Blair Witch

Love it or hate it, The Blair Witch Project is an essential piece of filmmaking and a masterpiece of movie marketing which popularised the found footage sub-genre. Personally, I'm not a fan of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez's original film. Despite a creepy final ten seconds and an intriguing set-up of the Blair witch legend, the film is basically 80 minutes of people arguing in the woods over a lost map. There's no big payoff, nothing is ever shown and mostly I just find very boring and tedious.

So when Blair Witch was revealed, I wasn't exactly excited like a lot of people were. I love the Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett duo and so I was looking forward to their next project, The Woods which of course turned out to be a secret pseudonym for a sequel to The Blair Witch Project. Early Reviews came out and I suddenly became very excited. People were calling it a game changer for horror films and one even went so far as to say that the film will wreck you, so of course I was sold. I avoided all trailers and decided to pop over and see it on opening day, hoping to watch a genuinely scary found footage horror film. Unfortunately I came out extremely disappointed.

Blair Witch isn't a bad film, but it's certainly no game-changer. In fact, it's nothing much to write home about at all. It is simply an average horror film and in my opinion the worst offering from the directing/writing duo so far. One of the main problems is that it plays out almost exactly like the original Blair Witch Project, albeit a bit more souped up. Instead of having a group of characters going into the woods to investigate about the legend, we have a group of characters going into the woods to find Heather, the main character from the original, who happens to be our protagonist's sister. If there was no mention of Heather then Blair Witch would definitely be classed as a remake, rather than a sequel. Even fans of this film admit that it follows almost every beat of the original: there's the getting lost, finding twig men hanging outside the tent, running away in the dark from something that can't be seen and even the iconic old house finale.

Blair Witch offers no new surprises and the first half of the film is almost as tedious as the original. We're not really made to care for any of the characters and none are properly developed. They're just your average group of young adults being lined up for the slaughterhouse, with the technicians from The Cabin in the Woods at the control panel watching it all play out. When a character dies, we don't really care which is sort of a problem when we're made to stay with them for 90 minutes. There are some nice moments of good humour, but for the most part not a great deal happens in the first half. It's just like watching some friends go on a camping trip. It would've been an ideal opportunity for some character development, but instead we just get the usual arguing and banal banter.

Once we hit around the midway point, spooky stuff starts happening but it's all stuff we've seen before. There are some tense moments when characters go off on their own and hear strange noises deep in the woods, but there's never any payoff. A good scare is like a good joke. There has to be an extended moment of suspense and then an explosive punchline, but Blair Witch seems to always miss the punchline. I was always on edge and waiting for something scary to happen in the woods, but nothing really ever does. I did like the real sense of panic and distress though as we realise that these characters are going to end up lost in these woods for what could be an eternity. But whilst the atmosphere is good, the scares are too uninspired to be effective.

Things do start to pick up in the last twenty minutes though. After what feels like endless screaming and running in the woods, we come across the dreaded old house from the first film. This is when things start to become intense and genuinely horrifying at times. There's a huge sense of dread and unpredictability which had me on the edge of my seat. I thought, "finally! Maybe this is the part that's going to wreck me" but it wasn't. Despite a couple of effective jump scares and moments of intensity, the finale fails to live up to the expectations which it promised. It did a good job of building up tension, but just like the scenes in the woods, it failed to conjure up a truly scary punchline. In fact, the film ends with a very disappointing whimper which left me wanting a lot more.

I don't mind slow-burners but there has to be a payoff worth waiting for. In the end, it's a perfectly serviceable horror film. It uses the found footage aspect well and makes good use of utilising new filming technologies. It's also better and far more entertaining that the original, but that's not really high praise coming from a detractor of it. I suppose that I just fell for the hype and I don't want you to do the same. It has moments which are scarier than most mainstream horror films, but there's nothing that will shake you to your core here. Hardened horror nuts are not going to be impressed. It may be worth a quick look when it gets released on DVD but it's not worth seeing on the big screen. In a year full of great horror films, Blair Witch disappointingly seems to be the first hiccup.

