One of the saving graces that can be found when watching Blair Witch comes in the highly underplayed concept of a woodland area in which time and space does not operate normally, being a fairly unique concept that while present in the original film, isn’t something we see all too often surprisingly. He brings along his girlfriend Lisa (Callie Hernandez) and friends Peter (Brandon Scott) and Ashley (Corbin Reid).
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“We know where we would take it if there is a sequel”, Wingard told Entertainment Weekly in July. Another couple invites themselves along, Lane (Wes Robinson) and Talia (Valorie Curry), who clearly have an ulterior motive.
The plot thickens when the YouTube users who posted the footage of James’ sister decide to tag along. Indeed, how could everything have gone so wrong with the director of Brother’s Keeper and Paradise Lost at the helm? What they find isn’t that different or far removed from the original movie.
Ninety percent of this movie can’t be scary to save its life. It placed third overall, coming in after Sully and Blair Witch. On a technical level, the film sports an excellent sound design and ambient soundtrack, as well as production design that feels authentic to the location; in fact, once the film enters the Rustin Parr house, the film becomes a claustrophobic, spookshow nightmare that’ll keep you gripping your knees until the very end. And we realize not everyone likes watching movies in the theater. But as a horror movie “The Blair Witch Project” was inert and inconsequential. To be fair, “The Blair Witch Project” was a triumph of guerrilla filmmaking and its financial success hinted at the promotional possibilities of the internet. Whereas the scares and thrills present in that movie came from the audience’s imagination, Blair Witch frequently teases with the prospect of answering these various questions, removing the fun for those that take joy in guessing.
With the sequel I could hope that the bad and motion-sickness-inducing camera work were behind us, sadly that is not what I got. There is also a scene in the bowels of the house that makes for the only time it is acceptable to be freaked out by this film.
Blair Witch supposedly bombed at the box office this weekend.
One and a Half Stars out of Five. The first twenty or so minutes in the woods are quite chilling, paying homage (according to my interpretation) to Junji Ito’s legendary horror comic Uzumaki in how space and time are distorted.
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“Blair Witch” is rated R for language, terror and disturbing images.
