Of all genres, horror is one of the hardest movie styles to pull off. Keeping the audience entertained, paranoid, and “in the dark” on the twists and turns throughout the movie is a difficult task to accomplish, and Blair Witch fails to bring these things together effectively.  In comparison, the original “Blair Witch Project” released in 1999 left viewers happily disturbed and confused by the end, something the lazily-named sequel Blair Witch falls short of accomplishing.

The movie follows James Donahue (James Allen McCune), a young man who finds a video containing an image of what he thinks is his sister, Heather, who went missing with her two friends while investigating the story of the Blair Witch spirit that inhabits the woods of Maryland. His friend, Lisa Arlington (Callie Hernandez) is filming a documentary on the legend. She and two other friends (played by Brandon Scott and Corbin Reid) follow James into the forests of Maryland where– in search of his missing sister– they are shadowed by an invisible evil that will bring their worst fears to the surface.

The action takes place through the lens of a film camera held by one of the characters in a style called “found footage” which has seen much success in movies like Paranormal Activity, VHS, and The Fourth Kind. But despite conforming to the popular horror movie trend, this time it did not seem to have the proper effect of absorbing the audience and making them ask “could this have really happened?”

The movie did install a sense of paranoia as there was plenty of mistrust between the characters who were ignorant to the supernatural entity that manipulated them. However, the acting is average and the plot is buried in horror cliches. The movie relies too much on using the first movie’s plot and trying to play it off as a recurrence of events. The potential was there, but the result unfortunately falls short.

Blair Witch is the nightmare that never was. The idea of being trapped in the woods with a legendary supernatural entity is an intriguing one, but overall, the movie is a let down and the only truly scary thing was the cost I had to pay to see such an average film. Although it had its entertaining moments, I suggest you wait for the movie to come out on Redbox or Netflix. Hopefully, the future will produce a truly scary movie that I could rate an 8 or higher, but for now, I must give The Blair Witch an unenthusiastic 5 out of 10.