Reviews
[Review] ‘Blair Witch’ Has Some Good Ideas, But Doesn’t Do Enough With Them
Blair Witch, as a brand, has survived, since 1999, on the strength of two pieces of iconography.
The crossed sticks, bound at the center to form a human shape. And, the shadowy figure, standing in a corner, staring at the ground.
A complex mythology has sprouted up around The Blair Witch Project, though, scaffolded with books, graphic novels, two sequels and a trilogy of games from the early 2000s. But, Blair Witch — unlike Friday the 13th, or Godzilla, or Halloween — has no iconic character to build a world around. The Blair Witch herself is most chillingly effective when she remains unseen.
Enter Bloober Team, the talented developers behind this year’s Layers of Fear 2, tasked by Lionsgate with adapting the Blair Witch universe to the world of first-person horror games. In their last game, Bloober Team ransacked the history of film. To tell the story of a troubled movie shoot, Layers of Fear 2 turned to the past century of cinema, filling its haunted cruise ship setting with familiar images; splicing horrifying sights into the mind of its protagonist.
As a result, Layers of Fear 2 added little to the horror canon. Instead, it remixed horror’s best moments. Like a scary Ready Player One or Super Smash Bros. Ultimate it asked, “What if all the things you like… but together?” The game we got, as a result, was not very original. But, it was scary.
With Blair Witch, Bloober Team has been forced to narrow its scope. Layers of Fear 2 was a game about movies; Blair Witch is a game about a movie. The palate Bloober once had — the twins from The Shining can go in this hallway, the shower scene from Psycho can go in this room — now includes some sticks and people looking at the ground.
That may sound reductive. And, to be sure, Bloober’s approach to Blair Witch feels reductive. It never digs deep enough to find something unique. Instead, Blair Witch is content to hang a bunch of wooden totems in the trees and scatter a ton of Polaroids of people doing the Blair Witch pose around the woods. It has no new scares for you. It simply hopes that you will see the familiar iconography and shudder like Pavlov’s most cowardly dog.
Speaking of dogs, this game has one. Bullet is a good boy and you’ll be happy to know that you can pet him. There’s a whole action wheel of other things you can do with your German Shepherd buddy, too. You can tell him to stay close to you when danger is nearby, or command him to seek out the source of a scent. You can also reprimand him — an action I avoided at all costs.
Narratively and mechanically, Bullet is your greatest asset. Your character, Ellis, has joined the search for a young boy who went missing in the Black Hills Forest, the Blair Witch’s stomping grounds. As you explore the woods, you’ll find discarded items that Bullet can sniff to help lead you to the missing child.
Some of these objects are out in plain sight. Others, though, you’ll need to manipulate time and space to find. With this mechanic, Blair Witch, pays homage to its found footage roots. Early on in the game, you’ll find a camcorder, and as Blair Witch progresses, you’ll pick up mini VHS tapes to watch. These tapes often correspond to the environment that you find them in, and rewinding or fast-forwarding the footage will alter the world around you.
This is Blair Witch’s best idea. After periods of searching the woods to no avail, I would check the tape, and often, find the solution. This was always satisfying. But, Blair Witch doesn’t take this mechanic far enough. The puzzles are simple. It was never so much a question of whether I could use my wits to solve a puzzle. It was more a question of whether I would remember to check the tape. As I played, I thought of the excellent “Effect and Cause” mission from Titanfall 2. That 15-minute level does more to explore the idea of manipulating space and time than Blair Witch does across it’s 6-8 hour runtime — and this is a core mechanic.
The problem is, Blair Witch has a lot of mechanics. There’s Bullet’s command wheel, the camcorder, flashlight battles against the beasts that lurk in the woods, a cell phone, a walkie-talkie. None of these are especially poorly executed. The cell phone, in particular, is a wonderful slice of ‘90s nostalgia. But, with such a breadth of tools, Blair Witch neglects to provide much depth for any of them.
And, in its most climactic moments, Blair Witch neglects all of these ideas. Instead, it asks you to walk agonizingly slowly or for agonizingly long amounts of time. It is Bloober Team’s least scary, least interesting game.
There needs to be more to Blair Witch.
Blair Witch review code for PC provided by the publisher.
Blair Witch is out now on Xbox One and PC
Reviews
‘The Last Temptation of Becky’ Review: Threequel Has A Blast Destroying Nazis [Fantasia 2026]
Over the course of three films, Lulu Wilson’s Becky Hooper has emerged as the unlikeliest of action heroines. What kicked off as a surprisingly brutal thriller back in 2020’s Becky evolved into a full-blown franchise with 2023’s The Wrath of Becky. Now there’s a third and possibly final film with The Last Temptation of Becky.
