Blair Witch

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!

Remember the first Blair witch movie? Yeah, then you don't need to see this. It's an updated version, but without the hype and sound design (oh, there are creepy sounds in this one too, so many in fact that they stop being creepy after a short while) that made the first one successful although not good, and slightly frightening. But sure, if you like to hear people scream names of people you don't really care about, and enjoy the tiresome jump-scares, and shaky cameras, and annoying frightened breathing noises, then you might enjoy this movie. I did not.

A lot of hate for this movie, its not really that bad. Yeah most people are right, there are a lot of jump scares which are annoying, and a lot of the suspense of the first movie has been replaced by loud banging noises, but still, I found it fairly enjoyable. Plenty of suspense, and plenty of scenes where I was shaking my head, thinking "dont go in there" or "dont do that" with uncomfortable laughs followed. All up, if you liked The Blair Witch then you will like this one as well, if you hated the Blair Witch, then there is no point seeing this movie.(which baffled me in a lot of reviews, people saying they hated the first one and then hated this one???? Why would you bother, of course you wont like this one)

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.

Over fifteen years have passed since the mysterious disappearance of Heather Donahue in the Black Hills Forest, but her brother James (James Allen McCune) still hasn't given up hope of finding her alive. When found video footage surfaces on YouTube showing what might be a fleeting glimpse of Heather, James leads a group of friends to Burkittsville, and into the woods supposedly inhabited by the Blair Witch.

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 might not have been a very good sequel, but at least it tried to do something a little different to the first film. This reboot for the Blair Witch franchise smacks of laziness and greed, the makers simply rehashing the original movie for a new generation.

This film takes advantage of the advances in technology, with digital headsets and a drone used by the characters, but director Adam Wingard is, for the most part, content to regurgitate the same old, same old: strange noises outside the tents at night, stick men suspended from the trees, piles of rocks, the characters seemingly walking in circles, and a frantic finale in a creepy old house covered in children's hand-prints.

About the only part of the film that doesn't feel tired and predictable is a claustrophobic crawl through a cramped tunnel by final girl Lisa (Callie Hernandez); after all of these years, we deserved more.