A slick postscript to the 1999 low-budget hit panders to a young audience by swapping the originals slow-burn for gory theatrics and modern gadgets
Given the quite terrifying frequency at which low-budget, low-wattage and lowbrow horror films are released at the moment, its strange and sweetly nostalgic to remember a time when the genre was less ubiquitous.
Back in the early 1990s, scary movies were about as profitable as Adam Sandler movies are now. After the repetitive slasher movies of the 1980s, the genre had given up the ghost and no one was interested in bringing that ghost back to scare a new generation of horny teens. In 1996, Scream changed things somewhat, proving that with the right amount of energy, self-awareness and originality, horror films could make money again.
The next seminal moment arrived at the tail-end of the decade as The Blair Witch Project arrived out of nowhere, quite literally, with no stars and precious little budget yet it created an entirely new sub-genre: the found-footage horror. It utilised viral marketing like no film before and despite its inauspicious beginnings, managed to make $248m worldwide. A rushed, universally loathed sequel was thrown into cinemas the year after and forgotten about just as quickly; but the self-shot style of the original endured and its influence was felt for the following 17 years.
For a while it was refreshing with Cloverfield, Rec and The Bay all finding neat ways of telling familiar tales. But by the sixth Paranormal Activity film, the line: Put the camera away! became as tired as Ill be right back.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/sep/12/blair-witch-review-horror-sequel
