Review of Blair Witch (2016) by Patrick L — 29 Jan 2017

"I liked this movie better when it was released in 1999. "The Blair Witch Project" was a chilling masterpiece, this new "Blair Witch" on the other hand is just a tired rehash".

Movie Review: Blair Witch.

Date Viewed: September 16 2016.

Directed By Adam Wingard (The Guest and You're Next).

Written By Simon Barrett.

Starring: James Allen McCune, Callie Hernandez, Valorie Curry, Brandon Scott, Corbin Reid and Wes Robinson.

The 1999 horror film "The Blair Witch Project" was not only an effective scary thriller, it was also the first movie to use found footage. This genre-bending technique wasn't used again until ten years later when "Paranormal Activity" was released. It became another critical and commercial hit just "The Blair Witch Project" but "Paranormal Activity" was soon followed by countless other found footage movies including "The Devil Inside", "The Last Exorcism", "Chronicle", "The Visit" and five more "Paranormal Activity" sequels.

The found footage genre was starting to wear off and everybody was getting tired of it but most of these movies were massively profitable because they were made on shoe-string budgets. I should also mention that "Blair Witch Project" was followed by a sequel "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2" but it was lambasted by critics and audiences and it tanked so badly at the box office, hopes for a "Blair Witch 3" were instantly vanished.

17 years after the original, we have a "Blair Witch" movie that's faithful to the "The Blair Witch Project" but the only problem is that it's an exact replica of the original. "Blair Witch" is a massive letdown because the filmmakers didn't try to more creative and inventive to this follow-up and it had a brilliant marketing gimmick. Back in the summer, the movie's secretly original title was "The Woods" and people were speculating what the movie was about. To everybody's surprise, the title was changed to "Blair Witch" and the movie would be an actual follow-up to "The Blair Witch Project" and ignore the events in "Book of Shadows".

This new "Blair Witch" movie is not as good as the original but can we all agree that it's better than "Book of Shadows"? "Blair Witch" centers around James Donahue (James Allen McCune) who's the younger brother of Heather Donahue, the protagonist from the original 1999 film. 20 years after her disappearance, James believes that her sister is still alive and wants to go to the Black Hills Forest in Burkittsville, Maryland to find her. In October of 1994, James' sister was a film student when she and two classmates went to the Black Hills Forest to uncover the legend of the Blair Witch but she and her friends never returned.

James is accompanied by film student Lisa Arlington (Callie Hernandez), Peter Jones (Brandon Scott) and Ashley Bennett (Corbin Reid) as he films his trip to the forest. Listen kids, if a known relative of yours disappeared from his/or her trip to a known dark forest or haunted place 20 years or so ago, it's very likely that he or she might be dead by now and secondly did any of these kids see "Cabin in the Woods" or any other horror movie that has a dark forest or terrifying stuff happening to dumb teenagers because these movies can be survival tips, just saying!

James and his friends meet up with some locals, Talia (Valorie Curry) and Lane (Wes Robinson) and they camp out for the night. The next day they wake up to find strange stick figures hanging from the trees, yep those same stick figures from the original movie and another relatively thing happens in "Blair Witch", the college students argue a lot as they try to find their way out of forest only to find their way back to camp site. The college students also hear noises in the woods but like the dummies they are, they split up only to grabbed by the entity and get killed one-by-one.

Another reason "Blair Witch" is a big disappointment is that it was written by Simon Barrett and directed by Adam Wingard the same filmmaking team who gave us two awesome low-budget thrillers, "You're Next" and "The Guest". I know they were trying to bring the spirit of "The Blair Witch Project" back to life but all were left with is a Xerox copy of "The Blair Witch Project". The characters are stiff and forgettable and Wingard and Barrett added nothing new to the "Blair Witch" series.

There are some good scares here and there but I liked this movie better when it was released in 1999. The first "Blair Witch" was a chilling masterpiece, this new movie on the other hand is just a tired rehash.