The Ghoulish Plot: I was already a young adult when the first “Blair Witch Project” came out in 1999, and the internet was still new enough that I saw the movie in the theater with a person who had been convinced that it was actually all real. The movie was already pretty effectively scary, but seeing it with somebody who thought it actually happened took it to another level. The rest of us who knew it was fake were also super kind and spent the rest of the night confirming for him that, yup, that was totally real, there are witches in the woods, dude! And we just let him keep getting increasingly more freaked out. Luckily, in 2024 we’ve all become very smart and discerning media consumers and nobody falls for insane nonsense online anymore and it hasn’t permeated everything in our lives and even affected our Democracy!

This movie was released in 2016 and is meant as a more direct follow-up to the original film than the sequel that followed. One of the original trio’s siblings is still haunted by their sudden disappearance and wants to take a new, younger and more technically-equipped crew into the same forest to see if they can figure out what happened. This is the same found-footage scenario, but instead of just two cameras they now have phones, drones, GoPros and are hauling around memory cards instead of film.

The crew pairs up with two local weirdos who claim to know where the witch’s cabin is located, and off they go into the woods. Before long, they find themselves lost, seeing weird stick-men in the trees, hearing cackling and then get lured into a creepy cabin in the middle of nowhere by the promise of a reunion that goes predictably awry, including being chased by something that is either a demon or a weird inbred redneck creature that has NOT been getting the right nutrition for bone growth.

The Scariest Part of the Movie: Just like the 1999 original, it’s the woods. I grew up near the woods. I have spent a lot of time in the woods. The woods are scary. Give me Compton in 1995 any day of the week over being stranded in the woods. In fact, I have been to Compton multiple times and it has always been welcoming and fun; drive around in some super-rural areas and see the shanties covered in Trump flags and “No Trespassing” signs and you know that place is filled with untreated mental health problems carrying loaded shotguns.

Spookiness Factor: we all know it’s fake and the whole “found footage” thing is fairly played out, but by the end of the movie I was jumping and nervous, even though the characters in this one are nowhere near as endearing as the original.

Rating: 6 out of 10 Twix Bars