"Blair Witch" Review

It has been 17 years since The Blair Witch Project revolutionized the horror genre with its slow-burning mythos and micro-budget "found footage" cinematography. Up until this July's Comic-Con event in San Diego, director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett (both of You're Next and The Guest fame) were thought to have made a new feature titled The Woods. Superlatives on the teasers billed it as "the scariest movie ever made" and "a gamechanger" for the horror genre. At the Comic-Con screening, Wingard and Barrett officially revealed that The Woods is actually Blair Witch, a continuation of the original 1999 cult classic.

After seeing the new film for myself, Blair Witch is to The Blair Witch Project as The Force Awakens is to the original Star Wars - enjoyable, but overall an all-too-familiar rehash with a bigger budget and better special effects. If Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez had studio backing 17 years ago, this is exactly the film they would've made.

The plot is essentially the exact same as before. Fans will recall Heather, Josh and Mike being lost and presumed dead following the events in the Black Hills woods near Burkittsville, Maryland in October 1994. As lore has it, their footage was recovered and released circa 1998-99. Flash forward almost 20 years. Heather's younger brother James (James Allen McCune) comes across a YouTube video which allegedly sheds light on the Blair Witch legend and the events of 1994. James is convinced that Heather is in that clip. He decides to head to Burkittsville in order to find answers. In tow are his friends Peter (Brandon Scott), Ashley (Corbin Reid), and Lisa (Callie Hernandez) - who, as fate would have it, needs a subject for her college documentary assignment. Armed with body cameras, walkie-talkies, DSLRs, and a drone, the group ventures into the cursed woods completely unprepared for what awaits them.

This new Blair Witch is a bit of a challenge to dissect. I feel as though my thoughts are split completely down the middle. On one hand, it's well performed and still feels like the living nightmare of your friends, siblings and neighbors. The film also ups the scare quotient significantly compared to its predecessor. A lot more wild and terrifying stuff happens to the group this time around thanks to Wingard's command of atmosphere. He toys with our fear of the dark in an even more convincing fashion than this year's other genre standouts Don't Breathe and Lights Out. It just upsets me so much that, on the other hand, the movie seems to betray everything that made The Blair Witch Project a classic. Where the original relished in subtle, slow-building tension, Blair Witch 2016 may as well smack you over the head with a sledgehammer. This is a "found footage" film that leans heavily on ear-shattering sound design, oddly placed musical cues, and random jump scares throughout most of its 90-minute run time. It isn't until the last 20-30 minutes when the most frightening and suspenseful material comes to light. Even then, Blair Witch leaves far less to the imagination than before, and I despise it for that. Its payoff also feels woefully familiar while positing more questions than answers. I smell a "new"-ish multi-million dollar studio franchise.

It's extremely difficult to avoid measuring this new film against the original. That often comes with the reboot/sequel territory. On its own merits, Blair Witch is as decent a "found footage" feature as we've seen in quite some time. Thank God the trend seems to finally be losing steam. It remains a generally solid chiller that should serve horror fans well during this upcoming Halloween season. However, I think this will be one of the most polarizing movies in years. Some audiences are going to adore it, others will easily loathe it. (A few folks even walked out of the screening I attended.) If you're okay with a Blair Witch movie that's well-acted, well-directed, well-paced, and terrifying, yet completely unsubtle and oftentimes tragically familiar, then this film comes recommended to you.

B-