Blair Witch (2016)
Directed by Adam Wingard
Found footage has been a very popular subgenre of horror, especially in the last 10-15 years. The Blair Witch Project in 1999 wasn’t the first, but it was the first to bring attention to found footage on a grand scale. Sure, The Last Broadcast predates it, but The Blair Witch Project made $248.6M against a budget of roughly $60,000. The found footage craze didn’t come along until the later 2000s and 2010s. It seemed like every horror movie coming out was a “shaky cam” movie. Called “Shaky Cam” because the handheld camera nature of the movies is shaky and amateur looking. While many love the genre, and praise The Blair Witch Project as a classic in horror cinema, many hate found footage and see the movie as greatly overrated. Say what you will about the film, but it was highly successful and helped usher in a wave of copy cats and even sequels. This film is the second sequel in the movie’s lineage. While Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was a departure from the original’s style and premise, the second and latest sequel is faithful to the original, but is that good?
Disclaimer right off the bat here, I’m not a big fan of shaky cam movies. They tend to annoy me and even make me sick to my stomach at times (ie watching Cloverfield in the theater, “ROB OH MY GOD ROOOOOOOOOOB!”). I find that very few of the films in the subgenre are even good let alone great. For every Rec, Rec2 or As Above So Below, there are hundreds of The Gallows and The Devil Insides. The main flaw I find in them is wondering why the person is still holding a camera when they’re about to die lol. Some movies such as VHS do a great job of answering that, be it a head mounted camera, a surgically implanted eye camera, or a pair of glasses with a camera. The other thing that annoys me is the shaky cam itself. I hate not being able to see what is going on or focus on anything. Why do they have to have the camera bobble all over the place ALL THE TIME? I mean I understand when they’re running and its bouncing, but when they’re standing still? Then you just suck at camera work dude!
The story is about a group of friends going camping in the woods in Maryland after watching a video on youtube. The video shows a young girl and what seems to be the Blair Witch. One of the characters, James believes it to be his lost sister Heather. What follows is very similar to the original. Group goes in the woods, odd stuff starts happening, people die etc. I kind of skim over that because this is a newer movie and you might want to watch it for some reason. There isn’t much new added to the film and again you never get to see much of what is going on which to me is a buzzkill for sure.
The acting isn’t amazing, but it isn’t bad per say. The characters have no development whatsoever so you really don’t give a shit when any of them die. That’s really the main issue I have with this movie. If you have a bunch of characters, and you don’t give me a reason to know them or like them, then how am I supposed to care when they die? This movie isn’t the only one to do that, I mean it happens A LOT in the slasher genre that I love. None of the actors or actresses stood out to me as being better or worse than one another, that was disappointing. I guess I had higher hopes for this than what I should have.
Special effects aren’t really a big standout in this type of movie and there isn’t really much to talk about. People die, you don’t see them die but you see their bodies bloody and in a heap on the ground. Most of the dialogue is just screaming someone’s name. How many times can you scream the name Ashley? Honestly! During one part towards the end they kept screaming “ASHLEY! ASHLEY WHERE ARE YOU!?” and my wife, whom was in the other room said “Bitch are you going to answer because that’s annoying!”. Why in found footage movies does this seem to be the case more often than not? I jokingly quoted Cloverfield with “ROB OH MY GOD! ROOOOBBB!” which was roughly 50% of the dialogue in that shitty nauseating film.
How about the shaky cam you might ask? Well it is at its wacky wobbly peak! Like the camera work was done by Michael J. Fox sitting on a washing machine with an uneven load. Lots of running, lots of falling and heavy breathing. We get the close up shot of a girl’s face freaking out like the original movie. Really not much new here. I see this as more of a remake than a sequel. A remake of a subpar movie makes a subpar remake and most cases and this is definitely one of those.
There isn’t really much I can say about this movie. I didn’t have much interest going into it, I saw it was on Hulu and figured I would watch and review it, to give you guys a new movie to read about for once. For whatever reason this was on Hulu for like three weeks before you could actually watch it. It’s almost like they were trying to hype it up. This is just another entry in the found footage subgenre and brings nothing new to the table. It is boring and stale. I wish found footage would go away, like every other subgenre, it has run its course. Slasher movies were huge in the 80s, only to see horror take a small break in the early 90s, then the slasher genre returned in the late 90s. From there slasher went away and Japanese remakes were the trend with the Ring and The Grudge, after those came the torture porn genre of Hostel and Saw. Found footage seemed to step up next and has been here ever since. I can’t wait for something else to come along and knock this subgenre out, it is getting dull and boring. I can’t really recommend this to anyone, I didn’t enjoy it and found myself groaning and checking the time a lot. I would give Blair Witch a D-. It is one step up from an F because it could have been worse to be honest, the acting wasn’t horrible, it takes a lot to get an F from me.
