Blair Witch is a 2016 Found footage supernatural horror film directed by Adam Wingard and written by Simon Barrett.

[a] It stars James Allen McCune, Callie Hernandez, Brandon Scott, Corbin Reid, Valorie Curry and Wes Robinson.

The film follows a group of college students and their local guides who venture into the Black Hills Forest in Maryland to uncover the mysteries surrounding the prior disappearance of Heather Donahue, the sister of one of the characters.

In 2011, Sánchez remarked that further development on a sequel depended on getting Lionsgate Films to approve the idea and for his and Myrick's schedule to match up.

Initially, the film's connection to the Blair Witch franchise was kept secret, having been shot under the fake title The Woods.

In 2014, James Donahue finds a video on YouTube containing an image of a woman he believes to be his sister Heather, who disappeared in 1994 near Burkittsville, Maryland, while investigating the legend of the Blair Witch.

[5][6] Locals Talia and Lane, who had uploaded the video to YouTube, say they will show the group the location of the tape only if they can join.

Upon setting up camp for the night, Lane and Talia discuss the disappearance of Heather and her crew, the 1940–41 Rustin Parr murders and other mysterious occurrences, which they ascribe to the Blair Witch.

Lane explains the witch had not been abandoned on a tree to die, instead tied high up with weights on her limbs to act as a makeshift torture rack.

Upon Lisa noticing twine in Lane's backpack, he and Talia admit to creating the figures to convince them to believe in the curse.

While promoting V/H/S/2 (2013) at the Sundance Film Festival, director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett ran into original The Blair Witch Project (1999) co-filmmaker Eduardo Sánchez and producer Gregg Hale, and asked them why there were not any more Blair Witch films.

[7] Barrett recalled that, in the initial pitch meeting, Lionsgate had already crafted a story for a new Blair Witch film, and simply asked if they would be interested in making it.

[13][14] Lionsgate's expectations were more conservative, however, with a projected $15–18 million opening, although rival studios were predicting significantly higher numbers, noting how horror films saw solid performances throughout 2016, including Lights Out, The Conjuring 2, The Purge: Election Year, The Shallows and Don't Breathe.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Blair Witch doles out a handful of effective scares, but aside from a few new twists, it mainly offers a belated rehash of the original – and far more memorable – first film".

[19] Michael Roffman of Consequence of Sound wrote that "nothing [about the film] is scary, nothing is remotely disturbing, and there's this boring familiarity to the proceedings, namely because it's more or less a beat-by-beat remake of the original".

[25] The Hollywood Reporter's Leslie Felperin criticized the film, commenting that it is "a dull retread rather than a full-on reinvention", enlarging the cast numbers this time but sticking to the same basic beats.

[26] Scott Tobias of GQ felt that the makers of Blair Witch made a poor decision by making the film less subtle than the original.

[27] Thomas Simpson of the Rock River Times said that the film "lacks any real scares" and that, after watching it, "you shouldn't have any issues turning the light off at night".

[29] Vanity Fair's Jordan Hoffman felt that the film was inferior to You're Next, a previous film by Wingard and writer Simon Barrett, and said that Blair Witch's "jump-scares [will] make for a fun night at the movies, but it's like chomping on White Castle hamburgers—when this creative team has previously served us a prime rib".

[30] Conversely, IGN reviewer Chris Tilly declared that Blair Witch is "so good it'll make you forget that Book of Shadows ever happened".