By Farhan Coleman
Staff Writer

2016 has been a really good year for horror movies. With films like The Conjuring 2, Lights Out, and Don’t Breathe all receiving critical and financial success, many people were curious to see if Blair Witch would continue the trend or just fall into the large pile of terrible, unwanted horror sequels.

Adam Wingard takes on the directing duties for Blair Witch, which also stars James Allen McCune, Callie Hernandez, Corbin Reid, and Brandon Scott. Blair Witch picks up 20 years after the events of The Blair Witch Project and follows James Donahue (McCune) as he leads a group of friends into the woods to try and find his sister who disappeared during the first film.

Like most found-footage horror films, Blair Witch starts off very slow and includes a few unnecessary exposition scenes. However, the way the film picks up toward the end makes up for its less than stellar start. Director Adam Wingard does a great job of slowly building the tension once the characters are in the woods. I was at the edge of my seat the entire time waiting for the next creepy thing to happen.

While this movie was very enjoyable, it’s guilty of having one of my biggest pet peeves in any horror movie, unnecessary jump scares. It feels like every five minutes one of the characters jumps in front of the camera for absolutely no reason. Every Time it happened I immediately became deeply annoyed and was briefly taken out of the film.

Overall Blair Witch is a very enjoyable film the breaks the stereotype that all horror sequels are bad.   

Final Score 6/10