Towards the middle of July, I wrote a piece about why I felt it was so exciting that The Woods was announced as Blair Witch, the third film in the series that began in 1999. If you remember, when the secret was revealed the hype train was unreal. It will probably go down as the biggest horror story of the year.

Now it’s Monday, and while I hoped a great many of you have gone to see it, it turns out that the film basically bombed in opening weekend. Expected to pull in around $20 million, it instead recorded a meager $9.7 million, shocking everyone. It seems that the nostalgia train that drove people to take their children to Jurassic World and The Force Awakens wasn’t present for Blair Witch.

I saw it early last week and I decided that I would save my review for today so that I could present it while discussing several key points, making this a very spoiler-heavy review. So, join me below and let me know your thoughts on the film after checking out my thoughts!

The film opens with James, the brother of The Blair Witch Project‘s Heather, showing a strange video to his friend Lisa, who is a documentarian. The video is taken from inside the house seen inside TBWP and James is convinced that he sees a momentary reflection of Heather’s face in a window. He becomes driven to search for his sister and find the house where she was last seen.

James and Lisa are joined by Peter, James’ friend since childhood, and Ashley, Peter’s girlfriend. The four of them make their way to Burkittsville, Maryland to meet up with Darknet666, the mysterious figure that sent James the video. Darknet666 turns out to be two local residents, Lane and Talia, who say that the only way they’ll show James where they found the video is by allowing them to join the camping expedition, which James agrees to rather reluctantly.

And so our six brave folk venture into the wilderness in search of the mysterious house that supposedly no one has been able to find. The search parties that scoured the forest back when Heather, Mike, and Josh went missing couldn’t find it but this group is convinced that they are going to solve the puzzle. Of course, everything goes to shit because what horror movie would be complete without things going wrong?

Alright, let me start with what I liked about this film, which is actually quite a lot.

First, the sound design is absolutely magnificent. The amount of work put into crafting a haunting and unsettling aural landscape is breathtaking and I could feel my ears standing on end trying to grasp every bit of sound offered.

Second, the film is undeniably one of the most tense experiences I’ve had in a long, long time. I was actually squirming in my seat on more than one occasion and I felt truly uncomfortable several times.

Third, the film feels in many ways like an evolution from the first. Whereas the first film was restricted to two cameras, this film packs in a TON of different options, allowing for interesting angles and, therefore, new ways for the characters to remain hands free, and more, like using a drone to scan the horizon. It feels like a representation of our time and technology. Sure, one day it will feel as dated as TBWP but I actually like the thought of that. Knowing that there will be a nostalgia aspect to this film in a decade or so (perhaps even sooner) gives it some charm.

Fourth, the characters are played very well. They are charming, engaging, and, in general, don’t really make stupid decisions. When they are placed in difficult situations, their decisions make sense. The horror they’ve entered doesn’t play nice and they’re along for the ride, even if they don’t realize it.

Fifth, the look of the film is pretty great. It’s obviously far more polished than TBWP since they’re recording in HD digital. That allows for a lot more detail and, as a result, I began scouring every frame trying to find something that appeared out of the ordinary. My own eyes began playing tricks on me as I sought to find something in the woods that didn’t quite fit.

Sixth, the third act of the film is batshit crazy and I loved it for that. This is where the tension ramps up to levels previously unfelt and it does its damnedest to ensure that it doesn’t let up for even one moment.

Okay, here’s where I’m going to start kvetching about the film. Be warned because here is where the spoilers begin to get really heavy.

The film doesn’t know what it wants to do. Does it want to push the mythology forward or does it want to remain rooted in what the original film created? The film takes place in the exact same woods with the exact same locations but it tries to elevate things into new territories with some plot devices that don’t really work all that well.

For example, the characters of Lane and Talia break off from the main group after being outed as having fabricating much of the evidence and scares that kick off the first night of the expedition. They leave in the afternoon and are seen again later that night. However, they explain that they’ve been wandering the woods for five days, introducing a strange time loop concept that is never given enough information to be made clear. I’m not asking for some sort of heavy exposition scene that explains the finer details of how this works but please give me just enough info so that I can come to my own conclusion or theory.

A really disappointing aspect of the movie is that it relies upon the same kinds of scares throughout the whole film. There’s a great buildup and then the payoff is something bursting onto the screen, jumping the audience and startling the person with the camera. Hell, at one point Lisa herself gets scared like this twice in the span of a minute and even she says something along the lines of, “I wish people would stop doing that.” Me too, Lisa. Me too.

When the movie does try out new scares, they don’t make sense in relation to what we’ve seen with The Blair Witch Project and the time between the first and this third film. The idea of the Blair Witch has supposedly been a part of Burkittsville lore for hundreds of years. In the first film, nothing overtly supernatural happened. Yes, some stick figures appeared out of nowhere and Josh disappeared only for his teeth, hair, and something else to show up in a random bundle on their sixth and final day in the woods.

The reason I bring this up is because things happen that suggest the Blair Witch is getting stronger, using her supernatural powers to lift tents into the dark of the night, only to drop them down dozens of feet away. If she’s been a legendary force for hundreds of years, what happened in the last 20 that gave her such a boost in power? It simply doesn’t make sense.

Coming back to the time loop issue, it affects the story in ways that are hard to wrap my head around. As I said previously, the movie begins with James showing Lisa a video that was sent to him. The footage that he watches and shares actually comes from the third act of the film, where Lisa is running through the house in the woods. There is no explanation how this footage could have traveled back through time to somehow get sent to James, kicking off the story.

Also, Ashley injures her foot relatively early in the film and it gets worse at a rate that doesn’t match our characters and their journey through the woods. Does her leg advance through time at a faster rate than her body? And what’s with the root that she pulls out of her calf? It’s a wonderfully gross visual but how did it get to that point?

While the third act is magnificent in so many ways, it’s also where it reveals a bit too much. There are many people who say, “It’s the third film so they HAVE to show the witch!” And they do, only never clearly. From what you do see, it looks like Tristana from [REC], all gaunt and gangly. She’s creepy but nothing we haven’t seen before. Had Wingard done something interesting with the witch, I’d be all for it. But they might as well have cast Javier Botet in the role of the Blair Witch and said, “Remember Mama and [REC]? Do that again.”

The end of the movie, by the way, is the biggest disappointment. It is basically the exact same ending as The Blair Witch Project, only this time we get to see over the shoulder of Lisa as she stands in the corner. A slight twist makes the scene stressful but the payoff left me frustrated.

There have been discussions about whether or not this film was necessary. I think that’s a pretty awful place to come at this movie from. Unless it’s a shot-for-shot remake based on the exact same script, I don’t think any film is “unnecessary”. Blair Witch brought new ideas to this series, which alone makes it worthwhile, and it was obviously created by people who have a strong passion and respect for horror.

The Final Word: Look, there’s a lot to love here, okay? Blair Witch definitely doesn’t skimp on creating tension and there are some genuine scares. However, it either strays too far from the original mythos or doesn’t stray far enough, never knowing where to plant its feet. It’s a great film to see in theaters and it’s something I’ll happily pop on during Halloween season but I don’t think I’ll find myself aching to revisit it with any greater frequency.