Some footage is better lost

petra_ste

score 4/10

Look, I've defended found-footage horror in the past - "har har why do they keep filming" notwithstanding. Matt Reeves' Cloverfield was neat, impressive, with its sense of scale and scope, the humongous threat glimpsed from the limited point of view of the protagonists; Jaume Balagueró's Rec was terrifying, with a masterful build-up of tension as the mystery surrounding the apartment building began to unravel. Blair Witch, however, is a worthless specimen of this particular genre.

If the first half or so is mediocre but tolerable, with a bunch of underdeveloped characters roaming the haunted forest, in the second part all semblance of storytelling goes out the window and this becomes some of the most tiresome stuff I've watched all year.

You can effectively recreate the experience by turning on a cheap camera, grabbing it and running at full speed through your local public gardens at night, while a bunch of your friends bellow and scream as you pass by; every now and then, someone gets a perspiring, hysterical close-up before being yanked away from the camera with a "whoosh!". This is anti-cinema; it's so shapeless and incoherent, it makes the first Paranormal Activity (i.e. the only one which wasn't completely terrible) look as tightly plotted as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

I suppose suckers for Blair Witch lore (if such people still exist seventeen years after the original) could be intrigued by the last ten minutes... except, the movie takes a supremely silly turn even then and implies aliens are behind it all. Wait, what?

Worth no viewings.

4/10

petra_ste 24 December 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3605183/