Review of Blair Witch (2016) by Dirigiblepulp — 07 Dec 2016

The only reason this movie had any glimmer of hope was that of director Adam Wingard, who after You're Next and The Guest could do no wrong, at least within the genre community. This was an interesting choice for him to break mainstream and on paper probably made sense. However, the combination of this film NOT actually fitting Wingard's talents and the general feeling that Blair Witch is an un-sequelizable film fed its own demise. The proverbial lightning in a bottle, as it were, cryptically out of reach.

What the movie really suffers from, is a lack of ingenuity and uniqueness. Not just within the confined realm of the opaque "Blair Witch" mythology (if anything, it should have resisted that ghoulish urge) but also within the dried-out decrepit husk of the found-footage film.

Wingard doesn't try to bring anything new to tried and true conventions (or wasn't allowed, but who knows), so much as apply a little muster on top of it to hope it works one last time. It mostly doesn't. Half the scares are tediously obvious, the other half mostly unknowable sudden explosions of noise or movement (the "jump" scare, a term used too loosely to signify any attempt at fraying the audience's nerves. There's a right way to do it, and sparingly, ask Johhny C).

The little bits of mythology (those wooden figures, standing in the corner, etc) are overused, though thankfully not expanded upon. There's a hint at something new in the form of a cut on the bottom of one woman's foot, but this winds up not amounting to much, at least in terms of pay-off, tension or surprise.

The ending actually contains some myriad degrees of tension, truly earned and the result of well-shot and constructed scenes. But again, there's no payoff. They don't mean much, especially the blistering ending which seems to be leading to a great movie-style haunted house freak-out traverse before suddenly cutting to black by way of a baffling character decision.

Maybe Wingard isn't meant to be a straight-forward terror machine, he prefers his comedy and his genre machinations. He also prefers well-thought out soundtracks (and at least in The Guest, some elaborate set decoration and lighting). This isn't the first time a horror director has faltered trying to re-establish a dormant franchise, or by sticking their hand in the found-footage garbage disposal.