Review of Blair Witch (2016) by Helloworld2012 — 16 Sep 2016

The movie is the epitome of what's wrong with modern horror movies. The audio is so overproduced. There's a moment where a character looks at another one strangely and there's a loud ADR scream to create a jump scare from nothing. To that point there's tons of other jump scares that use loud audio bangs or screams to create a "scare". This is to the point where one character says, "stop doing that. As if it's some meta, "lulz we scared you", thing. Then the film continues with loud banging jump scares with something not frightening happening on screen as the only source of "horror". It ditches the fake jump scares and gets to the "real" ones. Thankfully the last act avoids jump scares but that does not make it any better as I'll get to it.

The camerawork is another overproduced mess when certain jump scares occur near the end. Things have gotten real so the characters obviously need to run and shake the camera since it's a found footage movie. I have no problem with found footage or shakiness but on top of both they have to add glitches and ghosting to digital footage to amp up the terror I guess (which the effect does not do at all imo while making no sense at the same time).

The movie is practically a remake of the events of the first film except for a modern setting and done in a modern horror style. The main characters have little development and flip flop on what little traits and thoughts they have up until the end of the movie where it gets them killed. Moreover, the last act of the movie is not crazy or "mindblowing". I expected neither going in, and that's what I got, but I'm putting this as a warning since reviews and people are saying otherwise. If you've played or watched a playthrough of P.T., or pretty much any modern horror game, some of the end will be a retread on ideas in those. If you've seen the Descent or any other cave diving horror films, if there are any other than the Cave, then another section will be a retread. The actual end is terrible as well as the characters say what will get them killed and then proceed to do said thing literally seconds later.

The good part of the movie, and the only thing that makes it unique, is how it introduces some neat new time ideas to the Blair Witch mythos in the last half of the film. The time stuff is very cool, and there's a lot of hints and small details to it, but it's such a small nugget to the movie. If just hearing that there's time stuff in the movie interests you should watch the film but don't expect it to blow you away.