Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s 1999 movie The Blair Witch Project was an aberration–a successful one, but an aberration nonetheless–that has DNA that leads not only to low-budget horror features like the Paranormal Activity movies but an entire studio, Blumhouse Pictures, built on the model.

And a very successful model it is.  The last movie in Blumhouse’s Purge trilogy cost $10 million to produce, and earned almost $90 million at the worldwide box-office.

That’s a spectacular rate of return, which is why a sequel to the first Blair Witch movie isn’t a huge shock (that being said, there was one released a year after the original, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.  It was underrated, underperformed at the box office and is mostly unappreciated though –despite being structured more conventionally than the original movie–it’s a significantly better movie.

Which isn’t to say that The Blair Witch Project brought nothing to the table.  It was filmed in a manner that at the time was probably considered pretty daring–shot with hand-held cameras, and few of the niceties that accompany more traditional productions.

The problem was that, if you happen to be in a situation, you’re in it.  It’s by definition immersive. An imitation of that immediacy, that intensity is particularly difficult to copy–which isn’t to say that it hasn’t been tried prior.–and more often than not pales in comparison to the reality.

So, to be honest I am not expecting all that much from Blair Witch 2016, except more overt gore because today’s viewers won’t settle for the bloodlessness (never mind the almost nauseating camera work, the ancestor of today’s shaky-cam) that sufficed for the original movie.