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.