Have you ever walked out of a film thinking you've watched something different from what you paid to see? Well, I'm sure that's how audiences at San Diego Comic-Con felt in 2016 when they left a special preview screening of upcoming horror film 'The Woods', only to find that the entire lobby had been altered to reflect the fact that they had just seen the newest entry in the Blair Witch franchise, simply titled Blair Witch.
Any sequel to The Blair Witch Project is already fighting a losing battle against almost any type of audience member. You’ve got those who liked the original film because it was so unique, atmospheric, and organic; a film that didn’t stop once the credits did because it was all around you with the persistent viral marketing unlike anything else anybody had ever seen at the time. You get those who like it because it was a cool horror film that didn’t give too much away, leaving itself open to interpretation and theorisation. Then you get the people that don’t like it because nothing jumped out and screamed at them during the film to give them a cheap shock; and you get the people that don’t like it because there wasn’t enough to latch on to, being just a bit too freeform for their liking.
So, after Book of Shadows in 2000 the property laid untouched for sixteen years. Nobody wanted to do a found footage film because it would alienate existing fans who enjoyed the originality of The Blair Witch Project; but then nobody wanted to do a Book of Shadows and try and change stuff because then it’s nothing like the first film, and the lore the first film had isn’t really strong enough to act as the foundations for another film. So, how do you approach a sequel when all avenues seem problematic?
Any sequel to The Blair Witch Project is already fighting a losing battle against almost any type of audience member. You’ve got those who liked the original film because it was so unique, atmospheric, and organic; a film that didn’t stop once the credits did because it was all around you with the persistent viral marketing unlike anything else anybody had ever seen at the time. You get those who like it because it was a cool horror film that didn’t give too much away, leaving itself open to interpretation and theorisation. Then you get the people that don’t like it because nothing jumped out and screamed at them during the film to give them a cheap shock; and you get the people that don’t like it because there wasn’t enough to latch on to, being just a bit too freeform for their liking.
So, after Book of Shadows in 2000 the property laid untouched for sixteen years. Nobody wanted to do a found footage film because it would alienate existing fans who enjoyed the originality of The Blair Witch Project; but then nobody wanted to do a Book of Shadows and try and change stuff because then it’s nothing like the first film, and the lore the first film had isn’t really strong enough to act as the foundations for another film. So, how do you approach a sequel when all avenues seem problematic?
Blair Witch opens almost the same way as The Blair Witch Project, informing us that another group of filmmakers has ventured into the woods and have never returned and what we will see is their final days.
James Donahue (James Allen McCune) finds a video online of a woman running from an unseen presence in an abandoned house, supposedly shot in the Black Hills Forest. He believes that the woman in the video is his sister, Heather Donahue, one of the missing filmmakers from The Blair Witch Project. Together with his friends Lisa (Callie Hernandez), Peter (Brandon Scott), and Ashley (Corbin Reid), he travels to Burkittsville and enlists the help of locals Lane (Wes Robinson) and Talia (Valorie Curry) to help him navigate the forest and find evidence pointing to his sister still being alive.
It’s a great premise that not only stays faithful to the first film, both in setup and execution, but also allows the story to naturally progress and evolve as it uses the extensive time gap between films as its foundation for the story, rather than the flimsy threads left in place by The Blair Witch Project.
For the first half of the film it progresses much how you expect it to, not straying too far out of its predecessor’s shadow, and you do begin to wonder whether it will ever truly escape it. But once Blair Witch enters its second half it uses those threads of lore from the first film, as well as modern technology, and some great original ideas to turn the tables and take the film in an unexpected and extremely creepy direction.
Blair Witch is more conventionally scary that The Blair Witch Project. By that I mean that it does have frequent jump scares, there’s a lot of gory body horror, and there is a monster actually pursuing the group that you see this time round. But for me it’s not as scary as the original film, and that's mainly due to the reasons I find the first film terrifying.
I can’t help but feel that Blair Witch is like a theme park ride based on the original film. Whilst it’s very enjoyable and it does some awesome things, it’s not quite got the same level of realism and it feels artificial at times.
