Review of Blair Witch (2016) by Brett H — 01 Oct 2016

Blair Witch is the surprising sequel to the original, Blair Witch Project from 1999 that follows a new character, James, the brother of Heather from the original film, who heads into the same woods to try and find her many years later.

Hidden from the public and originally titled, The Woods to throw off the scent, horror great Adam Wingard directs with passion and obvious love for the original cult film, meanwhile adding his own spin to the proceedings.

Right off the bat, the film will invoke comparisons to the original, and admittedly it does follow some of the same beats, but the added mythology the filmmakers created fleshes out the universe to all-new heights and changes the game for where this franchise can go! Similar to the first, this is a found footage film, the big difference being the updated technology, where this time, each character wears an individual helmet cam which adds believability to why they haven't stopped filming; but it does no favors for the easily nauseous.

The filmmakers did a great job building dread throughout as a true sense of unease and paranoia permeate through the film, culminating in one of the scariest climaxes I've ever seen: I actually got goosebumps! Without spoiling anything, this film gives us more answers to the goings-on in both the original and terrible follow-up, Book of Shadows and I appreciated all of it and it was impossible to get some of these scenes out of my head.

It does have a few missteps: the drone camera has almost no pay-off, a character's mysterious injury ultimately goes nowhere, and the film does follow the blueprint of the first a little too closely at times.

However, this met and surpassed my expectations due to scare-factor alone and I'm hoping to see more in this series. Blair Witch was a surprise that actually delivered the goods and is the most frightened I've ever been watching a horror film in theaters: that should be all you need to hear!