Wood Witch: The Awakening

Two couples on a camping trip stumble onto a local urban legend, inadvertently awakening a sleeping demon.

_**Found footage Indie like “The Blair Witch Project,” but better**_ Two young couples take a camping trip to an island in Puget Sound to investigate an urban legend about the Norse goddess Hel being trapped on Midgard (Earth) as a tree. When one of the group voices an incantation they are horrified to discover the legend is real. “Wood Witch: The Awakening” (2020) is a found footage indie similar to “The Blair Witch Project” (1999) but all-around more satisfying and relatively worthy of its runtime (whereas “Blair Witch” was easily 35 minutes too long). One of the highlights is Juliana Azcarate as Ari and Sydney Mitchell as Cari, both beautiful and winsome inside and out. Meanwhile the locations are fabulous and the performances convincing. The problem is the “found footage” angle, at least for me. This flick would’ve worked better as a straightforward creature feature in the manner of “Ogre” (2008), but that would’ve taken more effort & money to pull off. Still, this is an entertaining found footage monster flick. Unlike “Blair Witch,” the antagonist is revealed in the last act. Yeah, it’s cartoonish, but at least there’s a payoff. The film runs 1 hour, 16 minute, and was shot on Bainbridge Island, Washington. GRADE: B-