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Blair Witch was one of the worst horror movies I've seen all year and I've watched Clown Town...at least Clown Town delivered something a little different even if it fails on its face with terrible cliches...Blair Witch is the movie that deserves all the hatred that was horribly misdirected at The Witch.
In case you're a lifeless masturbation sock puppet who doesn't know what films are, The Blair Witch Project was an independent horror film about a film crew documenting their journey through the dark woods in search for the Blair Witch, it had great authenticity with its poor audio, amateur film quality, great use of subtlety that builds its terror and never showing the true horror that awaits them but instead leaves you with haunting voices and disappearing friends and it was a big hit when it came out.
That was probably due to the way it was marketed, but after watching it it's hard to argue how it does everything right when it comes to found footage movies, the very genre it spawned that so many try to do with very little creativity and fail to utilize the way to make a good found footage movie instead they mostly use it as a gimmick to make a cheaper movie without any explanation as to why people are still recording the horrors happening to them, except for movies like VHS that utilize it perfectly.
Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows was a strange sequel that no one cares about.
Now we come to Blair Witch which was filmed in secret under the name "The Woods" and surprise it's a Blair Witch sequel/reboot to breath new life into the franchise that didn't even need to become a franchise for a desperate studio like Lionsgate.
I was surprised to see Adam Wingard had directed this movie, I liked movies that he did for VHS and Home Sick and I even enjoyed You're Next more than most...after seeing this movie this has to be one of his worst movies he's ever made if it were to be connected to the Blair Witch Project he did a bad job with the script and the vision of the film, what I'm saying is that he was the wrong choice for a project like this, even if it's a movie that no one really asked for.
How is Blair Witch? It's as bad as As Above, So Below, in fact...it's just like As Above, So Below...it had an interesting-ish trailer with one creative-looking death scene and a sort of interesting premise...it also makes me think of George Romero's Diary of the Dead that, while it does the found footage aspect wrong, it at least has some entertainment value...where as As Above, So Below is a terrible found footage movie that does nothing interesting with terrible shaky cam with only one interesting death scene with characters I hate and an idea gone completely to waste.
Blair Witch is about a group of college kids, one of whom is the brother of the woman from the first movie, who go into the woods to find out what happened to them and the same exact thing happens to everyone, blah, blah, blah...it's a fucking reboot of the Blair Witch Project and it's not even a good reboot at that.
All of the characters are boring and unlikable for the most part and mostly just exist to watch die off screen, one of the death scenes in the trailer (it doesn't count as a spoiler if it was in the trailer) where one of the characters breaks one of the wooden figures hung around in the woods and one of the characters die with their back snapping which was the only interesting death scene in the entire movie and it's not even well-shot.
There's even a part in the movie where one of the friends gets a cut under her foot and there's something moving around inside it but it's never revealed what it is that's moving around inside her foot and she doesn't turn into a scary creature or anything.
Also, believe it or not, you actually get to see what the Witch looks like...and...SPOILER ALERT!!! It's the Rake. Yup, it's a tall, bald, anorexic and naked creature that kills you if you look at it and it's all done with the worst most cheap-looking CGI that makes the creatures in Grave Encounters look like a masterpiece of filmmaking (which I haven't seen yet but I've heard it's really good), all of the characters see it and all of them die off screen, like seriously, this girl who is suppose to be our survivor she uses her video camera to not look at the witch in the face to escape the house and she hears the voice of her boyfriend she just heard getting killed off screen asking for help and she turns and she dies. Great.
Another thing that plagues this movie is it's terrible attempt at jump scares, they're every where and you can see them coming or they're just in the movie for no reason other than for cheap scares that never made me rattle like Lights Out did.
Also the camera equipment, video and the audio is pitch perfect which is what totally kills the authenticity for the movie's found footage aspect, everything is well-lit, characters look nice and polished and...there's actual MUSIC in the movie which completely kills its realism, it can't even rely on natural sound to be scary, it makes me wonder why they didn't just film it like a movie, instead it's a found footage film that shot like a movie which is a terrible why to make a found footage movie especially when trying to be realistic about what's going on.
The most I can say I liked about this sad pathetic excuse for a movie is that the forest areas and night scenes with some of the ambient sounds were effective at times and it was grabbing my interest in some places but each and every time it just lets me down with what ever desperate scare it tries to get out of me.
I didn't even have any high expectations for this movie coming out I just heard it was going to be scary and it looked like it was going to be fun with that one poorly-shot death scene, but it fails to deliver anything unique and it fails to do anything remotely frightening other than rip off the original Blair Witch Project and just making stuff happen to suck out all the mystery and just shit it into theaters to grab some quick box office dollars.
Stay far away from this movie, it's not scary, it's not stylish, it's not interesting which are its biggest detriments. See "Don't Breath" instead.
1/10