Blair Witch Review: 7 Ups And 3 Downs

4. The Shooting Methods Are Novel

Blair Witch is set in 2014, and as such has a lot of 2014 tech in it; drones, earpiece cameras, GPS readers, you get the picture. At first that seems worrying; a drone is going to allow unreal sweeping shots and earpiece cameras are a lazy way to fall back on effortless POV shots. However, as the movie gets going there's a real effort made to use these for different effects; the drone's a way to convey the dense forest, while the earpieces remove the characters knowledge of being filmed.

There's some really subtle tricks in there, with so much action unsettlingly happening to the side of shot and different camera quality building through the film to instinctively tell you what recording we're currently viewing. It's an inch forward rather than a leap, but Wingard's found plenty of fertile ground in found footage.

However while the captured footage may be, this film actually isn't scrappy. In fact, it's carefully curated; as the opening text says, this was "assembled", and there's definitely points where the editing is in-universe obviously making a point, especially with the long gaps between beats made to draw out the worry. Things come to a head in big conversations, where there's so many cameras we're jumping perspective every second. The result is dizzying, and with the disorientation Wingard's making an astute point about our constantly-recorded lives and how much has changed - in reality and cinema - since the original.