (Callie Hernandez), best friend Peter (Brandon Scott) and Peter’s girlfriend Ashley (Corbin Reid), as they enter the Black Hills Woods. This time they are in search of Heather from the original, who is James’ older sister, and are determined to try and find out what happened. After partnering up with some creepy locals (Wes Robinson and Valerie Curry) they begin to notice some strange happenings in the woods, with time distortions, loud sounds, and weird stick figure signs showing up around their campsite. If this sounds familiar to you, then that’s because it is, but I’ll get into that later.

     I’m going to be honest with you guys right up front: I absolutely hate The Blair Witch Project. I thought it was too slow, too boring, the characters were annoying as hell and the payoff to everything was a guy standing in a corner and a camera dropping. I’ve been camping before, guys, and I’ve seen much scarier things than anything in that movie, so I was feeling a bit tepid (and annoyed) that Lionsgate was bringing this franchise back. However, once I saw that the writer-director team of Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett (The Guest, You’re Next) were doing the film, I had a little bit of hope. After all, they’ve done send-ups to horror and thriller movies before and done it very well, so if anyone could pull this off, it'd be them. And I’m sorry to say that my faith in them was a little misplaced, but let’s talk about the positives first. 

     Unlike the characters in The Blair Witch Project, I actually really liked most of the characters in this film as people. Each one, despite some of them being a little obnoxious at points, feels real and genuine and you believe why they’re out in these woods in the first place. I credit that mainly to the performances, with both James and Lisa especially being relatable, strong characters that I immediately attached myself to. I was genuinely concerned for them as the film went on, and by the time the climax hits and (redacted) happens, it gets really intense.

     Before I get into the negatives, I also want to give credit to Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett for actually coming up with some genuinely creepy scenes and introducing some cool new ideas to this series. There are moments where the power of the Witch is in full view and is extremely terrifying, and the scenes in that creepy old shack (you know, the one that screams “Don’t Come In Here”) are tense from beginning to almost end, but I’ll get to that. In terms of new ideas, there are some interesting new angles explored as to how the Blair Witch operates, exactly what this little domain of hers can do and how her magic affects these characters. There’s one blink-and-you-miss-it moment right near the end that ties into the footage found by James that leads him on this mission that I found genuinely cool and exciting, but unfortunately moments like that are few and far between. I do credit them with coming up with these cool additions to the mythology, though. 

     My biggest problem with this film is that it is pretty much a beat for beat remake of The Blair Witch Project except for most of the final fifteen minutes, and that really hampers the tension and the scares. The characters find the same sticks and rock things from the first one, get lost the exact same way as the kids in the first film, hear the same clanging noises, yell each other’s names an indeterminable number of times, and so on and so forth. Sometimes it feels like scenes from the first film are being directly replicated except with a few more people, and given how I feel about that movie it doesn’t really endear me to this one. Sure, the characters might be more numerous and more likeable, but that doesn’t matter when they’re doing the exact same thing as the characters from before. If you know what’s about to happen, it removes any and all suspense, and that’s exactly what happened to me very often during the film. Even the last fifteen minutes, which are scary, has a final resolution almost exactly like the first one to a freaking tee, which just made me throw my hands up and ask why I even bothered walking in there in the first place. 

     You guys have no idea how tired I am of movies that are sequels to old properties doing absolutely nothing new or interesting enough to justify their existence. The Force Awakens had a lot of cool scenes but was basically a rehash of A New Hope, Ghostbusters was just a generic action film that didn’t really establish why it needed to be made, and now we have Blair Witch. It’s not like there wasn’t a set-up for more unique things here. The camera tech here is more varied and cool than in the first, such as an aerial drone (which you know the fate of the moment it appears on screen), but they don’t add anything except for a cheap way to pull a standard “shot reverse shot” that is the most basic shot in cinema, or a few wide scenery shots of the woods. Given that Wingard and Barrett gave us two subversive, fun, and legitimately scary films in The Guest and You’re Next (one of my favorite horror movies), I was extremely let down by this film.

     Finally, I am so freaking tired of jump scares in movies. I know I’ve discussed this before, but jump scares are the laziest tactic in horror today and it’s honestly starting to get on my nerves. There’s no real dread or suspense in a jump scare, it’s just a loud noise that startles the audience for a brief moment as if to check and make sure they’re awake. If I can give The Blair Witch Project some credit, it never relied on a cheap trick like this to get it’s scares across, it used atmosphere and mood to really let the paranoia sink it (if you were buying into it, of course). There are way too many in this film and like the replicant scenes from the first film it pulled me out of the experience each time they happened. Horror directors, just stop. Watch any of the good horror films this year and follow their lead in terms of building scares. This is just getting ridiculous and I think we deserve a little more effort if we’re going to be forking out ten or twenty bucks to see these films. 

     Blair Witch is an improvement on The Blair Witch Project only in that I thought Project was atrocious and this one is merely bad overall. With the talent behind it, as well as the good performances and legitimate scares it did have, I can’t say anything else except that this movie was a total letdown. I know Lionsgate wants this franchise to come back so they can make more money, but they really should’ve thought of something a bit more creative instead of this boring retread. Because the actors held my attention and I thought a few elements were cool/scary, I can’t completely condemn this film, but I’m certainly not going to recommend it either. 

My Rating: 2 stars out of 5 

Blair Witch is in theaters now.

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