[yasr_overall_rating]
After discovering a video showing what he believes to be his sister’s experiences in the demonic woods of the Blair Witch, James and a group of friends head to the forest in search of his lost sibling.
I remember being caught up in the hype that surrounded the release of “The Blair Witch Project” back in July of 1999. This was right after another much-hyped blockbuster, “Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace,” was released in May of the same year and went on to break box-office records worldwide. The difference between the two films is that it cost $115 million to make “The Phantom Menace” while “The Blair Witch Project” reportedly cost $60,000, which would go on to make almost $250 million worldwide, making it one of the most successful independent movies of all time.
Upon its release, “The Blair Witch Project” garnered mainly positive reviews but audience reaction was mixed. Many could not watch a feature-length film utilizing the hand-held approach that has become so prevalent in filmmaking today, and it was reported that a lot of people left screenings because they were suffering from nausea and motion sickness. Others liked it because it felt authentic, like they were actually watching a real-life documentary about three student filmmakers who vanished in the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland. And that was part of the exceptional marketing and publicity campaign done by Artisan Entertainment, the movie’s distributor. With the internet still in its infancy, it was claimed that “The Blair Witch Project” was indeed real, and not a hoax, and many people went into screenings thinking they were watching footage that had been discovered after the three central characters’ demise.
Now it is 2016, and an entire generation has been brought up on the internet so trying to fool the public this time around, would have proved futile, although a few months back, a trailer for this film was released with a title simply called “The Woods,” and while it showed very little throughout to imply anything even remotely connected to the Blair Witch, it was not until this year’s San Diego Comic-Con that a real trailer was released with its new title intact, so in a way, they fooled everyone again, but nowhere near the same extent as its 1999 predecessor.
“Blair Witch” takes place fifteen years after the events of the first movie. Our protagonist this time around is James Donahue (James Allen McCune), the brother of Heather Donahue, the girl from the first film who went missing. After a man who claims to live in Burkittsville, contacts James and informs him that he has uploaded footage to YouTube from a video tape he found out in the woods, and which shows a young woman, matching Heather’s description, running throughout a dilapidated old house screaming, James is convinced that she may still be alive. Along with some friends, Lisa (Callie Hernandez), Ashley (Corbin Reid) and Peter (Brandon Scott), they pack up their car with brand new cameras, including traditional hand-held, ear-pieces, and even a drone, to try and discover, once and for all, what really happened to Heather and her two friends.
James meets the man with the tape, Lane (Wes Robinson) and his girlfriend Talia (Valorie Curry), and when they discover that James and his friends are really heading out into the woods, they go along with them, claiming that they know the forest better than most people in the area. Naturally, as night falls, everyone starts hearing strange noises and when they leave their tents to investigate, they find humanoid stick figures suspended from trees surrounding them. As everybody begins to feel uneasy, and Ashley hurts her ankle in a fall, they decide the next morning to make their way back home but as the day drags on, and evening eventually approaches, they realize they’ve been walking in circles all day and end up back at their original camping spot.
With tensions rising, and a severe thunderstorm moving in, weird noises and screams begin to become more and more audible and as the group starts to disappear, one by one, those remaining, James and Callie, stick together as they try to make their way back to the car. They stumble upon an old decrepit and decaying house, and when James hears the screams of a woman coming from within and is convinced it is his sister Heather, he dashes inside. With no body to be found, both James and Callie find themselves trapped inside a house that they both immediately comprehend, is the same location Heather disappeared from in the first movie. Now they must try and survive the night before whatever is banging on the door, makes its way inside.
While “Blair Witch” is pretty much a carbon copy of the first film, director Adam Wingard successfully achieves some genuinely frightening moments. One scene in particular, and it is visible in the film’s trailer, has one character in an almost pitch-black basement, and as she tries to make her escape through a dark and filthy underground tunnel, it gradually becomes smaller and narrower, until such point that she becomes ensnared and physically cannot move, unable to free herself as her arms have become trapped by her side. I am not claustrophobic but this particular scene made me feel very uncomfortable. The thought of being trapped, physically, and not having the capability to move from your current position, was executed skillfully. With the added tension of the witch not far behind, I found it to be the most effective moment in the entire movie.
The rest of the film is made up of the quintessential jump scares and thunderous sound effects that typically accompany most horror movies of this ilk and sadly, we learn nothing new about the Blair Witch that wasn’t talked about in the first film. There is much running, much shaky cams, much screaming, and where the first movie succeeded in genuinely scaring its audience by never showing you the witch, or pretty much anything else as it was all implied, this time around, you get fleeting glimpses of something that resembles a human figure but it is never seen enough to truly make out its appearance. Something tells me when the film comes out on Blu-ray and DVD, there will be a lot of well-worn pause buttons.
In theaters Friday, September 16th
