BRIGHTBURN

D.C. Comics had a line of books called Elseworlds, where one change in a superhero's life would send them on a completely different trajectory.  This idea applies to Brightburn, a superhero horror movie that follows a simple idea: What if young Superman was evil?

In the small town of Brightburn, Kansas, farmers Tori and Kyle Breyer (Elizabeth Banks, David Denman) have been trying to have a child unsuccessfully when the answer literally falls out of the sky.  Twelve years later, their son Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) is going through puberty.  But it's very different for him.

Brandon's growing up is accompanies by super powers: super strength, toughness, flight, heat vision, super speed, and more.  Unfortunately, Brandon is hearing voices from the alien ship he arrived in; he wears a creepy homemade mask; and he feels no guilt when he hurts people -- and he does a lot more than just hurt anyone who he thinks is getting in his way.  When people start vanishing and dying, Kyle becomes very suspicious of his son; but his mother insists that Brandon is a good boy and that there's got to be some other explanation.

Produced by Peter Gunn, Brightburn really doesn't do anything interesting with its premise.  Jackson A. Dunn is suitably creepy as the sociopath with the power to do pretty much whatever he wants to anyone he wants -- but we don't get beneath his surface, except for seeing him as a literal alien invader.  Banks and Denman play the doting mother and stern father, parental archetypes often seen in movies.  And there are moments of brief but extreme gore, plus an ever-growing body count.  Brightburn is a superficial approach to a radical  change in an iconic superhero.

Overall grade: C+
Reviewed by James Lynch

US

A good horror movie requires several elements, from scares and originality to consistency and following its own rules.  Us, the latest movie from writer-director Jordan Peele, manages the former pretty well but falls short of the latter.

Back in 1986, young Adelaide wandered away from her parents at a carnival in Santa Clara.  She wound up at a creepy, dimly-lit hall of mirrors ("find yourself") where she saw something that left her traumatized.

In the present, Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong'o) finds herself on vacation at a summer house in Santa Clara with her family: laid-back husband Gabe (Winston Duke), cell phone-focused teen daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), and young son Jason (Evan Alex), obsessed with a magic trick and usually wearing a monster mask.  They meet up with friends and have a good time, but Adelaide feels like several coincidences are building up around them.

Things start to happen late at night when the Wilson family find themselves under siege by their doppelgangers.  Four people, dressed all in red and wielding extremely long scissors, are pursing the Wilson family -- and the duplicates are seemingly stronger, faster, and more twisted than the originals.  Red, Adelaide's duplicate and the only one who talks, explains that the copies are the Tethered and they want to kill the originals, or take their places, or... something.

Us has its scary moments, but the movie makes less sense the more one tries to think about it.  The motivations of the Tethered seem to switch from scene to scene, as are their abilities.  Some plot elements are forgotten about, while others seem to come and go as is convenient for a specific scene.  And there's one big plot twist that simply makes no sense.  The cast of the Wilson family do double duty as themselves and their evil counterparts, and Lupita Nyong'o has a lot of intensity as the mother fighting for her family, but Us is just uneven.

Overall grade: C+
Reviewed by James Lynch

HEREDITARY

Family issues and haunting concerns are featured in Hereditary.  This movie is sometimes effective, sometimes wandering in the tone it wants to set.

The movie seems to begin as a ghost movie.  Ellen Graham has passed away from cancer in her 70s, and her family deals with her death in different ways.  Daughter Annie (Toni Collette) has conflicted feelings about her late mother and throws herself into her art: making miniature scenes from her life.  Her teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff) seems concerned with teen interests, like getting high and women in his class.  Quiet younger daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) makes clicking noises and has a disturbing reaction to finding a dead bird outside her classroom.  And father Steve (Gabriel Byrne) just wants to hold his family together.

The movie also enters into ghostly territory: figures appear in the shadows and vanish when lights are turned on, a blob of light seems to flow along the walls or follow people.  But when a horrible tragedy strikes the Grahams, the movie shifts into a different mode: family drama, where the amily members deal with a new horror, often in destructive and vindictive ways.  Then the movie shifts a final time into near-gonzo horror, where things really go insane.

