Blair Witch (2016)

Movies

Thoughts

This is such a dogshit movie, and it only gets worse with every passing year. But I like watching it because it's a product of its time, tbh. The OG Blaire Witch is still quite spooky, but it's most well known for being an abject phenomenon when it first released, possibly the first "viral" film. Found footage was fresh and startling.

Blaire Witch 2016 doesn't get that benefit. But it's not just bad because found footage is passe - lots of modern movies do found footage quite well. No, it's bad because it's fucking humorless and bland and stale. It shrugs from expected scare to expected scare like a shambling corpse.

It has nothing of value to say, no thesis to it. And I'm not saying that every horror movie needs to be a Scream-like critique about horror as a genre. Mindless horror can be a blast too. But I don't spend enough time with the cast to want them not to get hurt, and I don't get to see them be big enough assholes to want them to get hurt. It's a grey blob of a film. And it's not even scary. Boo.