Review of Blair Witch (2016) by Raphael S — 29 Oct 2016

A good addition to the Blair Witch lore, but lost the sense of realism the original found such success with in the found footage genre.

James, along with a group of his friends go searching for his sister, Heather (from the original Blair Witch Project), in the woods of Maryland after some natives find footage that appears to be Heather's, back from when she was filming her documentary. This was a great extension in terms of clarifying some unknown details in the original, but I felt like these characters were more forgettable and obnoxious. They were assholes when the concept of spiritual unrest was brought up.

In retrospect, not knowing the details of what happened is probably what led many people to believe that the original was very real and not filmed for audience entertainment- that mysterious and unyielding sense of dread. I felt like the original could have been real, but after watching this, with most scares telegraphed or done already, along with the camera's rolling from so many different points of view, the found-footage aspect of it is lost, as is its sense of realism, which is where the horror of this sequel should have came from, rather than from the presence of the monster and its reign of terror in modern CGI.