This shift in tones weakens Hereditary, but there's plenty that does work here.  Toni Collette is very good as the mother dealing with both her issues with her late mother and concerns about her family.  Milly Shapiro is nicely creepy as the kid who may have something sinister going on in her own little world.  The miniatures add to the disturbing atmosphere, and while the end phase is crazy it also builds suspense and horror.  I just wish there was more consistency here.

Overall grade: B-
Reviewed by James Lynch

A QUIET PLACE

The monsters have arrived -- and the best protection against them is silence.  A Quiet Place is an effective, creepy horror movie.

When the movie opens, we see the Abbott family -- father Lee (John Krasinski), mother Evelyn (Emily Blunt), and little kids Regan (Millicent Simmons), Marcus (Noah Jupe), and Beau (Cade Woodward) silently going through a drugstore in an abandoned town for supplies.  They speak only in sign language and avoid any possible noises.  We soon find out why there's such a focus on silence: When Beau sneaks out a toy rocket, given to him by Regan, that makes sounds, we learn why they're so quiet: An insect-like creature appears out of nowhere and kills him.

 A year later, the remaining Abbotts are living on a farm.  Lee is taking care of his family, using a radio to try and find other survivors, and working on an earpiece to help his daughter Regan hear.  Evelyn is pregnant and getting ready for the birth of their newest child.  Regan is dealing with her guilt over the death of Beau, and Marcus is nervous about the ever-present possibility that the creatures will return.  While the family do certain normal things (like playing Monopoly with cloth pieces), they've also soundproofed their house and still live in fear.  And the creatures are still around -- and show up at almost any noise...

A Quiet Place works pretty well.  The movie (directed by star John Krasinski) wisely holds off showing most of the creatures until the end, giving us the knowledge that they're fast, deadly, and alien-appearing.  (We never find out where they came from.)  The cast does very well, showing a family trying to stay together in a world where sounds can lead to death.  And the presence of so much silence creates great tension, as actions we wouldn't normally think twice about can be a signal for the monsters to show up.  A Quiet Place is a solid horror movie.

Overall grade: B+
Reviewed by James Lynch

AMERICAN SCARY dvd

There was a time when television networks would get "horror hosts" to introduce, and comment on, the horror movies the networks were airing.  American Scary is a look at this tradition, from its beginnings, success, and vanishing.

Most of the horror hosts have a good deal in common: incredibly low budgets and production values, silly and corny sense of humor, appearing on regional/local TV stations, and either adoring or trashing the movies that they were showing; many of the female horror hosts amped up their sex appeal.  Heck, the names themselves give a feel for the sensibility that they gave: Ghoulardi, Vampira, Svengoolie (and Son of Svengoolie), Baron von Wolfstein, Elvira, A. Ghastlee Ghoul, etc.  Many of these former or present horror hosts are interviewed; and there are commentaries by such folks as Leonard Maltin, Neil Gaiman, and Joel Hodgson.

The horror hosts appeared as a way to add something more to a movie that was often not that good, and over time many of them became as or more popular than the movies they were showing.  As many of them appeared long before the VCR, lots of people would sneak around or stay up late just to see them.  Some horror hosts used the Internet to communicate with each other and the fans, while others migrated to the Web for their fans.

After the gushing and fandom, there's a real sense of loss when the horror hosts went into decline as television stations had less and less local programming and more national shows.  But there's a sense of revival when Neil Gaiman had the chance to be a horror host for a time, and how Mystery Science Theater 3000 sort of carried on the tradition.

I've seen few of these horror hosts (except for the new Svengoolie on MeTV), but American Scary makes me wish there were more of these hosts, to inform and joke about the horror movies that get broadcast.  While this documentary is unabashedly all in favor of the horror hosts, it provides a great look at their history and influence in the television world.  These folks may not be scary, but this is worth checking out.

Overall grade: A-
Reviewed by James Lynch

IT COMES AT NIGHT

So, what happens when you combine a plague, paranoia, and a low budget with a cast of less than a dozen people?  It Comes at Night is such a movie -- and it's painfully flat and boring.

The movie opens with someone apparently infected and sick, being taken to the forest for a mercy killing and body burning.  We're told (not shown, alas) that there's some sort of incredibly infectious disease that's caused the collapse of civilization.  Paul (Joel Edgerton) survives, with gas masks and plenty of firearms, in his house in the woods with his teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), and the family dog.  They follow Paul's rules, live simply, and barricade themselves in the house at night.

