By Dustin Hall
Blair Witch, the surprise sequel to the original smash The Blair Witch Project is upon us. Creeping out of the woods seemingly from nowhere, this movie brings its audience full circle, trapping us in a sort of time loop… Jesus, do I hear Limp Bizkit playing off in the distance? Let me get my chain wallet on just in case. We’ve come back around into the late nineties to once again visit the first-person world of Burkittsville. But to what end?
As a film, this new Blair Witch is an odd creation, delivered to us at an odd time. It’s not an anniversary of the original film, nor have any great nostalgic longings been publicly mused to a receptive online audience. If anything, The Blair Witch Project has been mentioned more than anything else as the mother-film that birthed a genre that has over-stayed its welcome and, with the end of the Paranormal Activity franchise, is now mostly dead. Was this, then, an attempt to revive first-person cinema? Or was it an attempt to again take the crown as the greatest first-person horror from Johnny-come-lately installments such as Cloverfield and Troll Hunter? Or, most likely and more horribly, was it simply the death throes of a desperate and creatively bereft horror arm of a major studio?
Regardless, Blair Witch is a solidly put together found-footage film. It stands as one of the best in the genre. However, if you already hated found-footage movies, this one probably isn’t going to change your mind. The D+ Cinemascore opening day audiences gave this film doesn’t bode well for converts. And keep in mind that calling it ‘best among found-footage movies’ isn’t exactly setting the bar too high, in a genre filled with about as much throwaway, low budget dreck as the preceding 20 years of slasher films had brought us. However, I know that I personally was a fan of the original film. It was ahead of its time, a then fairly unique film backed with viral marketing including faux documentary pieces and websites. Though watching the film now without the benefit of the verisimilitude of it being an actual vanishing case undoubtedly robs The Blair Witch Project of much of its power, it still stands as a fair film with a simple, thought provoking mythology behind it. It’s such a shame, then, that neither of the sequels have known what to do to create a franchise from the once-revered original, at first going in a completely opposite direction, and now trying too hard to copy it.
Reader advisory: moderate spoilers ahead.
The film revolves around James, the younger brother of Heather, who died in the first film. Thanks to a recently posted viral video, he believes that Heather may somehow still be alive, despite twenty years of time having passed since she vanished. So, teaming up with his girlfriend, conveniently a documentarian, and a crew of friends, they again enter the woods to see if they can find clues about the mysteries of the Blair Witch and the deaths that have plagued the area. As this leads to another series of nights lost in seemingly endless woods, spooky noises, screaming, darkness, and abrupt endings. Again if you enjoyed the original, expect more of the same. If it wasn’t your thing, you’ll still hate this.
Blair Witch does offer a few genuinely neat additions to the retreading of the original work. There’s some nice body horror, as shown in the trailer, involving a centipede trapped in a leg wound, as well as some Descent-like moments of claustrophobic terror in a water-filled subterranean tunnel. Generally, the last twenty-or-so minutes of the film move quickly and have lots of crazy, frantic moments of chasing and various phobias on display, it’s all very effective. The real question is whether or not audiences will have the endurance to get there.
In the meantime, there are lots of weaknesses on display as well. Blair Witch relies too heavily on gimmicky film techniques from advances in film technology, which it is all too happy to show off during the film’s set-up. “Look, how neat is our new drone camera?” “We’ve all got GoPros strapped to our heads!” “We have remote security cameras all around our camp!” Aside from how annoying this is, and how they use the GoPros with their seemingly infinite batteries to create 1-2 shots during conversations, it is absolutely mind boggling how none of it actually generates any payoff. In the Paranormal Activity films, at least a home camcorder strapped to an old rotary fan creates a jump scare later in the film. None of the gadgets in this film, aside from the GoPros, ever actually show the audience anything of importance. The drone, the security cameras, the B-crew that get lost off on their own, nothing is ever shown to the audience.
Perhaps the strangest omission in Blair Witch is any attempt to play with the mythology of the first film’s existence. There are many references to the legends of the witch from the first movie, but at no point does anyone reference the fact that Heather and crew were put in a documentary which everyone would have seen. No one questions whether it might have been a witch, or hillbillies, no one references the connections between the stick-men and the house that they find which were clearly shown in the documentary footage from Blair Witch Project. Rather, we get some strange new additions to the mythos, such as the witch having been tortured on a rack, her only being able to kill you if you look at her (something the film itself contradicts) and a boat-load of time travel. Also, something never addressed, is this film also a documentary? What is the film we are supposedly watching? Does this film also end up released into the world, and prove that Heather and her crew were locked in a time paradox before being killed? We see the witch this time around… did Josh just somehow prove the existence of the paranormal to the world? This all just got a bit too meta.
Maybe I’m asking too many questions, and maybe Blair Witch doesn’t deserve this much thought. But in the end that might be the film’s main problem. It’s not a bad film in its own right, but it tries to build upon the original film, which was a simple and effective story, a campfire tale, and creates something which generates more questions than it answers, and leans on more gimmicks than payoffs. In the end, it comes off standing in the shadows of its predecessors, and failing to create anything of its own. It would be a sad, but also fitting, place to end the found footage genre.
Blair Witch is in cinemas now.