10 Reasons Blair Witch Is A Crushing Disappointment
A glorified remake.
Two months ago, nobody had any idea that another Blair Witch film was in the works. Then suddenly it was revealed at Comic-Con in late July that the highly-anticipated found footage movie The Woods was, in fact, a secret sequel.
The hype train since has been immense, from rapturous early reviews through to a viral marketing campaign that has attempted (in vain) to replicate the original 1999 movie's success.
Sadly, despite any card-carrying horror fan wanting this movie to be a great resurgence of a doomed franchise (after 2000's horrendous Book of Shadows follow-up killed most studio interest), it's aggressively mediocre at best, and a troubling sign of Hollywood's crushing lack of originality at its worst.
That's not to say a sequel couldn't be an improvement, but for all of the pre-release excitement, this is one horror sequel that falls dispiritingly flat.
Here are 10 reasons Blair Witch is a crushing disappointment...
10. It's A Remake Pretending To Be A Sequel
There's an unfortunate recent trend of studios attempting to exploit our nostalgia for classic films by releasing "sequels" that are more or less remakes with a slightly modern twist. Blair Witch is one such film.
Essentially a soft reboot of the franchise despite how fervently it pretends to be a follow-up, the film largely recycles what worked the first time (creepy noises outside the campers' tents, piles of rocks and twig figurines being discovered, the campers getting lost, and plenty more in the ending portion that's too spoilerific to discuss) to largely diminished effect.
That's probably the worst thing that can be said of the new film: it feels incredibly lazy, and while it might prove effective enough for younger audiences who haven't seen the original, to fans of the first film it just feels like an insult.