Review of Blair Witch (2016) by Ragethorn — 19 Sep 2016

Let's get it out of the way. I love the Blair Witch Project. I will defend the Blair Witch Project until the day I die. A lot of people think, it was the marketing that skyrocketed the movie to success, but I disagree. I thought it was the performances, the simple/basic premise and the way the film was shot to look like a "snuff" film if you will.

Blair Witch (2016) is no snuff film. It's clean. It's MTV. It's Hollywood. It's also hard to believe considering Wingard is directing the movie.

Let's start with the premise. James Donahue, who plays Heather Donahue's little brother from the original BWP, finds a video...on YouTube...who looks NOTHING like his sister...so he thinks it would be a great idea to go back into the woods where she disappeared and find out if she's still really alive.

Let's stop right there. I was immediately taken out of the movie within the first 5 minutes. The girl, looked nothing like Heather Donahue.

The reality is, this is no BWP and it's actually my fault for thinking that experience in my life would be duplicated but this is a bad movie in its own right.

The footage is all clean. The editing makes it look like a rock video. The noises are loud. There's no mystery at all. The scares are somewhat effective if jump scares still get to you. They annoy me, so don't listen to my review if you love jump scares. Instead of soft crackling of twigs, we're treated to the footsteps of a T-Rex.

The characters all made dumb decisions throughout. It had me throwing my arms up in the air.

Nothing supernatural or scary happens and when it does, you can barely see due to how shaky the cam gets, which is worth mentioning is worse than the original.

Adam Wingard & Simon Barrett stated they were huge fans of the original. I'm calling **** I'm going to go as far as saying you can't love the original BWP and like this. This was blasphemy. It was everything the original wasn't.

I will say they added some interesting ideas to the Blair Witch mythology, but I can do without.

I'm sorry my review is all over the place. I'm still pretty disappointed.

The last 10-20 minutes were easily the films most interesting part, as it leads to the finale but too much is shown. There's no mystery. It's outrageous and ridiculous. There's no mystery. The vale has been lifted.