Blair Witch Review: Does Adam Wingard's Sequel Match the Original?

You've got to wonder where the parents of Heather and James Donahue are, and what exactly they think they're doing. We didn't see them before their daughter got lost in The Blair Witch Project and now they've only gone and let their son James wander off in search of his sister 20 years later. Surely one of the parents might have advised against this madness.

And so Blair Witch begins with director Adam Wingard (The Guest, You’re Next) taking us back into the haunted woods of Burkitsville as another group of camera-carrying crazies go in search of the elusive Elly Kedward. This time there’s six doomed younglings; James Donahue was four when Heather disappeared, Lisa wants to make a documentary on James’ ill-advised search for his missing sister, and their friends Peter and Ashley are just along for moral support (and to handily up the body count and prove that in horror, black guys are still first on the kill list). The four friends are then joined by oddballs Lane (darknet666) and Talia who uploaded footage to YouTube that they claim to have found on a tape in the woods. The shaky camera video appears to show a female figure in a house just like the one at the end of Heather’s original project. Is Heather still alive after all these years, or is the Blair Witch up to her old tricks again?

No points if you guess the answer, but prepare for another bumpy ride on you’re way to the climax. Blair Witch ditches much of the ambiguity of the original film. There’s no room for any real debate over what exactly happens to this bunch of terrified youths. Anyone still fuming that they sat through The Blair Witch Project and never got a single shot of the Blair Witch can rest assured that there is definitely something to see here. Thankfully, not too much though. Wingard is smart enough to know a little goes a long way and milks the most suspense possible from his characters’ shaky cameras and inability to confront the Blair Witch face to face. The sound design is also racked up a notch, sometimes a little too much as it sounds like the black smoke monster from Lost might have found its way into the woods of Maryland.

Though the Donahue kids’ parents could have done much more to stop at least their second child from heading into the woods, at least James and his buddies are much more prepared for their camping trip than Heather, Mike and Josh were back in 1994. This new crop of tech-savvy millenials have Walkie-talkies, GPS, wearable cameras, a drone camera, lots of lights, food and just more cameras than you can shake a spooky stick-man at. Unfortunately, they obviously didn't watch that footage filmed by Heather and Josh carefully enough as they don't seem to realise that it's all bloody useless when faced with the power of the Blair Witch.

And if you thought she was too passive in the original, or  maybe you don't believe that there was a curse and that everything can be explained rationally in the footage from Heather’s project, prepare to think again. In Blair Witch, the late Elly Kedward really unleashes her powers. She messes with their technology, messes with time and space, magics that old house from out of nowhere again and even throws in a few new tricks that are best left unspoiled. Wingard leaves you in no doubt that the Blair Witch exists and she's pretty much as terrifying as she ever was.

Fans of the original have to endure a little catch-up exposition to fill newcomers in on the legend of the Blair Witch, but at least a little more is added to the mythology. Rustin Parr’s house is also expanded with previously unseen elements providing one particularly claustrophobic moment. However, it's what goes down in the house that really gives the sweat glands a workout as familiar beats (people standing in corners, apologies, unseen attackers) get new and thrilling updates.

For those sick to death of found footage films, this offers little to win you over. There’s more cameras and camera technology so a slightly more varied visual experience than many other similar films. And the old charge of ‘why would they still be filming in this situation?’ is at least partially answered by having the characters wear their cameras on their head requiring them to not have to think about filming when the shit really hits the fan in the final act. These cameras also provide Peep Show style interactions as the characters talk to each other but gaze directly into the cameras. This pays dividends when two characters can only see each other's torch-lit faces while the space behind them remains in total, terrifying darkness.

So Blair Witch is scary, but it's not as ingenious and won't be as influential as the original. It's mostly a shame that Wingard didn't use the ‘method directing’ tactics of original directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick. Clearly some of the scenes were unpleasant to film, but the actors in this film got off lucky. Though there is less ambiguity in Blair Witch, there’s a higher body count and more hysteria to make up for it. It's just a shame that there isn't anything as iconic, moving and ‘real’ as Heather’s final apology in the project that started it all. Still, Blair Witch fans won't be disappointed and newbies will learn that the woods of Burkitsville can be scarier than Crystal Lake, Elm Street and Haddonfield put together. Go back to bed Paranormal Activity, the Blair Witch is back with a vengeance and as terrifying as ever.

Here's the trailer:

Now go buy my book on the original please! 

More on Blair Witch and the original:

Blair Witch trailer investigation

 

Quoted in Blair Witch Article on BBC Culture

 

Reviews of my book on The Blair Witch Project

 

15 Things You Probably Didn't Know about The Blair Witch Project

 

The Blair Witch Project and Top 10 Found Footage Films

Blair Witch trailer investigation

So Adam Wingard, what have you been up to down in the woods today? The director of You're Next and The Guest has finally put his cards on the table. His movie The Woods is now officially titled Blair Witch and IS a sequel to the original 1999 found footage horror.

