Film Preview: Blair Witch (2016)

Page Revisions:

(July 17, 2016) Original
(July 24, 2016) New Title (changed from “The Woods”)
(July 31, 2016) New Trailer (#2) / New Poster (#3)
(September 11, 2016) New Posters (#4-#6)

Release Date:

September 16, 2016

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “Involve[s] a group of college students on a camping trip who discover they are not alone.”

Poster Rating: C / C- / C+ / C- (3)

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Review: (#1 & #2) These two designs are as different as black and red. While both try to give the woods a frightening quality, the first design is more successful, giving it a physical presence in the form of hands. The second design’s failure is that making the woods loom over the viewer doesn’t give them nearly the heightened excitement they are looking for, even when overzealously red.

(#4-#6) More of the same is not a good design option and apart from inverting colors, these just don’t work individually or originally.

(#3) What made the second design so bland is what makes this design so effective. I’m still not a fan of the simplistic and overused color scheme, but the shifting of the trees into the pattern of the wooden dolls left by the Blair Witch in the original film is a nice touch and sets the poster into the world that it represents.

Trailer Rating: C+ / C

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Review: (#1) The trailer isn’t very clear. It doesn’t create nearly as much fright as it probably should, though it’s confusing nature might create a small degree of curiosity in the viewer.

(#2) Having seen the original Blair Witch Project in the theater and witnessed the fascinating viral campaign that made it a success along with appreciating the found footage style that would become the norm for almost two decades now, looking upon this distant sequel does little to quell concerns by those who remember the disastrous sequel. This looks like more of the same, but without the added suspense of not knowing what was going on or what was going to happen. This now looks like every other pale imitation that’s risen in Blair Witch Project‘s wake.