‘The Blair Witch’ squeezes last drop of fun from dead-end franchise

“Blair Witch” opened in theaters on September 16. Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

By Adam Schalke, Staff-Reporter

Seventeen years ago, “The Blair Witch Project” shook up the established formula for horror movies with its “found footage” direction and style of cinematography, all to unpredicted critical and commercial success.
Unfortunately the film that was once considered so trailblazing fell victim to one of its genres oldest cliches; the never-ending franchise. The latest addition, simply titled Blair Witch, will hopefully be the last entry in the series.

The film is a carbon copy of its predecessor. The story focuses on a young man, James, whose sister was one of the people who went missing after the events in the original film and goes out into the woods to see if she’s still alive. He brings a group of friends and a couple of locals to join him as he documents his search on camera. After spending a night in the woods supernatural phenomena begins to terrorize the group as they try with all their might to flee the woods, haunted by the Blair Witch.

One of the benefits to seeing a film that’s such a blatant repeat of an earlier installment is that any cheesy or gimmicky twists are bypassed entirely. While there are enough easy scares to make one jump in their seat, the movie itself is almost completely forgettable. If we’re lucky, this will be the movie that lays the “Blair Witch” franchise to rest