blair-witch-blurayStarring James Allen McCune, Callie Hernandez, Brandon Scott

Directed by Adam Wingard

Lionsgate, out now

If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big…

Chances are if you’ve not seen the original Blair Witch Project – or any of the found footage features that followed in its wake – you’ll enjoy Blair Witch a lot more than anyone who’s been done this path before. Adam Wingard’s movie throws in a number of scares and the occasional novel idea (but then again, drones weren’t around in 1999 otherwise you have to suspect that the best idea in the film probably would have turned up then), but there’s a real feeling of déjà vu.

Part of the problem for a British audience – and this applied to the original, as well as stories like Stephen King’s The Boy Who Loved Tom Gordon – is, I suspect, that most people simply don’t have the reference points for a wood of the size that features in the films. Yes, there are places in the UK where you can wander aimlessly for days (fill in your own joke about the nearest big shopping centre), and the moors have been used effectively in equivalent pieces, but the idea that you could disappear for five days simply doesn’t track. That adds another level of suspension of disbelief required – and this isn’t a movie that benefits from any sort of rigorous thought.

There are plenty of scary moments, but nothing that really captures the terror that the participants in the first movie experienced – and that sums up the difference between the two. In the 2016 version, you feel as if the actors went back to their trailers between shots; in the 1999 film, you were never quite sure if they actually were actors…

This is actually the second sequel to The Blair Witch Project, but the 2000 Book of Shadows is completely (and in my view, correctly) ignored. It’s a competent enough horror movie, but it’s nowhere near as strong as its template, and its best moments are those that don’t reference the original.

Verdict: If it had been the first Blair Witch film, I suspect I’d enjoy this far more; as it is, it never really gets the chance to establish its own identity. 6/10

Paul Simpson

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