
Blair Witch movie review: more like blah witch…
An entirely superfluous attempt to recapture the magic of the original film. A remake masquerading as a sequel that goes nowhere and has nothing new to say.
handcrafted film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
An entirely superfluous attempt to recapture the magic of the original film. A remake masquerading as a sequel that goes nowhere and has nothing new to say.
Cheap, lazy, and limited by its slavish adherence to the found-footage trope. Bonus: features the most cynical use ever of 3D to boost cinema ticket prices.
It’s the Where’s Waldo of spooky stories. (Where’s the ghost? Find the ghost!) But much less fun.
When the only mildly creepy thing a horror film trailer has to offer doesn’t appear in the actual film, that’s bad.
I can’t help but recall Eddie Murphy’s standup bit in which he suggested — this is decades ago now — that when a scary voice in your haunted house tells you to “Gettttt outtttt!” the best thing to do is leave…
Hollywood just isn’t even pretending anymore that they’re merely recycling the same stuff over and over again.
In Paranormal Activity 2, more regular folks in an ordinary suburban house are haunted by supernatural visitors while some cheap camcorders spy on it all for your entertainment. This flick sprang from (among other films)…
I suppose there’s a sort of cleverness in the direction Paranormal Activity 2 decided to take. Sequels are typically about one-upping their progenitor films by being bigger, faster, louder, more-er of everything. But the filmmakers went in the other direction: They aped the look and feel of Paranormal Activity but made everything else smaller and lesser. It’s a bold choice, if an odd one. And almost entirely predictably, it utterly fails to pay off.
I didn’t find the first film all that terrifying, only momentarily cheaply distracting, and I can’t see how this won’t be more of the same.
Catfish and I’m Still Here haven’t even opened yet, and already the filmmakers are having to defend their authenticity.