The latest entry hails from Jenn Wexler, the director of The Ranger and The Sacrifice Game, who co-writes the script with Matt Angel from a story by Angel and Suzanne Coote (The Wrath of Becky). Temptation opens on a now-adult Becky on her latest mission with the CIA. The caper is a complete failure, ending unsurprisingly in extremely bloody fashion.
In a post-mission debrief, CIA director Baker (Fiona Marr) explains to the young agent that she’s too much of a loose cannon, but as flashbacks to her psych evaluations and select events from the first film confirm, Becky has never truly recovered from the murder of her father by white supremacists.
It makes sense, then, that this outing brings Nazis back to the forefront as a kind of full circle moment. Becky’s new adversary is General Wilhelm Reuss (Neil Patrick Harris), a devout member of the Reich who believes so strongly in the cause that he recently moved his family, along with enforcer Russell and Dr Friedrich Metzger (James Urbaniak), to the Wolf’s Lair in Poland.
Turns out that despite the passage of several in-universe years between films, Becky still hasn’t learned how to play well with others or follow the rules, despite the guiding touch of handler Montana (Kate Siegel, Hush) and the model set by fellow agent Rigby (Brandon Flynn, Hellraiser). When Becky is given one final opportunity to prove her worth to the CIA, it sets up a collision course between her and Reuss that is guaranteed to be an all-out bloodbath.
The series continues to get good mileage casting against-type for its villains, although it should be noted that NPH doesn’t get as much to do as either the first film’s Kevin James or the sequel’s Sean William Scott. That’s because, in part, Reuss’s family comes as an evil package. Introduced in a great comedic scene when Becky checks in – all smiles – to the family’s Nazi motel, mother Helga (Catherine Walker), daughter Luisa (Aiofe Hughes), and son Otto (Noah Leggott) are as much of a threat as the patriarch.
Of course, the main selling feature of the film is Becky, and Wilson continues to have a blast bringing the prickly, quippy, and trigger-happy character to life. Wilson remains an absolute delight, from her delicious voiceover (“Mission ‘find out what these fuckers are up to’: commence”) to her dinner table banter with the Reuss family (“Where do you heil from?” she asks them). Three films in, there’s no fear that Becky could actually die, but the film isn’t afraid to put its characters through the wringer – Becky sports a broken nose for most of the film’s last act – and there are, naturally, some extremely cathartic Nazi casualties.
While there’s a disappointing lack of rocket launchers in this entry, by employing the tropes of the spy movie, The Last Temptation of Becky does get to have its James Bond/Q moment when Montana walks her pint-sized agent through a litany of Chekhov’s items that are inevitably used to destroy Nazis later. Ditto Becky’s newfound interest in fencing with Rigby, which serves her well when she goes up against Luisa in a duel. This sequence also includes the best exchange of the film, when Becky enquires where the girl went to Hitler Youth Camp and Luisa replies: “Mississippi.”
The Nazis are rightfully portrayed as a legitimate threat and, simultaneously, the subject of complete mockery. The brownies – armed guards who do the dirty work of patrolling the woods and escorting prisoners – are comprised of men who explain they’re just following orders or they are “media and Performing Arts majors from Ohio State.” They’re idiots who are the brunt of multiple jokes and insults throughout the film, including Becky’s immediately iconic jacket emblazoned with “Fuck Nazis” on the back.
Then there’s the hilarious reveal of Reuss and Dr. Metzger’s master plan, which is simultaneously pathetic and hilariously short-lived…because even The Last Temptation of Becky understands that the only logical response to Nazis making a literal comeback in 2026 is to barf on them, punch them in the face, or blow them up. Preferably all of the above.
If there’s a misstep, it’s the film’s uneasy mix of practical FX and CGI. An early death involving a drone and a landmine would be much more compelling if the accompanying explosion and fire were real, and a decapitation winds up looking cheap because of the digital blood. Compare this to another death later when someone bleeds from every facial orifice: it’s clearly practical and, as a result, looks great.
There are a few other instances of violence that miss the mark. A potentially brutal knife in the mouth is partially obscured; some of the hand-to-hand combat in the last act doesn’t hit terribly hard. But overall, it’s impossible not to cheer on Becky as she fucks Nazis up at every opportunity.
If that’s what your heart desires, then The Last Temptation of Becky will be right up your alley. Here’s hoping that, despite the possible implications teased by the title, Lulu Wilson decides to return to the role every three years (or less!) for a new Becky film.
The Last Temptation of Becky made its world premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.
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