I have a history with the Blair Witch movies. Back when the first one came out, a friend of mine saw it in theaters, and it scared her, so she came back to her house and told us all the story of the movie. We were sitting in a circle on the living room floor in the dark, at night, listening to her tell the story, and it was perfect. It gave me chills. Years later, I saw the movie, and it bored me to tears. It's a story that works better for me when told in the dark like a campfire story. The sequel came out and everyone hated it, but I saw it and I liked it. I think it did what the first one failed to do for me: tell a story that works better on film, with twists that work in the context of the movie. Now, all these years later and after the failure of the second movie (I was pretty much the only one who liked it) this reboot appears, in a genre oversaturated with "found footage" movies that have lost their luster through over use. A lot of people weren't fans of this movie, but I decided to give it a chance anyway. We'll see what happens.
This movie is kind of a hybrid between a sequel and a reboot. It focuses on some college students, one of whom is the brother of Heather, the girl who disappeared in the woods in the first movie. He was just a kid when she disappeared, but he's always wondered what happened to her, so now that he's old enough, he's decided to go back to the woods where she disappeared and investgate what happened to her (because camping in those woods worked out so well for the people in the first movie). One if his friends is filming everything that happens as a documentary based on his search for the truth about what happened to his sister. So just to recap, these idiots thought it would be a great idea to LITERALLY do exactly what the crew from the first movie that led to their disappearance. Smart move.
Aside from the fact that the idea behind this movie is completely idiotic (here, let's go alone into the woods where a bunch if people disappeared the last time they went into these woods), the acting isn't bad. These guys are idiots, but they're BELIEVABLE idiots. Some of the college students are dicks though, and they keep mocking the local kids who are serving as their guides in the woods. Plus some of them have never gone camping before and they don't even know how to out a tent together, and they get all pissy about it. Only like 20 minutes into the movie and I'm already rooting for the witch to kill them all.
As I said before in one of my other reviews, I think I'm burnt out on found footage movies. They're all starting to look the same to me. Shaky cam footage, idiots who hold onto their cameras long after anyone else would have dropped the camera, unseen horrors in the dark, all of them die or disappear, years later footage is found, we watch the footage and die of boredom. Yawn. I just can't muster up the "give-a-crap" to care much about what happens to these characters. It's pretty boring. They even tried to throw some "twists" in here, but nope, still boring. It feels like I'm watching the first movie again, only anything that seemed fresh and new back then is stale and tedious. Have you ever heard the saying "second verse, same as the first, only a little bit louder and a little bit worse"? That's this movie. It's too late for me, but save yourself the trouble and just watch the first one again. Or better yet, spend two hours watching paint dry. It will be more interesting.
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