Blair Witch (2016)

I’d be willing to bet that few proper film fans out there were actually excited when a third Blair Witch movie was made – I wasn’t, but I figured it was going to be an hour and a half’s worth of moderately-entertaining stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily regret watching.

There are few movies out there with quite the cult status of The Blair Witch Project: although a tried-and-tested schtick even in the ‘90s, the concept of a film that blurred the lines between fiction and reality really hit home hard, especially when it coincided with the true advent of the internet. The web provided never-before-exploited marketing opportunities, and step by step, the makers had assembled something of a snuff film whose authenticity could be verified by all other sources – as well as the fact that the ‘actors’ seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. It was a true sensation, the likes of which has barely been emulated, if at all, since.  This is why it was a bold choice for a sequel, especially since the first one flew very much under the radar, and no one had ever attempted anything like it since.

The premise of the film is that James (James Allan McCune), the younger brother of Heather Donahue - our original protagonist of the dribbly nostril and considerable lung capacity – was a small child when his sister disappeared, and all these years later is using the mystery for his friend Lisa (Callie Hernandez) to base her college film project on. James has spent an unspecified time obsessing over the idea that his sister is still alive in the haunted woods of Burkittsville, prompting him to mull over mysterious internet videos and other clues that might affirm his suspicions.

 

His online musings have seen him make contact with a guy who uploaded mysterious footage of a woman running through a house that police searches of the area could never locate. Despite the woman’s face obviously not being that of Heather Donahue, this video gives James all the motivation he needs, and he sets out to team up with the internet guy to find his totally-still-alive sister. Where would a horror movie be without an overambitious assumption to set the ball rolling?

For diversity and that insulting bit of tokenism, they bring two black friends along – Peter (Brandon Scott) and Ashley (Corbin Reid) – whose sole purpose, it seems, is to complain about the imminent danger they are in. Oh, well, and of course to be the first ones to die. You didn’t think we’d moved past that old chestnut, didya? Not one black death, but two. This must be some kind of record.

This being a thoroughly modern murder mashup, the kids come prepared. Where Heather, Josh and Mike had weighty mid ‘90s VHS film equipment to lug around, these guys have earpiece cameras that don’t fall out, handheld cameras, GPS, cell phones, walkie-talkies and even a drone: about as well prepared for potential supernatural encounters as you can be. Equipment-wise, at least.

You remember that episode of South Park in which the plotline of the latest Indiana Jones movie is compared to our favourite archaeologist being sexually assaulted by Spielberg and Lucas? You might make a similar comparison with Blair Witch. Post-Millennial horror has become an incredibly formulaic experience, with a standard that is a million miles from everything that the original movie was, and it seems that the makers just couldn’t help themselves when it came to ‘modernising’ the beloved product. First night there are creepy noises outside – guy sits up to investigate – BOOM! It’s only his friend descending in a loud and stupidly unannounced fashion on his tent. It’s like the camping version of ‘Oh, its only the cat. Phew!’ Ashley cuts her foot when they decide to wade barefoot (?!) through a river, only for a closer inspection to reveal *GASP* something wiggling under her skin! Is this Blair Witch or fucking Alien? This whole build-up for no pay off is not only a waste, but totally ill-fitted to the genre.

The final act of the movie is where it loses all its rhythm. One of the major strengths of the original Blair Witch movie is that basically all of the horrors were unseen, so by the end we are not only terrified, but wondering quite what went on. What did happen to Josh? Why was Mike not fighting? Who left the goodies outside their tent? One thing we can establish onscreen is that all the action is contained within a very real and reliable world. Sure, they get lost in the woods and go round in circles, but that’s easy to do. Blair Witch decides to go down a more definitive route, and takes a leaf out of the book of…well, basically every found footage movie to be made in the past 15 years that took place in some sort of abandoned building. Grave Encounters et al.

