*Originally written September 9th, 2016*
"The Blair Witch Rehash"
I am so let down by this. Directed by Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, both of which worked on You're Next and The Guest, two films I utterly adore the fuck out of. So I was extremely disappointed by Blair Witch.
Sold as a sequel to the original (Ignoring the events of Book of Shadows), this really is pretty much a straight up remake. It lacked any kind of surprise or originality. I really have no idea where the acclaim for this film is coming from.
Aside from the sound design and excellent final 15 minutes, I never cared about anything else in Blair Witch. I was bored a lot of the time. I just felt like I'd been here and seen it all before. I nearly even rewatched the first earlier today, which only would have made this even harder to get through.
Horrific camerawork too. I wanted to like the idea of the POV cameras, but it was borderline impossible to know what was happening most of the time. There was some interesting use of drones and body-cams to get this rehash into 2016, but it was mostly just disorientating.
That said, in terms of found-footage films, this is still head and shoulders above utter dreck like Paranormal Activity. It's just everything about this film should have been better. How do you go from The Guest to this?
I hated every character. I never cared for anyone. I liked that they at least still kept the mystery of the Blair Witch while expanding on the mythology a little bit. I was worried we'd see the witch and have that ruined, but thankfully they never get that far, although we do get some clearer glimpses that we never got in 1999.
For better or worse, Blair Witch is back. The best I can say about this is that it is at the very least a hell of a lot better than Book of Shadows....
4/10 Dans
Blair Witch is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD
Watch the trailer below:
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