Review of Blair Witch (2016) by Moviemitch96 — 15 Sep 2016

Deciding to market this under a false title (The Woods) and even going so far as to release posters, promos, trailers, etc bearing this title a couple months before revealing it's true identity at the 2016 San Diego Comic Con was a clever move on Lionsgate and director Adam Wingard's part.

It succeeded at getting me, and I'm sure many others, pretty amped up and excited for an unexpected return to the creepy and mysterious Blair Witch mythology many of us came to know and love from the original film.

Seeing also that it would serve as a much more rightful sequel than the dreadfully awful Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 did, needless to say I had very high hopes that this would deliver and bring some long-awaited justice to the original and unnerving nature of the first film.

Unfortunately, this film's secret marketing strategy ultimately proved to be the most exciting aspect of the film, because the actual film itself was truly a disappointment. While not as near as terrible as Book of Shadows, in terms of hype and anticipation, this film failed miserably at living up to either.

It simply took advantage of today's latest and greatest technology (drones, ear-mounted cameras, etc) and stuck disappointingly close to the original's formula. Overall, while there were a handful of tense moments (particularly in the final 20 minutes but even that ended abruptly and disappointingly,) this film simply failed to deliver or successfully build upon the original and its effectiveness, which is kinda sad considering many of us waited 15+ years for an at least halfway decent continuation, but I guess even that proved too difficult to follow through with.