Checked out Blair Witch, the canonical sequel to the Blair Witch Project. It’s technically the third movie in the series but Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 barely counts and was more of a meta-sequel that investigated the real-life events of the movie on the culture (and then was a batshit horror movie in its own right). The new sequel ignores that sequel and exists in the world of the original film.
In this one, the brother of Heather (the gal from the first flick) is all grown up and receives a new version of the video of the original crew running around the creepy house. A video that was never shown before, used in the hunt to find the missing students, or spliced (I guess) into a movie (if that happened). So he and three of his friends – later joined by two more people – venture into the woods of Burkitsville, Maryland to see if they can find his missing sister.
And boy did I get sick of this movie’s bullshit early on. Once again, it’s all found footage and they have updated cameras, GPS, and even a drone copter with a camera on it…. and we get largely a remake of the first movie only now with more shaky cam, BS jump scares, and gore (mostly in the form of icky body horror and not that much of it, to be fair). All the new technology fails almost immediately and brings nothing new to the pic. Our heroes wander around the woods, get spooked by all the same stuff from the first movie, and then wind up a the house (which could never be found before). It’s at this point we do get some glimpses of the witch (probably, I guess, maybe? camera is all janky and jerky) and a MUCH longer scene of them running about being scared, standing in corners and all that jazz.
The final twenty minutes in the house was the only really tolerable part of the movie and, even then, it was on a see-saw of tolerability. How much will the movie show? How much can they show? Will this be a complete remake only now with more footage or are we going in unique directions? Well, there were some hints of unique directions but giving away too much would be too much for this movie. And maybe that’s the right choice to keep the original somewhat mysterious… or maybe it’s just yet another example of found footage BS (you know, where you don’t need an ending, you don’t need to explain much, you don’t even need a cinematographer or a good editor).
So this movie was pretty bad to the point where I wondered if the first movie was any good after all. Or was that movie just at the right time and unique enough… I was a little annoyed by the original’s use of shaky cam and darkness so I’m sure I was on the edge of hating it. But this movie does all the same thing that one does and I kind of hate it. So who knows? I suspect if you hated the original, there’s no point in seeing this one. If you loved it without reservations, maybe this one will work for you?
Score: 63