Another Blair Witch movie was seemingly in and out of development for over a decade with original creators Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, but it wasn't until a few years ago that serious talk started up again, this time with Adam Wingard (You're Next) behind the camera. Filmed under the title The Woods, the movie eventually premiered a teaser along with the faux title, essentially fooling everyone. It wasn't until a couple months before the theatrical release that the real title was revealed, giving long-time fans a reason to finally shut their mouths, as the promise of a "true sequel" was nearly upon them.

Admittedly, I'm not a fan of the first flick--being an impressionable teenager at the time it came out, I fell into the hype that many did, believing the footage to be real and the movie to possibly be one of the scariest to come out in years. Boy was I disappointed when all it turned out to be was a lot of shaky nauseating footage and people constantly arguing. Book of Shadows wasn't much of an improvement, despite trying to go the more conventional way of filmmaking.

Thankfully this sequel ignores Book of Shadows and takes place 20 years after the events of the first, where Heather's brother "James" has apparently been searching for his older sis since her disappearance all those years ago. After seemingly recent footage of Heather shows up online, James decides to venture into the woods in hopes of finding some clues that might explain what the hell happened to her. Using the latest technology has to offer and accompanied by a few friends and a couple weird locals, they head deep into the woods in search of answers, only to end up the latest victims of the Witch.



Though officially a sequel, it's basically a reboot since it's essentially just a rehash of the first, but with today's technology and a some ideas expanded upon. One of those ideas is the whole time loop aspect, which was depicted in the first as the characters simply going in circles. Here characters are shown to actually age and it also explains why a couple other things occur in the story (no spoilers!).

We also get to actually see something chasing people this time, unlike its predecessor, which was too busy shaking to show anything. However, the creepy elongated creature that we see towards the end isn't actually the Witch herself; instead, it's described to be "one of the victims" of the Witch by writer Simon Barrett. So those hoping to see that pesky witch will be a bit disappointed, but the humanoid being they do briefly show is still pretty freaky looking.

Honestly, the last 20-minutes of the movie is pretty tense and creepy, and had a majority of the film been like that I'd be praising this; unfortunately, that's not how most of the movie was. In fact, the first hour almost put me to sleep, as it's a fairly standard found footage pic set in the woods with unlikable characters making illogical decisions, and some pop-scares and creepy noises thrown in. And on the topic of the scares--they're mostly the clichéd ones involving characters just randomly popping out of nowhere, and they do this numerous times! So it became more annoying than anything.

It's sad, because there seemed to be a lot of potential here, especially with some of the ideas they expanded on. But aside from the climax this was almost like watching the first over again, just with more victims and in higher definition.

This might not've been the sequel some fans were hoping for, but it was at least a step above Book of Shadows and the story expanded a bit on a couple things. However, the first hour is your pretty standard found footage effort and the whole thing is essentially just a rehash of the first movie, which is disappointing, because I personally didn't care much for the first movie.