The morning hours come but it is eternal darkness outside. We see tents being thrown through the air by unseen forces. Characters age years in a matter of hours. Yup, it’s one of those time- and space-bending theories that sounds like it should have a technical name but I haven’t managed to find it. Once again, it’s overkill. Being preyed upon by an unseen malevolent entity through seemingly endless woods is bad enough, and this twist really does nothing to enhance the plot – it just feels disjointed, like a rejected transplant organ.

The Blair Witch Project followed in the footsteps of some of the best horror/thrillers of our time, by using that classic Hitchcockian technique of keeping the antagonist off-camera. Psycho and Jaws are great examples of this, and the sheer horror created by The Blair Witch Project relied very heavily on letting our imaginations do the work. We were fed many influences, from the opening interviews with local townspeople and other folklore, giving us a haunting image of the witch and her atrocities, and we were taunted with terrifying sounds and the characters’ reactions to their surroundings. Never once did we see the Witch. Was she even real? This is the kind of direction strong horrors take.

Not only does Blair Witch break this golden rule, but it changes the story. You’ll recall Mary Brown telling Heather, Mike and Josh about her childhood encounter with the witch, and describing her as being a person covered in fur-like hair, whose feet never touched the ground. Lane and Talia - the internet guy and his girlfriend - shit all over this long-held impression, instead telling us that the Witch’s death at the hands of the townspeople saw her stripped naked and suspended from a tree, rocks weighing her arms and legs down - effectively a makeshift rack. When we finally get a look at the Witch (which we never should), she is the standard product of a modern horror movie: a pale, long-limbed humanoid that we have seen in a million other supernatural horror movies this side of the Millennium.

Research informs me that director Simon Barrett tried to make out like this creature wasn’t actually the witch, leading fans to deduce that this creature may in fact have been Heather, mutilated and controlled by the Witch. I call BS on this one, for the reason that Barrett made his utter ignorance of the entire Blair Witch mythology known in the DVD featurette exploring the sets. He seemed under the impression that the original house was still standing ‘somewhere in Maryland’, but this assumption seemed to have no bearing on his decision to build a set to replicate it (even though the set doesn’t replicate it at all). 

Were he any sort of fan, he would know that the historic Griggs House in Granite was demolished some years ago, before which it had gained a considerable cult following, with fans exploring and recreating classic scenes for their own photo albums. He struck me, sadly, as the type to rewrite history because he was too cool or important to actually learn the facts. After the film got a lukewarm reception – with many critics and fans agreeing that the introduction of the creature onscreen killed all tension – I reckon he was just looking to create a bit of a stir, which his ‘revelation’ managed to do. This reckless style of his is evident throughout the movie, always trying to add themes or take the mythology in a new direction, or just start again from scratch. His script is puzzling, and not in the good way that actually encourages theorisation, but in the bad way that is simply incoherent.

The Dyatlov Pass Incident [AKA Devil's Pass] (2013)

I feel bad for Renny Harlin: has any other relatively mainstream director ever been so consistently middle-of-the-road throughout a thirty-odd-year filmmaking career? Boasting five Razzie nominations for Worst Director, and of course, the Guinness-certified Biggest Box Office Flop of All Time (Cutthroat Island), Harlin has done well just to keep working in this business. But the saddest part is that he obviously has real talent: almost all of his pictures have some strong elements, and often, they seem like great movies from a distance. But they are always plagued with silly little problems that bring the main product down. Consider Deep Blue Sea: even on its release it was the go-to shark movie after Jaws, and it has maintained a strong cult following, at least among my own generation. But despite the movie’s many strengths, it is difficult to forget the critical reception, or to forget what we all knew: it was a silly, silly film, with many logical inconsistencies. This, sadly, is a pattern that seems to stalk Harlin throughout his career. 

