Review of Blair Witch (2016) by Filipeneto — 22 May 2022

The movie "Blair Witch Project" was so well executed and successful that it had to spawn more than one sequel. It was doomed to it. Even so, it is not understood that they were such bad sequels! If "Blair Witch 2" turned out to be totally forgettable, this movie isn't much better, even if it is considerably more faithful to the source material.

In practice, the film works as a sequel to the original. If BW2 shows us the efforts of a new film crew, which decides to go after the first one and do something new, this film brings us the way in which James, brother of Heather (the filmmaker of the initial film), looks for clues about what happened to her sister and forms a group that decides to camp there, look for traces, and of course, subject themselves to the same fate. Thanks to the script, I felt I was finally looking at a true follow-up to the story of "Blair Witch Project", and not a film that wanted to stick to the success of the initial film. That was the biggest strength of this movie.

The film is directed by Adam Wingard, who is not a horror newbie and has already given us a handful of films with some quality, like "You're Next". The director makes good use of the cards he has and knows how to guide the actors well, even if they are not big stars. On the positive side, I would like to highlight the work of James McCune, Corbin Reid and Wes Robinson. I think these three actors really deserve praise for their commitment and the way they did their job. It's ok... but the character construction is weak, and the story is sometimes confusing, which spoils the actors' work a bit.

Technically, the film opts for a minimalist approach where less is decidedly more: in addition to the obvious choice for the "found footage" style, which many criticize (I'm not a fan of this style of filming) but was the right choice in a Blair Witch movie, I would like to emphasize the purity of what we see, in that almost no computer effects or other visual effects were used. There are good sound effects and sound editing, and the editing of the film doesn't feel poorly executed. All of this is positive... what I really regret is that the film is not able to give us something really new or original, as all the scares I saw here were previously performed in the previous films and lost their originality and the ability to scare. Even so, the film can be a little scary thanks to the shaky shooting style, the screams and some jumping that intentionally provokes us. It's little, but it's something.