Warren Beatty once said about Madonna 'she doesn't want to live off camera – much less talk'. That goes triple for this so-so reboot of 1999's found-footage classic, which re-hashes the original's premise for the modern day.

It's 2016, or thereabouts. 20 years ago, young filmmakers Heather, Mike and Josh disappeared in woods in rural Maryland, the only trace of them being the video camera which they'd been using…

Now, teased on by a video found online which supposedly shows the original trio's experiences, Heather's brother and his mates set out into the very same woods to find out what became of big sis and her friends all those years ago. Bad idea. Obviously.

This is a competently made film with some well-placed shock sequences and a reasonable sense of pace, and apart from a few false endings, it holds the attention pretty well throughout.

Unfortunately the young cast is rather irritating, their characters even more so, and like most sequels it's compromised because giving us more of what we liked the first time doesn't account for the fact that what was surprising then isn't anymore.

There is one very interesting variant on the original's action, which says more about how found-footage films have changed in the 20 years since the genre's inception than anything else in this picture.

Some viewers will remember that in 1994, at the time the original events of The Blair Witch Project unfolded, it was slightly implausible that three terrified people would continue filming themselves while lost in a dark wood and fighting for their lives. Indeed, Heather's friends tell her to switch the camera off on several occasions.

By contrast, no one in this reboot ever tells anyone to stop filming; it simply doesn't occur to them that documenting every aspect of their lives, regardless of circumstance, is anything other than completely standard. The selfie generation doesn't want to live – much less die – off camera. And that is the scariest thing about this film.