With the Dyatlov Pass Incident (A.K.A. Devil’s Pass), Harlin had rather unique opportunity to really have fun. For anybody not familiar with the events of 1959 in the Ural Mountains, a group of nine students – all experienced hikers and mountaineers – set out on a trek and never came back. A short time later, rescue teams found all nine dead, under mysterious circumstances. Some were partially undressed, some had massive internal injuries without any outer trace of struggle, and examination of their tent found it had been cut open from the inside and fled from in the middle of the night. No official explanation has ever been offered, in spite of rampant speculation and conspiracy theory – ranging from yeti and UFO to military experiment and infrasound – making this incident an absolute dream to turn into a film, which nobody has ever done. And Harlin, in his classic style, starts off well and ends well, but loses his footing somewhere in between.

It’s a found footage movie, which is just as laborious a filmmaking technique as any other nowadays. In fact it is the Dolly Parton of filmmaking: you have no idea how expensive it is to look this cheap! Behind the scenes featurettes show Harlin crawling around in the snow looking for the most appropriate camera angles, crossing off requirements and scenes from the storyboards – FF is a surprisingly technical process. Unfortunately for the most part, this movie underutilises the format, which in the second act seems to simply serves as a means to masking breaks in continuity. A good FF will take advantage of the moods and emotions you can create by adopting a handheld POV (The Blair Witch Project), but almost nothing here is done with this extra dimension. At least until the end.

So how would Dyatlov Pass and FF go together? Ding-ding-ding ‘College documentary project’! Holly (Holly Goss) reckons she’s 21 when she’s at least a decade past that, and has had Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters-style premonitions of the Ural Mountains all her life. She has apparently been given a project grant by the University of ARE-gan where she is a student (she and almost all the actors are British and acting American, and Goss’ accent is slippery at best). So she takes a few friends to Russia and off they hike. Either Holly is very disoriented with her facts, or the writers made the least effort possible to change key information, as she recounts the Dyatlov Pass events inaccurately, attributing one victim's injuries to another and so forth. 

The group's overnight stay at the site where the Dyatlov group's bodies were found kicks off the horror but doesn't keep it going. Explosions set off an avalanche that kills one and breaks the legs of another of Holly's friends, but not only are they now fighting for survival with no equipment in some seriously harsh conditions, they are also subject to what lies behind the mysterious door Holly found in the side of the mountain. Here Harlin goes and stamps his trademark silliness all over what was shaping up to be a respectable picture. And it's not even the time travel twist that bothers me: it's a good twist, as limited as my comprehension of time paradoxes is. What bothers me is the introduction of lurking humanoid creatures. As I told about in my review of the sequel Blair Witch, as a modern horror viewer I am sick to death of lanky, pale, glowing-eyed, quadroped humanoid creatures. From I Am Legend and The Descent to basically every creature movie of this decade, it has been done a thousand times, and never very distinctively. Come up with a new monster, or do a different kind of horror.

It happens that these monsters are relative to the time travel theme, but even then, they are badly done with CGI and suddenly bring the entire quality of the movie down. I actually sighed and rolled my eyes, it was so poor. This idiotic Resident Evil-style sequence takes place, and it's nowhere near as terrifying as, say, the chase by the hooded and armed assailants who originally chased them was. The entire movie could have done much better were it not for the creature feature.

People on discussion boards have presented an interesting array of ideas and interpretations that the time travel theme has prompted, as well as on how sloppily it is executed. The second act of the movie takes on that annoying horror habit of telling rather than showing. So the remaining characters talk the audience through their patchy theory on what is going on and what they should do next. For example, tell me what's wrong with this suggestion: they theorise that the wormhole they have discovered will take them anywhere that they think of hard enough, so they should think of the place that's freshest in their minds that they recall vividly, for the best chances of success; they decide on outside of the door, on the side of the mountain. Answer: well, everything. Let's assume their theory that the wormhole can take them anywhere is somehow correct. How do we know all you have to do is picture your destination to get there? Secondly, if they are going for a place that they can recall vividly, how about home, thousands of miles away from this hellish situation? How about anywhere but back out into the Russian wilderness with still no supplies or equipment? What exactly is the plan once they get back out onto the side of the mountain, where they managed to lock out the two hooded assailants earlier? 

