‘Blair Witch’ Movie Review

You know what’s even creepier than little kids laughing at night? Getting lost in the woods at night. And that’s exactly what happens in the reboot/sequel of the original ‘Blair Witch Project’ from 1999.

‘Blair Witch’ is directed by Adam Wingard who has also directed some of my favorite horror movies in recent memory (‘The Guest’ and ‘You’re Next). It is about the brother of Heather from the original ‘Blair Witch Project’ going into the haunted woods again to find the house that she disappeared in 17 years prior.

First, I really didn’t like the original ‘Blair Witch Project’. I saw it for my first time a few years ago and thought that it was boring and not extremely well made. I think that my low expectations from the first one really helped me like this movie a lot more. A lot of the criticism from this movie is that it copies the original too much. Personally, I loved that they took a lot of beats from the first one. There were a lot of good ideas in the original, and I think that Wingard took them and spun them just enough to make it different. A bonus, is that the sound design and mixing in this movie were crazy good. You can hear every tree branch crack and creak, adding to the eerie atmosphere.

My favorite thing about this movie is that once I was done watching it, I wanted to go online and look up more about the lore. I was a little bit confused about the ending so I looked it up on screenrant.com (SPOILERS AT THIS LINK) and found so many answers and interesting theories. I love movies that leave themselves open to interpretation.

Now I can’t just gush about this movie, as much as I want to, because it definitely isn’t perfect. First of all, some of the acting wasn’t spectacular. The character of Lisa comes to mind. She just got a little to over the top sometimes and also gave some pretty bland line delivery. Another thing that I was disappointed in was that they introduced a drone camera that was totally wasted. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the drone really ended up serving no purpose, when it could’ve been used to show us something creepy.

In the end, ‘Blair Witch’ is a great horror movie, full of twists and suspense. While not perfect, I think that the film took the source material and made it better. I do think that if you absolutely love the original film, this may disappoint you due to the extreme amount of similarities.

8/10