Film Review: ‘Blair Witch’ Takes a Familiar Trail to a Dead End

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CHICAGO – The forest is an elusive environment that can hold hope for one person or isolation for another. You can enter the forest for some Thoreauvian wisdom, but end up being engulfed by its overwhelming monotony. As we revisit the world of “Blair Witch”, we are reminded that the found footage genre has come a long way from its humble origins, but perhaps some footage is better off not “found.”

Rating: 2.0/5.0

Adam Wingard is no novice when it comes to creating tense atmospheres in horror/thriller films. With films like “You’re Next” and “The Guest”, Wingard has already proven his mastery over several key aesthetics necessary to the horror genre. In “Blair Witch”, he repeats all of them while also adding some of the more cheapening effects to recreate the once novel experience that was “The Blair Witch Project” and gives it the Hollywood treatment.

“Blair Witch” is one affable dog with a speech impediment away from a full-blown cartoon caper. The scares are predictable and formulaic, relying on jump cuts and sudden sound distortions to startle you. It continues wearing you down with this technique, creating tougher and tougher calluses until you feel nothing by the time the film actually reaches its climax. Every time the camera turns, you know somebody is going to “suddenly” appear. Every time the digital footage fades for the next scene, your body cringes at the aggressively loud noise that you know will start the next scene. Aside from being completely ineffective, these techniques quickly become infuriating, setting the frustrated tone you will have for the rest of the film.

The shots are so perfectly framed and the footage looks so pristine that you begin to wonder if this story should even be told in the found footage format. “Blair Witch” picks up the gimmick under the guise of filming a documentary (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?), but eventually completely drops the pretense. That’s when you start feeling the presence of the Wingard-led film crew rather than the self-shooting youths that the original pioneered. The film would have probably been much more successful as a third-person narrative rather than a shifting first-person farce.

Continue reading for Jon Espino’s full review of “Blair Witch”

Lisa (Callie Hernandez) Starts Her Journey in ‘Blair Witch’
Photo credit: Lionsgate

Continue reading for Jon Espino’s full review of “Blair Witch”