Just this face... for 90 long minutes

Renny Harlin seems to suffer from over-confidence. His behind-the-scenes dialogue always boasts of things we don't see as an audience: how frightening that scene was, how fantastically talented the actors were. Here he was determined to hire unknowns (that's fine, lots of horrors like to do that), but he also reckons that they were the cream of the crop. Performances are mediocre at best, but the prize here goes to Holly Goss for being terrible. She never ever seems scared when she finds herself in terrifying situations, and has this gormless look on her face throughout. Plus, as early implied, her accent is not great. 

You know what this movie should have been? An account of the real Dyatlov group and their doomed expedition, without the found footage format. Just a straight up narrative of what we know happened, and then perhaps a fictionalised account of what could have caused the group to flee their tent and eventually die. Because the appeal of the Dyatlov Pass incident is that it is a real life event that still doesn't make much sense, and feels like one of those unsolvable mysteries. There you have your perfect movie! You don't need to modernise it and make it about American college students for it to be interesting. 

Grave Encounters 2 (2012)

What’s the best sequel of all time? While it may not be Grave Encounters 2, I would argue that it’s one of the strongest horror sequels we’ve had for some time. If I’m honest, I remember little of the first movie, but this is for good reason. It is one of a slurry of found footage horrors based on paranormal investigator TV crews getting lost in the bowels of an abandoned hospital/asylum/prison, and how often has a movie like this turned out a truly memorable character that you can instantly distinguish without having to subconsciously label them Brunette 1 and Brunette 2? The first Grave Encounters is one of these, and it’s a lot of fun and has plenty of good jump scares; the sequel manages to top itself by taking on the same fictitious reality as used in the Blair Witch Project 2, in which the first movie is acknowledged as a movie.

Alex (Richard Harmon) is an uptight obsessive who is working on his own horror movie while

Nothing unsettling about this guy

becoming engrossed in the mysteries surrounding the movie Grave Encounters, and soon abandons his own project in favour of an investigative piece, in which he aims to prove that the movie was reality and that a whole TV crew are dead by ghostly means. OK, let’s take an obligatory moment right here to appreciate the one eventuality that characters in these sorts of plotlines always seem to take for granted: they go somewhere dangerous and creepy to prove that ghosts exist, and then when they get that startling proof, they are far from overjoyed. In fact, one might venture to say that they bite off more than they can chew in the ghost-hunting business and give Yvette Fielding a run for her money on the screamometer. One time it might be cool for one of these crews to actually show some sort of spiritual efficiency when faced with ghosts.

19th century-style filmmaking

Anyhow, Alex brings along his small crew of friends and they break into the same abandoned asylum. But this isn’t just any asylum, this is a shapeshifting, time-bending asylum from M&S, so prepare for the mindfucks. What really made me look again at this movie was the featurette on the DVD, which gives you behind the scenes footage and interviews with director John Poliquin and writers/producers The Vicious Brothers. Part of a small gaggle of modern horrormakers that miss the spit-and-sawdust levels of filming and reach into the past for their inspiration, the Vicious Brothers detail the tremendous technical measure that goes into making a movie look so small-scale, and the box of tricks they use to pull it all off, including such Victorian wonders as forced perspective. Consider, for example, the simple genius that goes into designing a shot in which a creature twice the size of the characters comes crashing down a corridor like a huge house spider, by using a particularly tall and lanky actor in a scaled-down set. It’s just pure excellence.