The camera operation is usually too clean and choreographed, unlike the original’s very sloppy and intentionally disorientating presentation. The performances are clearly scripted and the actors aren’t good enough to make the performances totally believable; unlike the original which relied mostly on improvisation as the actors had been left to their own devices outside of a skeletal set of instructions they had been given. There’s also a number of sequences that just don't look real, the first film simply didn’t have the budget to do anything explicitly paranormal so when you see monsters, objects flying around of their own accord, and fancy lighting effects being used in Blair Witch it takes you out of the experience and reminds you it’s only a film.
James Donahue (James Allen McCune) finds a video online of a woman running from an unseen presence in an abandoned house, supposedly shot in the Black Hills Forest. He believes that the woman in the video is his sister, Heather Donahue, one of the missing filmmakers from The Blair Witch Project. Together with his friends Lisa (Callie Hernandez), Peter (Brandon Scott), and Ashley (Corbin Reid), he travels to Burkittsville and enlists the help of locals Lane (Wes Robinson) and Talia (Valorie Curry) to help him navigate the forest and find evidence pointing to his sister still being alive.
It’s a great premise that not only stays faithful to the first film, both in setup and execution, but also allows the story to naturally progress and evolve as it uses the extensive time gap between films as its foundation for the story, rather than the flimsy threads left in place by The Blair Witch Project.
For the first half of the film it progresses much how you expect it to, not straying too far out of its predecessor’s shadow, and you do begin to wonder whether it will ever truly escape it. But once Blair Witch enters its second half it uses those threads of lore from the first film, as well as modern technology, and some great original ideas to turn the tables and take the film in an unexpected and extremely creepy direction.
Blair Witch is more conventionally scary that The Blair Witch Project. By that I mean that it does have frequent jump scares, there’s a lot of gory body horror, and there is a monster actually pursuing the group that you see this time round. But for me it’s not as scary as the original film, and that's mainly due to the reasons I find the first film terrifying.
I can’t help but feel that Blair Witch is like a theme park ride based on the original film. Whilst it’s very enjoyable and it does some awesome things, it’s not quite got the same level of realism and it feels artificial at times.
The camera operation is usually too clean and choreographed, unlike the original’s very sloppy and intentionally disorientating presentation. The performances are clearly scripted and the actors aren’t good enough to make the performances totally believable; unlike the original which relied mostly on improvisation as the actors had been left to their own devices outside of a skeletal set of instructions they had been given. There’s also a number of sequences that just don't look real, the first film simply didn’t have the budget to do anything explicitly paranormal so when you see monsters, objects flying around of their own accord, and fancy lighting effects being used in Blair Witch it takes you out of the experience and reminds you it’s only a film.
The films contributions to the Blair Witch lore are pretty great though, and really helps give the film its own identity among a plethora of lost in the woods type films. The most impressive of which is the time manipulation that occurs in the second half of the film, with characters supposedly not having seen the rest of the group for days or months, despite only having been gone a few hours; and the resulting never ending night-time that the forest is plunged into. This time manipulation and what we already understand about the first film gives film theorists a field day trying to connect the dots between the two. It's something that'll stick in your mind for quite some time as you put the pieces together.
Blair Witch is a good sequel to The Blair Witch Project; and although I don't find it as scary, the filmmaking practices more generic, and the characters significantly less interesting; I really appreciate what it does with the Blair Witch and it makes the film significantly more interesting and intricate in ways that simply weren't possible with the original. There are far more moving parts to Blair Witch than its predecessor, and whilst not all of them move as smoothly as one would hope, it certainly is a very good attempt at following up a film as unique as The Blair Witch Project with something that’ll appeal to existing fans and newcomers alike.
Blair Witch is a good sequel to The Blair Witch Project; and although I don't find it as scary, the filmmaking practices more generic, and the characters significantly less interesting; I really appreciate what it does with the Blair Witch and it makes the film significantly more interesting and intricate in ways that simply weren't possible with the original. There are far more moving parts to Blair Witch than its predecessor, and whilst not all of them move as smoothly as one would hope, it certainly is a very good attempt at following up a film as unique as The Blair Witch Project with something that’ll appeal to existing fans and newcomers alike.