Review of Blair Witch (2016) by Veronica P — 03 Apr 2018

The Blair Witch sequel arrives trying to renew the most dreadful thing in the horror movie industry: shaky cam/ found footage.

The Blair Witch project was one in a million, it'll go down in film history as a rule breaking, unprecedented movie. It was a producer's dream, making 4142 times its tiny production budget! It had one of the most effective marketing campaigns in history, convincing people that what they'd see was real and introduced a fresh technique in the horror genre (fresh only to mainstream audiences, shaky cam and found footage were both used way before and sometimes better). The original film works because of the mystification of the movie itself, because of how innovative it feels but specially because it played with one of horror's most prominent yet ignored rules: what you don't see is way worse than what you do. It fluently plays with what's off screen, with what's lurking behind the bushes just to keep you constantly unhinged. This is backed up with some moments in which the filmmakers use POVs to increase your immersion and feel like you're the character you're fearing for. But what I liked the most about the first film is how long it takes to build tension, it's such a slow burner that pays off in its final act. This new film has a bad trailer, frankly weak actors and just isn't.. new. I have seen the camp, I easily predict the twist, I've been to the third-act house and I've seen all the sequences. Everything you've shown me, I've seen before. Yet, I can't lie that it gets fairly scary in the later third but it would have been way more effective if they took the time to properly build tension in the beginning. It's simple, if you do an exact copy of the films that came before, you'll achieve to some extent, their original purpose but that doesn't mean we should encourage this practice...