Review of Blair Witch (2016) by Jim T — 29 Sep 2016

A film to make you nostalgic for the good old days - when "it's basically just the same story as the first one" was a criticism rather than business as usual. It's vaguely interesting to see the found-footage genre come back to its genesis when camera technology has come so far, but the progress mostly seems to consist of dishonesty to concept and outright cheating; giving everyone go-pro style cameras means long sequences end up in traditional shot/reverse-shot patterns (albeit with bad lighting and no tripod) supplemented by any camera that falls over conveniently landing lens-forward towards the action and a sound mix that isn't even trying to sound homemade.

Beefing up the core cast at the start does mean it has more places to go than the first one, and it conversely deserves credit for realising that you don't need to follow the traditional pick-em-off pattern in too much detail when you state upfront that everyone dies.

But at the end, borrowing heavily from the ill-advised second instalment rather than the first, it just shows that when your whole concept is uncertainty and unknowability, any answer you come up with is going to be unsatisfying.

It occasionally brings the chills, but you really have to work at switching your brain off.