The Scary Magic Forest

I watched the 2016 Blair Witch movie tonight. The first movie was a great prank when you look at all the stuff they did leading up to its release, but what keeps bringing me back to these movies is that, despite the title, they're really about the forest. There's probably another name for the archetype it tapped into, but I call it the Scary Magic Forest. 

The first thing you find out when you wander into the Scary Magic Forest is that it's bigger than it should be, and whatever you're using to find your way is going to fail you. Time is often distorted or just lost. Weird stuff happens. Maybe there are monsters, but maybe not. Often there's a heart of the forest which you probably should not hang out in. If you've ever tromped around in a forest, you know what inspired all this. I love Scary Magic Forest stories. 

This movie. . . I'm glad I watched it. It could have been great. There was a lot of good material, and a lot of stuff that was genuinely scary. It lived up to its Scary Magic Forest promise. Unfortunately, someone on the team decided the movie need a ton of cheap shaky-cam jump scares that, rather than keeping the tension high, eventually made all my sympathy kind of callous over. I'd still recommend giving it a look, I guess.