★ ★
The release of 1999’s The Blair Witch Project unquestionably changed horror films by introducing the found-footage subgenre to a wide audience. Thanks to some clever (for the time) marketing, viewers were fascinated by the possibility that the footage might even be authentic.
The duo of director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett (the pair previously made The Guest and You’re Next) attempt to both reprise and update the original’s premise in their 2016 sequel, Blair Witch. The movie is prefaced by a title card informing the audience that the following footage was found in the woods of Burkittsville, MD, in 2014. We open on James (James Allen McCune) as he finds a compelling video on YouTube that leads him to believe that his sister, one of original group of documentarians hunting the Blair Witch, might still be alive. Accompanied by his aspiring-filmmaker friend Lisa (Callie Hernandez) and childhood besties Peter (Brandon Scott) and Ashley (Corbin Reid), James sets off to camp in the very woods where his sister vanished. First, however, the friends join up with the locals who posted the video, Lane (Wes Robinson) and Talia (Valorie Curry), who insist on accompanying them during their trip. Despite their gut instincts telling them otherwise, the friends decide to let them come along.
Naturally, this turns out to be a terrible idea, and events take a turn for the worse just after they arrive in the woods. Wingard preserves the shaky (and frequently nauseating) handheld camerawork of the first movie throughout, despite the fact that these teens are outfitted with high-tech gear such as Bluetooth cameras and even a drone -- the film, much like the kids’ tech, is simply an updated version of the original. But the even bigger issue is that the mystery and novelty surrounding The Blair Witch Project just isn’t present in this follow-up. The plentiful jump scares will help keep viewers on edge (as will a bit of stomach-churning gore), but the most fascinating aspect of the film are the new tidbits of Blair Witch lore. The main characters’ poor decision-making skills are frustrating to watch and make it difficult to sympathize with their situation, and although this flick runs only 89 minutes, it drags interminably toward the end.
The appeal of The Blair Witch Project was largely found in its uniqueness; unfortunately, the zillions of lazy and contrived found-footage films that have flooded the horror genre over the past 17 years have diluted the subgenre’s impact (the Paranormal Activity franchise is a particular culprit), and this sequel doesn’t offer anything new to set it apart. While the acting is convincing and the script is decent (Barrett lands a few solid laughs in what would otherwise be a monotonous slog of shakily filmed anxiety), the Black Hills Forest simply has no more secrets left to discover. It might be interesting to watch a movie about the Blair Witch lore (maybe even an origins story), but the horror world could do without another found-footage cautionary tale about unsupervised camping in woods where kids routinely disappear.