The trailer takes us straight back into what looks like psycho hermit Rustin Parr's house way out in the woods of Burkitsville where the Blair Witch is known to lurk. If you don't know the backstory of the Blair Witch, (what do you live under a rock?) then check out the original film's website and the mythology section here.

The found footage point-of-view shot shows a frantic rush around the old house, before it is revealed that this is footage from YouTube which a guy called James is watching. The footage was uploaded by another guy who found a tape in the Black Hills woods. There is the distorted sound of screaming and at 11 seconds into the trailer, there is a person visible in the footage. That's all I can tell you about that.

But then James states to whoever is now filming him, 'I think that might be my sister'. I'm not the only one who immediately thinks.... 'You're sister???' Heather Donahue? Did Heather have a little brother in the original movie? I don't think it was ever mentioned, but then this girl's voice, who I assume is the off-camera camera operator filming this guy says, 'You really think you're sister could still be out there after all these years?' That's 17 years by the way if we're counting and assuming this sequel takes place in the present day.

Yikes! Please tell me Heather is still out there. I know the actress Heather Donahue has been busy growing weed and then writing books about it, but that means she's surely available for a cameo. God that would be a interesting development in the story... maybe.

So the Wikipedia page for the film states that this guy's name is James Donahue, so it definitely is supposed to be Heather's brother, but I don't know if this is 100% confirmed. It looks like James and his five college buddies head out into the woods to search for Heather after finding this YouTube footage. They know the legends, they know about the curse, they know about Elly Kedward a.k.a. The Blair Witch.

So then shit hits the fan as you would expect. Those creepy stick men; they're back and they're bigger. The kids start walking in circles again. Somebody (probably) kicks a map in the creek.

There is a shot of one of the girls with a camera in hand, suggesting that there must be at least two characters that will be carrying cameras, and in the great words of Cloverfield's Hud 'documenting everything'.  I wondered when I first watched this trailer if the film was all going to be found footage. The shot 7 seconds into the trailer suggests that either these college kids have a nice drone for capturing aerial shots (doubt it, though that would be awesome), or the film won't be all found footage, or it's just a nice shot to insert in the trailer but it won't be in the movie. I'm going with that last one.

Well anyway, then the kids start turning on each other and the woods start turning on them as the (hopefully still) invisible witch works her magic on them all. Looks like this film will have a lot more going on in it than the original. I suspect it will be gorier, more graphic and have more than just traipsing around in circles and arguing going on. There's a shot in the trailer that looks as though nature will attack them more than it ever did in the original. I'm talking Evil Dead style trees. And then there's the shots that remind me of The Descent with one of the girls crawling through a whole load of shite to escape from somewhere.

I hope they don't dare show us the Blair Witch and I hope this film keeps up the ambiguity. I'd love it if there was a link back to the original with Heather appearing in some form, but it needs to be ambiguous and it needs to be done well.

Also in the trailer: we have a person standing in the corner facing the wall, hand prints all over the spooky house and the voice of someone apologising. It sounds more like a bloody remake than a sequel when you put it like that.

More than anything, I hope this honours the original by limiting the gore, having no CGI whatsoever and being bloody scary. I don't want to see the witch, I don't want to know exactly what happens at the end and I don't want this to turn into a franchise that goes on and on and on with new batches of disposable teens. I'm already concerned that some of the six characters in the film are simply there to allow for a bigger body count.

I loved Adam Wingard's The Guest so I'm optimistic that this will have some good stuff in it. But I suspect that Wingard probably didn't go into original directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick's 'method directing' techniques and I think that is a huge shame. It will show in the performances, the cinematography and the dialogue and it will make Blair Witch a hell of a lot less believable than The Blair Witch Project is.

What do you think Blair Witch fans? Talk to me... I'm here for you! And please buy my book on The Blair Witch Project.

Here's the Blair Witch trailer:

A Night in the Woods DVD Review

Fed up of found footage films?  Wish they would just stay lost in the woods?  Well this British Blair Witch from director Richard Parry isn’t going to do much to get you back on board as it’s more likely to leave your stomach churning from another shaky-cam extravaganza.  

That said, if you enjoyed the last couple of Paranormal Activity films or any other number of lazily shot and scripted found footage horrors from the atrocious The Devil Inside to 2010’s marginally better The Last Exorcism, you could do worse than this well-acted little shocker.

While A Night in the Woods adds nothing to the already saturated found footage sub-genre like, say, the super powered capers of Chronicle, it does have a vaguely interesting threesome of lead characters, admirably played by capable actors who improvised much of the dialogue.  We first meet brash American Brody (Monsters’ Scoot McNairy) and his beautiful British girlfriend Kerry (Anna Skellern) as they prepare for a camping trip to Dartmoor’s Wistman’s Woods, stopping off along the way to pick up Kerry’s cousin Leo (Andrew Hawley).

The character dynamics are the most interesting element of the film and it feels as though more thrills, twists and turns and a far greater sense of dread could have been gleaned from the odd love triangle that develops between a boy, his girl and her cousin.  Yes that sounds weird but there are surprises in store as to the motivations of some of the characters and even who one claims to be.