Their existence is changed when someone tries to break into the house at night.  This would be Will (Christopher Abbott), who's searching to trade food for water for his family.  Paul is initially skeptical, but he eventually allows Will's family -- young wife Kim (Riley Keough) and their young son Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner) -- to integrate with his family, living and working together.  But Paul's fear of infection remain, there are mysterious sounds in the woods, and Travis is having both nightmares and fantasies about the newcomers to their home.

While bare-bones movies can sometimes work (Clerks, The Blair Witch Project), It Comes at Night doesn't work on so many levels.  We never get to learn anything about the characters, making it hard to root for or sympathize with any of them.  (The bland acting doesn't help either.)  Most of the scares come from Travis' nightmares, which isn't an effective source of terror.  And there's little payoff for the few mysteries introduced in the movies.  This was a huge disappointment.

Overall grade: F
Reviewed by James Lynch

ALIEN: COVENANT

So, who wants their homicidal, adaptive alien served up with a side of philosophy?  If you do, then you'll like Alien: Covenant a whole lot more than I did.   This entry in the Alien franchise tries for greater depth but proves boring.

After a discussion of creations and creators, we see the starship Covenant on its way to colonize a distant planet.  The trip is scheduled for seven years, with both passengers and crew in suspended animation, with synthetic Walter (Michael Fassbender) minding the systems.  But a cosmic event damages the ship, killing the captain and dozens of the passengers.  While conducting repairs, the crew picks up an automated message (actually a John Denver song), which leads them to a much closer, potentially inhabitable planet.

The new planet seems both perfect and mysterious: The environment is fine, but why is their Earth wheat growing there?  It turns out that this is where the ship from the movie Prometheus landed, and the only survivor is the synthetic David (also played by Michael Fassbender).  And worse, the members of the Covenant can get infected by the xenomorphs by spores, eggs, and other methods.  Who will survive?

The bigger question: Who cares?  All of the characters in Alien: Covenant have virtually no personality or characteristics, making them disposable and forgettable.  The xenomorphs are almost included as an afterthought, the killer ticking clock for the crew on the planet.  As for the issues of who creates life and what its purpose is, this movie spends a lot of time discussing this but won't be remembered for it.  This movie is a very weak entry in a generally strong franchise.

Overall grade: D
Reviewed by James Lynch

PHOENIX FORGOTTEN

The horror movie Phoenix Forgotten is incredibly easy to summarize: The Blair Witch Project with aliens in the desert instead of a witch in the woods.  This found-footage horror movie often copies The Blair Witch Project but doesn't improve or add anything to the genre.

Phoenix Forgotten is shot as two different hand-held camera movies.  In the present, Sophie (Florence Hartigan) returns to her home in Phoenix, Arizona to shoot a documentary.  Back in 1997, at Sophie's sixth birthday party everyone saw a series of lights in a V formation appear and move in the sky.  Sophie's teenage brother Josh (Luke Spencer Roberts) -- who always has a camcorder with him and loves science fiction -- is convinced the lights are aliens.  He recruits friends Ashley (Chelsea Lopez) and Mark (Justin Matthews) to interview people and eventually head into the desert; after the latter, they were never seen again.  Sophie interviews the teens' parents (even hers), police officers, politicians, and even folks in the Air Force to try to figure out what happened to her brother and his friends.

The other "found footage" is from the camcorder recordings John was always making.  Most of it was benign interviews with folks in the town.  This being a horror movie, the "final" tape surfaces, showing what happened to the three teens.

There's very little to like in Phoenix Forgotten.  The characters are one-dimensional, the movie really copies far too much from The Blair Witch Project (from recurring symbols and hand prints to a finale set in an empty house and the recording device on its side) and delivers few scares beyond mystery sounds in the distance and odd ailments affecting the teens.  And a postscript trying to link the movie to real-life events feels a bit desperate.  This isn't a terrible movie, but it's not far off.  Pass.

Overall grade: D
Reviewed by James Lynch

TRAIN TO BUSAN

The zombie movie has its protagonists battling in a variety of ways and places -- but I don't think any of these have been on the train before.  The South Korean horror movie Train to Busan takes a more claustrophobic -- and emotional -- take on the zombie uprising.