Shhh.... Did you hear that?... Peter?... Peter?!... Peter!... Peeeter!!... Ashley!...Ashley?... Ashley!....ASHLEY!... Aaaashleeey!!... Aaashleeey!....James?... Jaaames!...Lisa!... Liiisaaaa!... Peter?... Peter!!!.... Lane?... Laaane?.... Talia?... Talia!.... Ashley?... James???... Lisa? ... Liiisaaaa!... HEY! All of you just shut the f**k up! It's over! OK? Take it down a notch. It's finally done. What started in 1999 with a unique low-budget, cleverly executed and promoted, and genuinely creepy little indie film, finally ended in 2016 with a ridiculous corporate big-budget hackneyed piece of shhhh...did you hear that?... Ashley?... Ashley?.... ASHLEY!

This rating feels really harsh as this was a genuinely good movie and an excellent homage to the original.However the issues here are two-fold:

1. If you've seen the original there's really no need to see this one. It's effectively a modern remake of the original film with some minor tweaks. As a result, there isn't really much need for its existence other than to make more money for the film studio.

2. Part of what made the original so genre-defining and so ruthlessly scary (at the time) was the fact that nothing had been seen like it before. Tie that in with all the paraphernalia that went with it – mockumentaries, interviews with relatives, the actors in hiding for months, and it meant people were genuinely terrified before they'd even set foot in the cinema. Without all that, and with people being so accustomed to 'hand-held horror films' now, this film doesn't really deliver anywhere near the terror or frights that its namesake did 17 years ago.

Despite the above however, Blair Witch does so much of what 'Project' did well. For a start, the characters make genuinely, believable choices (minus maybe the idea of going into the woods in the first place). When you find yourself thinking you'd definitely leave at that stage - the characters attempt to leave. When you think at that stage you'd set up camp for the night rather than wandering round in the dark – they set up camp for the night… So often in horror films we have to put up with idiotic characters making idiotic, wholly unrealistic decisions and suffering the consequences as a result. At least with the BW series, you can actually empathise with the characters as they act in a similar manner to that, any of us would in the same situation.

Then, somewhat in homage to the original, it brings in elements of new camera-work which add to the tension and genuinely seem to present some alternative ways of filming (GPS cameras connected to the ear, looking through the reverse screen of a video camera, drone cameras etc) and all are integrated into the story seamlessly rather than being thrown in for the sake of it.

Finally, although I personally found myself relatively unmoved by the whole thing, the cinema itself barely moved when the credits rolled. My partner and I watched the entirety of the credits and were still two of the first out. It was as if everyone was waiting for the lights to come on first, which would suggest maybe others were more unnerved. I've never seen anything like it! In summation, if you've seen the original, there's really no need to see 'Blair Witch'. It's not that you'll be disappointed as it does a lot well, but it does a lot well because it practically mirrors the first. Not a bad film by any stretch but doesn't offer enough new material to warrant its existence.

So much for months of hype starting with The Woods trailer months ago which was eventually revealed to be this film.

You want scary? You won't find it here unless you've never seen one of the Insiduous/Paranormal Activity/Conjuring clones to come out in the past 5 years. It uses the exact same scare tactics that made those films so successful, bringing nothing but a completely derivative experience to the table.

This completely failed to capture anything that made the original such a disturbing experience. They replaced subtlety and dread with loud sound effects, jump scares, and video game glimpses of cliché figures.

Did you see VHS? Did you handle it well? Congrats, you'll have zero problems sitting through Blair Witch. The first segment of VHS and the religious cult segment of part 2 are both scarier than the entirety of this film.

The worst part is Wingard and his crew don't even attempt to bring any original story elements to the table. This is literally a rehash of the original story with more characters and a flying drone with updated cameras. And don't expect to have the experience enhanced by any of these.

It's funny that even with the new expanses in technology they still couldn't make this thing more interesting than something that was filmed with 1999 equipment.

This isn't a spiritual successor to The Blair Witch Project, it's a found footage jump scare film for millennials who loved VHS and Paranormal Activity. I'm stumped as to who this was even made for. Certainly not people who saw the original in 1999 like me. We're a little too old to fall for this shtick.

It's great that it is a direct sequel and helps with some closure and better understanding of the first film, as well as confirms some suspicions from BW2: The Book Of Shadows.

While the movie had some fake & silly jump scares, the main plot and twist were actually really good. Not as subtle as BWP, more like blatantly obvious at the very beginning and end, but some just don't get it, care to see it, or don't understand it.

When I put it together it definitely helped add more appreciation for the films overall, and would love to see more in the series or even some spin-offs more like BWP & BW, no to so much BW2.