The Blair Witch Legacy is a found footage fan film set in modern day. Using Book of Shadows' frame that the original film is a fictional movie, the characters travel to where it was shot to make a documentary and end up getting terrorized by unseen forces. Despite Book of Shadows being largely bashed by both critics and fans, it did have some interesting concepts, some great performances and it looked great, thanks to a talented documentary filmmaker, Joe Berlinger. The Blair Witch Legacy, on the other hand, is a low budget film, and it looks it in every department. A successful found footage movie hinges on the performances of the actors. It needs to seem naturalistic, and can't look like an actor reading lines. The original Blair Witch Project excels in that department, eschewing a script for improvisation. Legacy's actors are clearly reading from a poorly written script, and their performances suffer for it. Everyone is wooden to varying degrees, Samantha Marie Cook being the least wooden. Her character disappears half way or so in to the film, and we're left with characters Cody and Jason for the rest of the punishing run time. The town extras are the worst, though, bringing an elementary school play level of quality to the film.
Another problem is the sound design. Yes, it is supposed to be an amateur filmmaker's documentary, but there are spots of offensively awful sound quality that completely takes you out of the experience. There's a scene at coffin rock where Sam is narrating, and it sounds like it was recorded in an echoy room with some birds chirping overlayed onto the soundtrack, not outside. Everything sounds like it was captured with on-board mics, despite one of the characters being a sound guy with semi-professional sound equipment. I'm not asking for professional sound quality from a found footage movie, but consistency is preferred.
The story here is mostly the story of the first film, because they recreate so many scenes and situations from the original it could be considered either a loose remake or a straight up rip-off. It (slightly) veers from the original in the last half, mostly becoming a series of scenes of 2 guys finding the same tent over and over and over again. Rock pile shenanigans and tent shaking are all here as well. There are some "twists" to the original story elements, including one "Parson Rust is an anagram for Rustin Parr!" reveal that had me laughing at it for quite some time. The ending is just down right insulting to the franchise.
Editing here is a nightmare. Scenes go on forever, like the fake wiccans interview segment that is 4 minutes too long and the woods sequence which feels twice the length it actually is. This project could at least be somewhat tolerable if it was 30 minutes or so. At almost 100 minutes, it feels about as long as a Godfather marathon without the quality. I know cutting whole scenes is hard for a director to take sometimes, but this really needed to be done multiple times here. Shots and scenes are mashed together without any narrative flow, making it feel super disjointed and each scene jarring.
Listen, despite not having a positive thing to say about the film, I wish everyone involved in the film well. Indie filmmaking is hard, and making a convincing found footage film is harder. Making a sequel, official, unofficial, or otherwise, to the groundbreaking original film is a task I wouldn't wish on my enemies. I would be interested in seeing if director Jason Hawkins has a good original film in him, and I'll check it out if he ever releases one.
Mom can't put up everything you paint on the fridge. Better luck next time.
