Blair Witch - 2016

 "At this point," thought I after finishing Book of Shadows, "I might as well close the loop."

I had seen Blair Witch before, I think, sometime around when it was sort of new probably.  This would have been when I was newly single, breaking up with my wife in 2016 and I probably got pretty drunk and watched this alone in my apartment, pretending not to care about the new status that haunted me:  Single.

Single is a good way to start this review I guess, or at least I'll make it work.  How's this:  There is one single good Blair Witch movie.  Sigh.  This one starts out and the idea is fine enough.  First of all, we return to the found footage look from the original Blair Witch instead of the classic cinematography from Book of Shadows.  A girl is making a documentary for her senior class about her friend who's Heather Donahue's brother.  Heather Donohue was the girl from the first Blair Witch, and she's been missing.  He wants to go investigate, so boom, a group of four friends heads out to the same woods.

The idea is to have another batch of fresh idiot teens for ol' Blairy, and I like that.  The group picks up a tour leader couple, and so now the six of them go out to the woods.   They cross a river and one of them cuts her foot.  We know that's going to be bad.  But what's really bad is that once at the camp site, they go to sleep to have the trademark night noises bother them, and tensions among the four friends and the two others rise while the scares come up.

I will make a short list here about what the problems are:  1 we have too many allusions and follows in the footsteps in the first one - do your own thing!  I heard a great quote once in MST3K once: never put a better movie referenced in your shitty movie.  2 there is never a human moment, once, for anyone in this movie.  Hope you don't like any writing behind your cannon fodder.  3 having the series now use actual supernatural elements in it?  Why would that make it scarier, or better?  4 Having some of the humans be the bad guy at some points?  Again, does that make it scarier or better?

There's more, but those are the ones I think of right off.  There's still some chilling segments, but overall, this feels like just another horror movie.  Generic is another word for that I guess.  It's any movie set in the woods, and since found footage had taken off, it's also any found footage movie.  I will grant there's not a ton of wasted time with annoying shit like in some found footage movies, but still, this movie is garbage for the most part.