I was so hopeful for 'Blair Witch', the sort-of actual sequel to 'The Blair Witch Project' - but OH HOW EASY it is to be disappointed by 'found-footage' horror in 2016.
The differences between this film and the original are as follows - the new group of lost in the woods / making a documentary / researching the legend of a vengeful Witch Ghost have better technology. That's it.
They have a drone, body-cams - full HD, the works. But the film is almost an entire play-by-play of the grandfather of found-footage flicks, the genuinely hard-to-watch, overloaded with spine-chilling creepiness 1999 film.
All of the overdone horror characters are here, you've seen them all before. The nice guy, the cocky guy, the scared girl, the hard-as-nails-when-needed girl, the weirdo... Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The third act kind of went in an interesting direction and introduced some ideas that the Blair Witch movie lore hasn't seen yet, but so much was set up with little to no pay off. It was incredibly frustrating.
THE CURSE OF MODERN HORROR MOVIE TROPES STRIKES AGAIN.
Constant, pointless, soul-destroyingly loud jump scares ruined 'Blair Witch', even if the plot basically followed the original exactly - that couldn't save it. The subtlety of the 1999 film (i know, I know, I'm mentioning that one a lot, but it really is great) was totally disregarded and substituted for LOUD NOISESSSSSS.
Every time I think modern US horror is out of ideas something like this confirms the fact even more.
MUST TRY HARDER!
5/10
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