Seok-woo (Yoo Gong) is a hedge fund manager whose obsession with work has led to the end of his marriage -- and a great emotional distance with his young daughter, Soo-an (Soo-an Kim).  When he really blows things for her birthday, Soo-an insists on getting to visit her mother in the southern town of Busan.  So Seok-woo gets them train tickets, expecting to drop her off in about an hour.  The train has a variety of people: a tough guy and his very pregnant wife, a high school baseball team (including a shy guy and the cheerleader who teases him), a pair of elderly sisters, and several others.

Unfortunately, what should have been a quick trip is substantially changed by... zombies!  The infected are snarling, feral, disjointed, fast creatures who bite at the non-infected -- and who turn them into zombies within seconds.  In less than a day South Korea is a shambles, with massive devastation and military quarantine zones.  And it's hard to know what is worse for the passengers on the train: the possibility of being stuck in close quarters with a zombie, or the stops at train station, where the quiet is often broken by the attack of dozens, or even hundreds, of zombies.

While Train to Busan doesn't reinvent the zombie movie, it is a very effective entry in the genre.  There's an ongoing theme of altruism vs. selfishness, where people wanting to save everyone risk more, while those looking out only for themselves seem to last a lot longer.  These fast zombies are pretty scary, and even their one weakness just creates more tension.  The actors are all good, and the movie is quite unpredictable when it comes to telling who'll survive until the end of the movie (though the survivors' numbers get whittled down very quickly).  Train to Busan has scares, tears, and it'll stay with you long after the train ride ends.

Overall grade: A-
Reviewed by James Lynch

THE BELKO EXPERIMENT

The philosophical/hypothetical question "Is it better to kill a certain number of people if twice as many people will be killed otherwise?" gets the big screen treatment in The Belko Experiment.  This movie, written by James Gunn, takes a dark (and sometimes darkly comic) look at what people will do when given an impossible choice.

It's a strange start to the day for the employees at Belko Industries.  On the way to the office building in Bogota, Colombia, armed guards search every vehicle and turn away the locals.  We get to know some of the 80 employees there: romantic couple Mike (John Gallagher Jr.) and Leandra (Adria Arjona), responsible boss Barry (Tony Goldwin), awkward and creepy guy Wendell (John C. McGinley), maintenance men, the stoner employee, the hostile woman, etc.

Things get much worse when steel walls rise up and seal everyone in the building, and all communication with the outside world is cut off.  A voice over the office intercom tells the people that they have to kill two people, or four people will be killed.  The employees nervously think it's a joke, until four people's heads explode.  It turns out that when the company put tracking chips in people's skulls in case of kidnapping, they were really explosives that can be detonated by remote control; the company also has cameras all over the building to spy on the employees.  The voice on the intercom then gives an ultimatum that's the basis for most of the movie: The employees have two hours to kill 30 people, or 60 people will die.

The employees react to this in different ways.  Mitch doesn't want to kill anyone and focuses on escaping.  Barry gets a bunch of people and arms them, to do what he thinks must be done.  Some people hide, some arm themselves (with kitchen and office supplies), and everyone has to decide what to do as the deadly deadline gets ever closer...

The Belko Experiment is a basic yet enjoyable big-budget B movie.  The characters are fairly generic, but that's largely the point: to see how they react in this suddenly homicidal experiment.  The movie could have used more dark humor, but it certainly delivers plenty of bloodshed --first accidentally, the deliberately -- as the characters face the demand put on them.  While The Belko Experiment could have done more with its dark premise, it's still entertaining.

Overall grade: B
Reviewed by James Lynch

GET OUT

Some of the best horror movies go beyond simple scared to engage in social issues or commentary.  Get Out, written and directed by Jordan Peele, adds a layer of racial knowledge and concern to the horror genre -- with terrific results.

Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) have been dating for a while, and it's time for the event most boyfriends dread: meeting her parents.  He's concerned that she hasn't told them he's black, but she insists it's no big deal.  So the two leave the city for the suburbs, with Chris staying in touch with his TSA agent buddy Rod (LilRey Howery) by phone.

