Blair Witch Review: 7 Ups And 3 Downs

Ups:

7. It's Scary (Especially At The End)

Putting aside the hype, Blair Witch was always going to be fighting an uphill battle care of some of the most hyperbolic trailer quotes imaginable; the teaser for "The Woods" had an assortment of lines from trusted genre publications calling it a "new beginning" and "one of the scariest films ever made". While that sure stirs up excitement, it doesn't really help the film, creating unreal expectations and opening it right up for instantaneous mocking.

Thankfully, Blair Witch is scary. Sickeningly so in fact. Adam Wingard's proven gifted at playing horror conventions knowingly over his previous features, but here he plays it so straight that the built-up results are nothing short of chilling.

The final twenty minutes in particular are unbearably intense. As the characters unwittingly stumbled to near-certain doom, the tension mounts and by the time we reach what is clearly the final location (you'll know it when you see it), I was frozen in place, unable to breathe, let alone move. It's pure, unadulterated terror, and, whatever issues there may be in presentation, this is the stuff of Burkittsville dreams.