...that kickstarted the "found footage" subgenre. A college film student (Callie Hernandez) decides to do her class documentary project on her friend (James Allen McCune), or rather her friend's sister, Heather, another documentary filmmaker who went missing back in the late 1990's investigating a local legend about a witch's ghost that haunted the nearby woods. Hernandez and McCune, along with his friends (Brandon Scott & Corbin Reid) and a local couple (Wes Robinson & Valorie Curry) who supposedly know the woods, all head into the forest to see if they can find the abandoned house where Heather went missing.

I was a fan of the original but not the superfluous 2000 meta-sequel, so I went in with lowered expectations. I was interested in what director Adam Wingard would do with the material, as I was a big fan of two of his previous movies, You're Next and The Guest. This doesn't rate with either of those, but I did enjoy it almost as much as the original. It still uses the "found footage" gimmick, with all scenes supposedly filmed by camcorders, or, since this is more tech savvy, small GoPro style cameras worn by the cast, as well as a remote control camera drone. While the movie relies way too much on loud soundtrack-sting jump scares, I liked the decision to be more demonstrative as regards the witch's ghost, and there are some good creepy moments here and there.

The amount of false scares in this Blair Witch horror movie is actually maddening, even more so than most of today's horror movies. It's especially angering because if they had just simply, so simply avoided those horribly nonsense clichés, this movie would very likely have higher scores. Because the plot's premise, which is Heather's brother heading into the forest with his friends in an attempt to find more information on her mysterious disappearance, is something very easy to come up with, but is also appealing.

You already know and can expect that you're gonna see a larger group of friends face these terrifying circumstances together, with more characters equalling more dramas, arguments and a higher kill count. Blair Witch delivers all of these elements using very strong acting, enough swearing and several sequences that are actually terrifying, especially the ending which is as twisted as the first film. But even now, there's even some soundtrack accompanying the already terrifying scenes, which is completely unnecessary and they should've just stuck to the scary noises.

But when this horror sequel could've been flying high with the critics, receiving the praise and acclaim it could've chosen to get, it ruins the entire thing with just a few moments throughout: false jump-scares and terror that turns out to be fake. There's moments that are actually pretty scary, especially when you're watching it alone in a dark room. This movie actually depicts the horrifying Blair Witch in brief instances, which kind of eliminates the looming threat horror technique, but is acceptable. However, the good scares are overtaken by the terrible clichés.

Stop here if you want to go into the film without any further details, but these horrible, hated and excessively maddening false scares consist of the idiotic characters literally sneaking up on each other and scaring each other in already intense situations, when who in the actual blank does that? And the terror assigned for the film's first act all turns out to be set up by these two other hatable characters who shouldn't have been involved in anything other than the beholders of the found footage from The Blair Witch Project.

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