At first, things are expectedly awkward with the parents.  Dean Armitage (Bradley Whitford) is a slightly dorky guy who keeps calling Chris "my man."  Missy Armitage (Catherine Keener) is concerned that Chris smokes around their daughter.  They're both very accomplished -- he's a neurosurgeon, she's a psychiatrist specializing in hypnosis -- and live in a pretty isolated home.  It's not thrilling for Chris, but he can handle it.

But little things seem to keep building on each other.  The Armitages' black groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) and maid Georgina (Betty Gabriel) seem a bit... off.  Rose's brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) seems a bit aggressive towards Chris.  When there's a big family gathering, the Armitages all seem to treat Chris differently, as he tells Rose, it's like they never met a black man who didn't work for them.  And Missy had hypnotized Chris without his consent, leaving him without the desire to smoke -- along with who knows other effects.

Get Out works pretty well.  The movie takes the discomfort of being black in a largely white group of people (even if they all say they all would have voted for Obama a third time and Tiger Woods is the greatest) and builds it into a borderline paranoia with something behind it.  Daniel Kaluuya is a fine horror lead, and the rest of the cast do a good job of being almost indefinably off.  Get Out is a creepy, interesting horror movie.

Overall grade: B+
Reviewed by James Lynch

RINGS

So, the infamous cursed videotape has gone digital.  Rings is the third movie in the horror chain based on Japanese movie Ringu, and this time around it's... quite similar to what came before.

The movie starts with the latest person to watch the cursed tape on an airplane, which crashed when the ghostly Samara appears.  Two years later Gabriel (Johnny Galecki) buys a VCR that belonged to the victim -- and Gabriel watches the cursed tape that was in the machine.

We jump ahead, where Julia (Matilda Lutz) sees her boyfriend Holt (Alex Roe) off to college.  Things are fine, until Julia gets a frantic message from Holt's computer from Skye (Aimee Teegarden).  When Julia heads to the college, she's there when Skye is killed by Samara.

It turns out that Gabriel is a college professor, obsessed with the cursed tape: He has students watch the tape, times their "seven days" until Samara appears, makes digital copies of the tape, and assigns "tails" to watch copies of the tape so the would-be victim gets a reprieve.  Holt had seen it, so Julia watches his copy to save him.  But when Julia makes a copy of the tape, her copy is larger than the original -- and has additional images.

Julia and Holt follow the clues of the new version, hoping to save her and stop the curse.  This journey involved Julia's hallucinations, a town that had been flooded, and a blind caretaker named Burke (Vincent D'Onofrio) who remembers "the drowned girl."  And the seven days countdown continues...

The main problem with Rings is that it's virtually the same story as its predecessors: Someone sees the tape (or, now, digital file) and tries to interpret the images to spare themselves from being killed by Samara.  We get the same warning and timeline, the same disjointed ghostly figure, the same terrified and contorted looks on her victims, even the same dim lighting throughout the movie.  Since we've seen it all before there's nothing really new or scary -- and the paper-thin characters don't have much to do besides look worried and scream.  Rings has a few decent moments, but most of the movie is a dud.

Overall grade: D
Reviewed by James Lynch

THE BYE BYE MAN

There may be an overlap between ideas, language and reality -- but that sort of potential is far from realized in The Bye Bye Man.  This is a complete wreck of a horror movie.

The movie opens in 1969, as a man keeps muttering to himself "Don't say it, don't think it" while walking from house to house with a shotgun, asking people if they told anyone the name.  Then he shoots them.

Jump to the present, where college student Elliot (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas), and his good friend John (Lucien Laviscount) have rented an off-campus house where they can live.  As usual for a horror movie, there are the beginning minor events: the sound of a coin falling and rolling, what look like figures in the darkness, scratching noises in the middle of the night.  Elliot finds that inside a nightstand, "don't say it, don't think" has been written over and over -- and under it are the words "the Bye Bye Man."

After their psychically sensitive friend Kim (Jenna Kanell) has a seance with the three main characters, Elliot mentions the name "the Bye Bye Man" -- and things get really bad.  All the main characters start hearing or seeing things -- sometimes driving the people to kill themselves.  Some characters who heard the name "the Bye Bye Man" kill others they might have told it to, then themselves.  And Elliot's research suggests that the more "the Bye Bye Man" is said or thought, the stronger he becomes.  Elliot also starts having visions of a cloaked figure, sometimes with a large dog-like creature covered in blood...

