Blair Witch is the surprise sequel to the influential 1999 found footage horror film The Blair Witch Project. I can’t say I’m a fan of the franchise, but I did know it was written by Simon Barrett and directed by Adam Wingard – the pair who brought us 2014’s The Guest, a film I really liked. Despite this, I hate the found footage style, so I wasn’t sure what to think going in.

Blair Witch follows James Donahue, the older brother of Heather, the main victim of the first film. After finding a clue as to her whereabouts, he hikes up to the woods in Black Hills with three friends, hoping to find her. While things are normal for a while, strange things start happening and yadda yadda yadda you already know the plot of this thing.

Why do I hate found footage? Partially because it doesn’t make sense. It requires enormous suspension of disbelief when crazy, violent stuff goes down and our characters still cling onto the camera. It’s also because I’m something of a film snob and admire the craft – framing, editing, cinematography – and found footage circumvents a lot of what I love about film.

Blair Witch has possibly the best answer to my first nag. All the characters are given earpieces, which are also cameras, which are also GPS locators. It means a lot of the horrid shakiness isn’t present with most camerawork coming off more like point-of-view shots. The GPS also means our characters never have cause to take it off. This made Blair Witch one of the more – possibly the most – immersive found footage films I’ve ever seen.

But enough snobby bullshit – is Blair Witch scary? Yes. The entire third act is fast paced, nerve wracking, and actually really well-composed. I’m not normally one for these sorts of scarefests but there are some excellent scenes that play with claustrophobia and disorientation to chilling and effective degree.

There’s also a lot of interesting and subtle worldbuilding that goes on before the action. They talk about how the woods are haunted, and some of the early, spooky occurrences are unexpected and really lend to the eerie, otherworldly nature of the forest. It really worked for me, because even before the action started, I already felt trapped and powerless.

Sadly, even with all these interesting goings on, it’s a long time before anything actually happens. Remember when I said you already know the plot? Well, you really do already know it. In what other genre is it acceptable that the audience knows so much about the story before seeing it? This is what will bug me when people start trying to call Blair Witch innovative.

I don’t even mind a film where little happens for so long, as long as the characters are interesting. Blair Witch has the sceptical “I don’t believe in ghost stories” arsehole, the “you’re not from around here, man” true believer, and a plank of wood meant to serve as our protagonist.

I do give the film props for having its characters often make the smart decision. “Shall we split up and search in the dark for this guy?” “No. Let’s not do that.” But still they are so clichéd, so boring, and perhaps representative of what I hate most about a lot of found footage films. By placing us in the action, they offer no interesting characters for us to root for. (There are exceptions – Chronicle, for instance.)

And I get it, it’s the experience we’re going for – we’re along for the ride hoping to get scared. But again, in what other genre is it acceptable for all the characters to be terrible? I don’t think we should let them get away with it, even if we’re just looking for a good scare.

Finally, I can’t say much without spoiling but something happens towards the end that I thought was awesome and a way to put a clever spin on the genre. However, the film never really puts it to use, so when the credits rolled I was a bit disappointed.

My personal feelings about the style aside, Blair Witch is an effective scary film. I think it does the best a film can do with this formula. But I do have to knock it for adhering so tightly to this formula and many of the stereotypes. Still, with well-crafted sequences that create real terror, I enjoyed it, and if you like the style I have no doubt you’ll have a blast.

7-6

(GRADES: Both are from 0 to 10. The left is an objective score based on artistic merit, the right is my personal enjoyment.)

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