[ot-caption title=”Are you scared by the myth of the Blair Witch? (via, Nicola, Flickr)”]

(SPOILERS)[spacer height=”20px”]

I am easily frightened; I see no point in horror movies; I don’t like being unable to sleep in the days after seeing one. It is for these reasons that I was apprehensive that seeing Blair Witch (2016) this past weekend would’ve left me as disturbed and frightened as the film to which it serves as a soft reboot/sequel (The Blair Witch Project, 1999). I needn’t have worried, as the film instead offered some mild laughs and confusion. In fact, I don’t think I was scared once while watching this film. [spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]

The film opens 20 years after The Blair Witch Project as James returns to the Black Hills Forest in Maryland where his sister disappeared. Together with his documentary-making friend Lisa and another couple, they rehash the same premise of the first film. The key difference being that everyone has ear-mounted cameras that are constantly and jarringly cut between or used to create jump scares out of thin air when one character would simply startle another. The uninteresting gang joins a couple of locals (Lane and Talia) who have evidence that could lead them to the horrifying house in the woods where James’ sister ended up. This leads to some interesting moments where the couple could’ve been used to create doubt as to whether anything actually supernatural or mystic was going on or if this was just a couple of serial killer-types. This is my main issue here. While many films in this genre are scary due to a lack of knowledge as to what may or may not be occurring and its origins, Blair Witch is just confusing. After a certain point it becomes apparent that the group is both stuck in the woods and stuck in time, as night never turns to day. This could have been an interesting and horrifying part of the Blair Witch’s curse, but the time distortion is never explained or used any further than keeping the entire third act in the dark. [spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]

At one point, the man from the other couple, Peter (I had to look up every character’s name before writing this-proving the lack of clarity within the film), leaves the campsite to use the bathroom when a large tree just falls on him. His eventual death comes about as a result of his choosing to walk as far away from the camp as humanly possible to go use the bathroom. This revelation that he was absurdly far away from the camp got nothing but laughs in my theater. [spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]

Upon entering the forest, everyone crosses a river barefoot, and Peter’s girlfriend Ashley cuts her foot on a rock. While the wound does get treated, it later pulsates and leads illness. After Peter’s death, Ashley is alone in her tent where she removes an alien-worm creature from her cut. THIS IS NEVER BROUGHT UP AGAIN. At no point is there any talk about how something this supernatural could have happened. She, too, eventually dies. Her death was even less scary and perhaps even funnier than Peter’s: she falls out of a tree trying to recover the group’s drone for an unknown reason. [spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]

Finally, at the end of the film, Lisa and James reach the house where James believes his sister will be. Here, Lisa fights and kills Lane, who is under the witch’s influence. In the end, both Lisa and James are mysteriously killed. And while this type of ambiguous death made the original film spooky, the same cannot be said this time around, as the camera cuts to this CGI stick-figure monster for a split moment. Again, causing laughs instead of shrieks. [spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]

At least I got my ticket with an old gift card I found instead of paying for it. Go see the original if you’d like to see a horror film, or just watch anything else. It neither scared nor entertained in its short 89-minute runtime.[spacer height=”20px”]

Photo Source: Flickr

Sources:

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1540011/?ref_=ttmi_tt

Blair Witch Film Site: http://www.blairwitch.com/

Lionsgate Studio Site: http://www.lionsgate.com/movies/