‘Blair Witch’ Review: Fad scares

Oggs Cruz

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‘Blair Witch’ Review: Fad scares
'Blair Witch' doesn't do much to reinvigorate the genre, writes Oggs Cruz, but there are some notable moments

The film, which essentially stitches together low-rent footage supposedly created by fictitious amateur videographers who foolishly entered a forest famous for a witch, turned lo-fi aesthetics fashionable in gloss-addicted Hollywood. Of course, it makes a lot of sense. As proven by the commercial success of The Blair Witch Project, there is real gold in what looks like garbage.

Unsurprisingly, The Blair Witch Project spawned a lot of copycats, most of which utilized the idea of turning filmmakers into victims of their own addiction with documenting everything happening around them. With each and every iteration of the trope, weaknesses of the genre are exposed, with a lot of the filmmakers responsible for the iteration doing nothing to graduate the genre from utter repetitiveness.

 

Faults and pleasures

Adam Wingard’s Blair Witch bears all the faults of the genre pushed to the forefront by its direct predecessor. It also showcases a lot of its pleasures. 

The film centers on a group of camera-wielding youngsters who again foolishly venture into the witch’s forest. They all have their respective agenda. James (James Allen McCune) wants to search for his long-lost sister, the presumably dead star of Myrick and Sanchez’s film. Lisa (Callie Hernandez), a film student, wants to make a documentary about James’ search. Peter (Brandon Scott) and Ashley (Corbin Reid) just want to tag along. They are assisted by Lane (Wes Robinson) and Talia (Valorie Curry), locals responsible for uploading the video that pushed James in his search. 

 

Characterization is a weak point here. 

The genre of course does not provide much wiggle room to explore motivations beyond what is said during idle conversations caught on camera, leaving the characters without anything to turn them into anything more than just warm bodies waiting to die. This however shouldn’t be an excuse for laziness, which is Blair Witch’s biggest fault. Wingard doesn’t make an effort to stray away from the genre’s tired tropes and clichés, relying relentlessly on everything that has been done before. If the film feels old, it is only because it is.

Still scary 

To say that Blair Witch is ineffective horror is not exactly accurate.

There are parts of the film that showcase the genre at its best. When the action does start, Wingard doesn’t let go, allowing the conceit of different cameras and different perspectives to work in favor of building up suspense and tension.

 

However, Wingard eventually falls into the trap of favoring incoherence for the film’s climax. After very precisely engineered scares that raised hopes for the genre, the film turns into a mess of fast cuts, unflattering close-ups, screams, and other sound effects.

In the end, Blair Witch is nothing more than another entry following a stubborn fad. Its promises are fake, and its effects don’t last. – Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ ‘Tirad Pass.’ Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema.






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