[Jake.Ashworth]

Originally Posted by Repo'd

Glad you liked it, Jake! I did too, and I've seen it twice now.

I'll start with a few minor complaints, so I can get the bad stuff out the of the way and move on to the positive. Too many jump scares. They are at times effective but I don't think half of them were necessary or all that scary. It's kind of annoying, but in the filmmakers defense, they do acknowledge the plethora of jumps with a bit of humor. At one point, and after the four thousandth time a character is scared by another character popping up in their camera lens, someone says " I wish you'd stop doing that". I LOL'd, so good on them for poking some fun at themselves. One other small complaint is that the new film really doesn't enhance, embellish or expand on the original legend of Elly Kedward/The witch.
Yeah there is a weeeee little bit about the stones and how they were tied to Kedwards limbs as she hung from the tree, but that's not enough for me. I would have liked a little more insight or innovation regarding the legend itself.

Okay, on to the good stuff!
This movie is fast paced, and I mean fast. We hit the ground running and it never stops. Even before we get to the woods, the movie motors along splendidly. The characters seem real, not one dimensional cutouts, and their affection and concern( love, even ) for each other makes the deadly events even harder to bear. These people acted like friends, not movie characters.
The end is NUTS! I loved how they ratchet up the tension as we close in on the finale, and the lead actresses performance at that point is really top notch. The glimpses we see of the witch are perfect, never giving us too much but always giving us just enough. I agree Jake, her stick figure-ish appearance is a great choice. The tent chase worked really well for me and I wouldn't have minded another 60 seconds of that!
One thing that I truly loved happens at the end, just before our lead character (James) enters the house. We hear screaming coming from the house, and it's clearly a females voice. Now, I might be wrong, but some of those screams sounded exactly like Heather's terrified screams from the original film. In fact, I'm almost certain we hear her yell "Josh", precisely as we heard her in the original. I LOVED that moment in the film.

Anyway, I'm done. So, who else has some opinions on this sucker?

I can agree, I wish there would have been some more expansion. I wish there would have been another chunk interviews with the locals. I assume the long legs and arms of the witch is a direct result of the stones tied to her limbs. I think that was fun. The humor was well played, perfect black friend/white friend banter. I commented out load in the theater that they where actually killing off the black guy first and the black guy next to me broke out laughing. Im expecting to catch a lot of things in my second watching when it hits Netflix or wherever it ends up. But I think the ending holds tons of little surprises. I love that the ending is the video that led him there. I think eventually it will come to light that the original group is living in some sort of cycle in the house and the new groups killing is happening alongside the original groups.