"Blair Witch" is a found footage horror film, which tells you a lot about how it's going to feel right off the bat. The original movie, "The Blair Witch Project", was largely what popularized the found footage film, and is a great example of what found footage could be. It can be done well, using the camera to give you a first-person perspective and creating a creepy atmosphere. Found footage can also be done badly, making the story hard to follow and relying heavily on jumpscares. That's what "Blair Witch" does.
"Blair Witch" is almost a remake of "The Blair Witch Project". The plot is very similar and many of the same events take place.The basic plot: A film student named Lisa is shooting a documentary for a class. She and two of her friends decide to try and find the sister (Heather, one of the main three in the original) of another student, James, after seeing a video "found in the woods" near where Heather disappeared twenty years before. The four students meet the locals, Lane and Talia, who put the video online, and agree to let the two join them. They camp in the woods overnight, and problems soon follow.
As is typical with a found footage film, the camera work is very shaky and the focus is off at times. This isn't bad in itself. What would normally just be shoddy camera work can make a found footage film scarier by not allowing you to get all of the details or making you and the character wait to find out what's around the corner. Despite the use of new technology like a drone (that gets stuck halfway through the movie), "Blair Witch" doesn't use these "amateur filming" techniques well. It just doesn't. Especially towards the end, there were parts where I could barely tell what was going on. Half the shots are trees or face close-ups. There are a ton of jumpscares, and while a couple of them (okay, one in particular) are pretty good, you can see the majority coming, and the same scare is reused multiple times with little variation. The movie itself is really loud, and there's a lot of screaming, which does absolutely nothing to make it frightening. It just gets annoying.
Spoilers in the next three paragraphs.
There are some things in this movie I really want to like, and some plot points that would have been great if they were expanded on or allowed to progress. What was the significance of the Confederate flag in on Lane and Talia's wall? Why were there roots growing in Ashley's leg? Did each member of the group have a voodoo doll stick figure like Talia's? Why didn't the sun ever come up? It's all left entirely unexplored. They stick closely to the original film's plot and never expand on the new twists that could have made it unique.
There was one scene that I did like. Near the very end, Lisa is thrown into a trapdoor in the basement by a dirty, aged Lane (a great twist I wish would have been used more). She escapes by way of a tunnel she can barely fit through. This was the only part of the movie that created some real tension for me. I didn't care if she made it, but I wasn't sure if she was going to or what would be waiting for her on the other side.
As a kind of nitpicky thing, I want to point out that the movie ends in the attic. They specifically say it's the attic as well, so it's possible you were meant to notice it. The two characters who are left are James, who saw and heard his sister, and Lisa, who sees something in the woods. This closely parallels the original movie, where Heather and Mike attempt to find Josh. Ending the movie on the same note is kind of cool if we ignore how similar the two were in every other aspect. However, Lisa and James dying in the attic doesn't match the murders that it's supposed to. Heather and Mike dies in the basement because that's where the pairs of children were killed. One of them stands in the corner while the other dies, just like in the murders. Lisa and James, on the other hand, are in the attic, they both stand in the corner, and they both die after looking away from the corner. I wouldn't care that this occurs in the attic if there was a reason for it. The fact that there isn't a reason is what makes it bad.
Overall Assessment:
I wouldn't recommend "Blair Witch". It isn't different enough to be good or bad enough to be funny. If you haven't seen the original, watch it instead. You'll basically have seen "Blair Witch" anyways.
