Review of Blair Witch (2016) by Joseph D — 15 Sep 2016

I remember when The Blair Witch Project first lit the fledgling internet up like a Roman candle. I remember when Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 fizzled like a dying match. Now we return to those haunted(?) backwoods; will it be as memorable as before? Let's find out, this is BLAIR WITCH (2016)! PS, they're not counting BW2...thankfully.

To put it bluntly, it's a carbon copy of the original.....at first. The film's saving grace was the fact that there was a not too small chunk of new stuff, like the fact that everyone had GPS devices, & they'd brought an air camera drone; they even managed to deepen the Blair Witch mythos a bit, while still not answering every question.

The characters embodied pretty much every slasher movie cliché, except they weren't all sex maniacs. And while none of them were really that likable, toward the end, I did find myself starting to root for them, despite knowing they were DOA. Their only real problem was they seemed to turn on each other way too quickly, like they were bipolar or something, that, really, seemed where the acting kinda faltered a bit.

True to the original, the whole thing was camera POV, this time with digital glitches for annoyance...er-, I mean..."dramatic effect!!" (holds up sarcasm sign). But in all honesty, the footage of the woods in which they were filming was really beautiful....when it wasn't shaking so much I was worried about motion sickness.

The effects looked 100% practical, I couldn't spot any CGI, which was a real plus for the film, there were a few classic camera tricks that actually got my spine to tingle.

3 stars out of 5, hard core fans might not like how much was copied from the original & be disappointed that there wasn't more new stuff (Star Wars rant much?), & casual viewers might say ".....meh.", but I honestly liked it. It stayed far truer to the source material than that mess of a not-sequel, & it even added new layers to the mythos that make me wanna see more.....just...not enough to go camping...ever....EVER!!!!!!!