Mythology becoming reality has been done in horror movies before, but never as badly as in The Bye Bye Man.  This movie has the unfortunate -- but common in many horror movies -- element of the actors being poor in their roles and having paper-thin characters.  The movie has a visual sense of persistent gloom, from the poorly-lit house to surprisingly dismal daytime scenes.  Lots of things about the movie make no sense, from why the Bye Bye Man kills people whose knowledge of him is what lets him to exist to the point od the dog-type-thing, which adds nothing to the movie.  And worst of all for a horror movie, this isn't scary.  The title character looks like a failed makeup project from Face Off, and the movie lacks either jump scares or growing dread and menace.

I was the only person in the theater showing The Bye Bye Man, and the people who skipped it were luckier than I was.  This may well be the worst movie of the year -- and it's only January!

Overall grade: F
Reviewed by James Lynch

RIFFTRAX LIVE: CARNIVAL OF SOULS

There are plenty of ways to celebrate Halloween -- and I was fortunate enough to catch Rifftrax Live: Carnival of Souls on the big screen on Halloween itself!  Comedy may not seem like something for Halloween, but it worked -- especially with such a bad horror movie.

After some funny opening movie quotes and trivia ("The razorblades actually make the apples taste better") accompanied by songs from "Weird Al" Yankovic and Jonathan Coulter, the Rifftrax trio (Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett) took the stage and their microphones.  They began with two terrible shorts -- "The Dirt-Witch Cleans Up" and "Masks of Grass" -- then jump into the feature.  And while Carnival of Souls may not be quite as bad as other movies they've riffed, it still supplies plenty of fodder for comedy: endless organ music, a near-total lack of acting, an over-the-top scuzzy male creep, pale zombies or ghosts, and a lead actress who goes through almost the whole movie with a blank stare.

As always, the jokes fly fast and frequently.   There are digs at Utah, Golden Corral, Wonder Woman, and even subjects of previous rifts, like Birdemic and "Shake Hands with Danger."  And the trio are in fine form, with numerous laugh-out-loud moments and leaving the audience happy (and unable to take Carnival of Souls seriously ever again).  Rifftrax Live: Carnival of Souls was a fun and funny evening for Halloween.

Overall grade: A-

Reviewed by James Lynch

BLAIR WITCH

Back to Burkittsville!  Blair Witch is a found-footage sequel to what could be the most successful found footage horror movie of all time, The Blair Witch Project.  This movie follows very closely in the original movie's footsteps (ignoring Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows), sometimes to its detriment.

The movie opens by saying it's put together from found footage.  James (James Allen McCune) is the brother of the Heather who vanished in the original film, and some recently discovered footage makes him think she could still be alive.  Lisa (Callie Hernandez) is working on a documentary project for school, so she decides to accompany James back to the Black Hills Woods in Burkittsville, Maryland to try and find Heather -- or the building where she vanished.  And their friends Peter (Brandon Scott) and Ashley (Corbin Reid) tag along, for reasons never made clear.

The friends apparently raided Best Buy, because they're fully stocked with gear: all sorts of flashlights, walkie talkies with GPS tracking, earpieces that film, personal flashlights, and even a drone.  They meet up with Lane (Wes Robinson) and Talia (Valorie Curry), two weird locals who insist on camping with the friend in the woods and who share stories about the Blair Witch.  It's then into the woods, for camping and searching.  Before long night falls, those familiar stick figures show up, and we get a whole lot of first-person shots of people running at night.

The original movie was a masterpiece of economy, creating its own mythology and giving scares with no stars, special effects, or soundtrack.  Blair Witch has a similar format but doesn't deliver nearly as well.  Having numerous cameras means we get lots of different shots from different angles, which feels like a "regular" movie.  The mysterious sounds in the woods sound like the Blair Witch has a bulldozer instead of just trying to spook the hapless campers.  The characters are all paper thin.  And while there's some creepy claustrophobia near the end, the finale feels far too much like it's taken from the original film (with "characters constantly running in the woods" replaced with "characters constantly running in a decrepit building").  I'd pass on Blair Witch.

Overall grade: C-
Reviewed by James Lynch