Blair Witch (2016) Review!!!

Synopsis – After discovering a video showing what he believes to be his vanished sister Heather, James and a group of friends head to the forest believed to be inhabited by the Blair Witch.

My Take – Anyone wide awake during the 90s will remember a little known film called The Blair Witch Project. Released in 1999, due to its exciting new content (at the time) & marketing gimmick of promoting the film as a real life incident with real people (which It obviously was not), the film turned out to be an astounding success story by bringing in $248.6 Million on a budget of about $60,000. Despite not being the first of its kind, the film popularized the “found footage” horror subgenre, spawning countless imitators and profit seekers. However, barring the first two Paranormal Activity films and a few other films, the genre as if now has descended into banality and unoriginality, where studios look to cash in on audiences looking for similar thrills over & over. The announcement of this film came as a shock to many horror fans, especially for the ones who had been following the developments on fan favorite director Adam Wingard‘s follow up film titled The Woods which was revealed as a direct sequel to the 17-year-old film at it’s first screening at Comic Con. The best part being the film rightfully ignoring the existence of the little seen non found footage sequel Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000). Honestly, I am not the biggest fan of the original, but being a fan of the found footage genre & considering the fact that director Adam Wingard (You’re Next & The Guest) hasn’t disappointed yet, I had some specific hopes and expectations for this film. Lucky for me, I wasn’t disappointed. To be fair, this film has a lot going against it. It’s been a long time since the last one came out, and especially with the found footage-style now becoming very common technique, its hard to get the audience excited for such kind of a film. However, if you are like me, and are willing to trudge through all the rubbish, to find a hidden gem, this is the right film for you. Rather than going for the convenient assembling of yet another bunch of foolhardy adventurers to go back into the forest, director Wingard chooses to establish a much emotional (and logical) reason for the group’s flirting with danger.

Taking place 20 years after the events of the 1st film, the story follows James (James Allen McCune), brother to Heather Donahue, one of the three student filmmakers who went missing two decades ago, who comes across footage online of what he believes to be his missing sister. In order to find closure ever since her disappearance, James decide to go back into the woods. Joining James on his quest to locate his sister are his filmmaker friend Lisa (Callie Hernandez), his childhood friend Peter (Brandon Scott) and Peter’s girlfriend Ashley (Corbin Reid). Their first stop is the home of ‘Darknet 666’, aka Lane (Wes Robinson), who had uploaded the video; and having grown up in these part of the woods, Lane shares stories of the Blair Witch legend, including one where a father of seven children in the 1940s kills his whole family after claiming to have heard her voice and another where a mother says a hand reached out from under the river in the woods to pull her daughter in. But Lane only agrees to show James where the video was found on one condition – that they bring him and his girlfriend Talia (Valorie Curry) along for the hike, which James eventually agrees to despite Peter’s objections. Together the group heads into the woods, looking for the fabled house & with hopes to finding clues regarding Heather’s disappearance. After a few strange occurrences, the group come to the realization that the legend may be true after all and their lives are now in danger. The film closely follows the course of its predecessor. With the background of the urban legend and local histories explained the group sets camp for the night and promptly things become eerie. The first half of the film has the group doing exactly what Josh, Heather, and Mike did in the original, getting drunk, and giving the viewers all the exposition they need for a bit of a catch up. The only difference here is that we have the odd ‘Heather’ thrown into the mix for good measure, and the inclusion of two characters who know a lot more about the history of the titular witch, and look like shabby hill billies. While the rest of the film consists of people making silly decisions, shouting names out very loud when you should be quiet, and you the viewer thinking to yourself ‘why on earth are they doing that/running that way/opening their tent’, but it only adds to the fun of the film. Once inside the forest the atmosphere of the film darkens and the claustrophobic camera work moves you ever closer to the edge of your seat in anticipation of the first sound/sighting of something lurking in the trees. There are familiar noises and calls coming from the darkness which recall the original, but more than that there’s also the inclusion of more detail in the way of audio which points to something much more menacing than the original could achieve (mostly due to budget restraints).

The overall suspense is no doubt accentuated by the visual flow of the film, which is further testament to Wingard‘s achievement. Yes, Wingard and his cinematographer Robby Baumgartner do knowingly violate sight lines to make us as disoriented as the campers, but the shots are carefully pieced together to alternate between still and moving ones in order not to be nausea-inducing. Technology has also helped a lot in this regard, and whereas such means were not available two decades ago, the use of hands-free recorders and drone cameras allow for different points-of-view other than from the respective characters. So instead of diminishing the viewing experience, the found-footage format rather enhances the atmosphere of anxiety, dread and sheer terror, especially when we are like the characters unable to see what is coming from behind our backs. The same can be said of the film’s shocking third-act twist, which takes place almost entirely within the house that Heather was last seen. Even more foreboding from the inside than it looks from the outside, the two-stores farm building plunges its visitors into a disorienting maze of corridors and decrepit rooms before they are made to confront its real horror. Oh yes, it is here that our characters – and us – come face to face with the Blair Witch herself, a hairy half- human, half-animal beast that stands tall and towering over its victims. These last 20 minutes in the titular character’s presence are easily some of the most claustrophobic and nerve-wracking moments we’ve had in a horror film in quite a while, deliberately paced so that you have no time to catch your breath in between. It is frightening as hell when things go to sh*t, and by the time the ending that leaves just enough possibility for a follow-up comes around, I guarantee that you’ll be left thoroughly shaken. One thing about found footage that is never explained is the editing that has all the different cameras cutting from one to another in perfect sync but with a little suspension of disbelief, this can be forgotten. It’s great to see a director like Adam Wingard take on the challenge of making a sequel that isn’t just a carbon copy of its predecessor, instead choosing to take elements and build upon them to create a sequel that, I think, surpasses the original. Director Adam Wingard does a good job bringing the terror to the script written by Simon Barrett as they have worked together before on other horror projects. The film is really terrifying and moves way faster than the original and creates a new sense of horror that doesn’t feel stale or like a simple rehash of the same premise. By expanding on the mythology but largely retreading plot points from the original, the new film plays more like an homage to the first film rather than a proper (albeit belated) sequel. The performances are good enough here. The two stand-outs were without a doubt James Allen McCune and the gorgeous Callie Hernandez, who especially has to do a lot of terrified close-ups in her role. Corbin Reid, Brandon Scott, Wes Robinson and Valorie Curry played their parts well. On the whole, ‘Blair Witch’ is easily one of the must see horror films of the year, proving yet again that found footage is a formidable technique if employed by the right filmmaker.