A supernatural version of a Welcome Mat

There is further method to the madness: by introducing the building as a weird entity that seems to dangle between dimensions and is capable of manipulation, all classic audience reactions are suspended. The hackneyed knowledge of running outside instead of upstairs or not believing the bad guy is really dead is long forgotten once physical rules no longer apply, leaving the audience with little option but to sit tight and hope for the best. It’s filmed very well, and FF opponents will have to try harder than the ‘shaky camera’ excuse with this one, as it’s coherent even given the context. It is a gripping and watchable movie, and has a couple of really fantastic Oh Shit moments, which are particularly important in a film that is brimming with jump scares.

I suppose it would be beneficial to watch Grave Encounters before embarking on this interesting sequel, and if you’re here and interested in the sorts of movies I write about, it probably wouldn’t be a waste of 90 minutes of your life. But if all else fails, watch it so you can watch the second one and get it, because it’s a really good movie, and a rare example of a sequel outshining its predecessor. 

Wrong Turn 2 (2007)

Star of the show, Mr Wayne Robson

Wrong Turn has got to be one of my favourite post-millennium horrors. I don’t think it has anything to do with my longtime love of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or any of its contemporaries, but don’t mutated hillbillies make excellent villains? When Roger Ebert reviewed the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, he humorously and very knowingly detailed his concept of the Wrong Gas Station, which has applied to horror movies for decades, and applies to Wrong Turn: a ramshackle arrangement of cracked wooden planks that looks torn straight out of the ‘40s, with a crackly old hick in denim dungarees as its proprietor, who is always trusted despite his ominous nature and deliberate attempts to have his customers picked off by hick associates. You’d think the only gas station for miles around would make the most of its meagre custom – fat cigar stumps don’t pay for themselves, you know!

Ain't nobody got time for that!

The first Wrong Turn is a fun, tense, creepy movie with some great effects and good actors (Jeremy Sisto’s hair, anyone?). It’s one of those movie series, rather like Final Destination, at which you can look and wonder exactly when the makers decided they were not making a serious movie anymore. The first one can pass for pretty much straight horror slasher; the second decides to take it from a more wink-wink-nudge-nudge approach, both in theme and in specifics. The central disdain for the curse that is reality TV allows us all to share a laugh about the ludicrousness of modern media, while the hideously inventive death sequences allow us to share a laugh about the ludicrousness of modern splatter.

Wrong Turn 2, I assume, takes place in a location close to the first one, and is centred on a group of (mostly) dickheads who are taking part in a survivalist reality show. Among them is the slut, the horny pest punching way above his weight, the mousy girl and the moronic male – classic lineup. Tokens include a black guy who survives and a hot lesbian who doesn’t. Heading the gang is the Colonel (Henry Rollins), a retired Marine who plays to the camera but fights like a champ. The first fantastic kill has taken place before the opening credits, and kicks things straight off with over-the-top deaths constructed with amazing effects and buckets of corn syrup blood. One thing you can always count on Wrong Turn for is memorable death sequences.

Before long, the local family of mutated hillbillies (which now extends beyond the original’s freaky fraternal trio to include…girl hillbillies!) are wreaking havoc and pulling contestants apart with their unnatural strength and durability, but certainly not missing out on any opportunities to fuck each other and birth worm-like babies. These are, after all, no ordinary hillbillies like the banjo kid in Deliverance; these are genetically-mutated cannibal hillbillies who have an unhealthily iron-rich diet and could definitely do with some vegetables. And that means that brothers fuck sisters in public places and sisters birth incest babies that consume toxic waste from a bottle. Although this family of hillbillies seems to have actually learned to speak a few words, they do still do a lot of their stupid manic laughter and hollering.

What can I say? Wrong Turn 2 just gives and keeps on giving for any good horror fan. Tons of splatter, lots of unexpected moments and an outstandingly good performance from Wayne Robson as Old Timer, the shrill patriarch of the family. There are characters you root for, and others whose untimely deaths you anticipate with bated breath. It’s fun, fast-paced, well filmed and done with enthusiasm as a directorial debut from Joe Lynch, and a very worthy successor of the original Wrong Turn.