Brody is amiable and amusing as the American belittling Britain’s Stonehenge in favour of his own country’s Grand Canyon and taking an instant dislike to the lothario Leo for reasons that become increasingly clear.  But as the woods grow darker and the night gets longer, it is clear that Leo isn’t the only one with things to hide.

The found footage technique is justified continuously by dialogue between the characters.  Kerry complains about Brody’s need to film everything.  Leo has even brought his own camera along for the trip allowing perspective to shift between the two characters’ cameras and finally to Kerry as she takes one of the cameras herself.  They watch previously filmed footage on laptops and an iPod, giving the film a clever way of showing revealing flashbacks about the characters.  It has to be said that this is actually not a bad looking film (for found footage) with the opening half particularly having some very attractive cinematography from DOP Simon Dennis.

It’s just a shame that it all descends into sub-Blair Witch running around in the woods, screaming hysterically, and getting bumped over the head by unseen forces, perhaps local legend ‘The Huntsman’.  These found footage films work best when a light on the camera illuminates the dark night, heavy breathing can be heard from the camera operator, and someone can be heard screaming in the distance. But when so many other films have done this to death, these scenes now drag and become quickly repetitive.  

It’s a blessing found footage films are so short as this one, like so many before it, fills most of the last twenty of its eighty minutes with shaky camera footage of the trees blurring past as a girl screams from behind the camera.  The first half’s interesting character relationships give way to something much less exciting but still a cut above many of the other found footage horrors of recent years.

See it if you like this sort of thing and you’re not looking for anything fresh, but if you’ve had enough of found footage, you’ll probably wish they never picked up the camera in the first place.

Another Review of my Blair Witch Book

It gives me great pleasure to share another review of my book on The Blair Witch Project, this time from fellow blogger Chris at Movies and Songs 365. I'm biased, so I'm going to tell you that my favourite part of the review is the line, 'An enjoyable read, which has given me a new appreciation for The Blair Witch Project and how it was made.' What more could I possibly want from a review?

Huge thanks to Chris for picking up a copy, reading it, AND reviewing it! What a gentleman! If you'd like to pick up a copy too, please head to Amazon and purchase one.

If you're not convinced to BUY BUY BUY after heading over to Chris' review, then check out some more reviews here.

Submitted my Found Footage Horror PhD Thesis Today

After 5 years of part-time studying; countless hours of sitting in libraries and reading (188 sources cited), writing, re-writing and more re-writing and watching and analysing about 20 films again and again and again, I submitted my PHD thesis today. It is 292 pages and 99,543 words long. 

Now I've just got to get through the viva exam around Easter time, and then hopefully get the thesis published as a book, and hopefully get a lecturing job out of it now! Thanks to everyone who has been in any way supportive over the last 5 years. It's been awesome and I'm going to miss it.

As I'm now in a navel-gazing kind of mood, here's a look back at some of the highs and lows of the past 5 years, as I have attempted to complete this thesis, watched a lot of awful films (and some really good ones too) and got a short book on The Blair Witch Project published at the same time!

Reviews of my book on The Blair Witch Project

My first academic paper: Cine-Excess Conference 2014

Referenced in a book on Found Footage Horror

My Blair Witch book just got a cover

Becoming a Found Footage Horror Expert: Media Interview

The Making of The Blair Witch Project

Blair Witch Book Just Got Really Real

Evidence of Good Found Footage

Alone With Her and Behind the Mask: Interesting Found Footage

Scraping the Bottom of the Found Footage Barrel

Found Footage PhD Update

Characters With Cameras

Top 10 Found Footage Horror Films

Found footage horror is a much-maligned sub-genre but with more and more of these films appearing in cinemas every year, there seems to be no sign of the technique running out of tape anytime soon.  Recent efforts have taken the horror out of found footage with the superhero themed Chronicle and partying teens of Project X but horror is still very much at the heart of the genre (just ask anyone who sat through Project X).  There may be more straight-to-DVD offerings than you could point a shaky camera at but the films that use the found footage aesthetic well, and in interesting and often new and exciting ways can be hugely profitable and offer audiences a unique and immersive thrill like few other horror films. Time to dust off those lost tapes and take a look at the best found footage horror films of all time.

10. TrollHunter (2010)

You’ll believe it when you see it ran the tagline for this Norwegian found footage oddity. Not quite, but the sight of giant trolls tearing through the countryside is made slightly more believable by the clever mythology and handheld camerawork of the documentary crew that decides to follow the titular troll hunter. On a low budget, director André Øvredal has his characters capture the fantastical sight of these awe-inspiring but ugly creatures as they attempt to make a documentary about Otto Jespersen’s grouchy Hans. Many argued the mock-doc format was getting old and stale by this point but the blend of impressive visual effects to create the trolls and the well-judged moments of comedy made up for the lack of genuine horror and left many with the feeling that there was life in the found footage film yet.

9. Diary of the Dead (2007)

George A. Romero’s second return to the original ‘Dead’ trilogy after Land of the Dead follows film students as they capture the beginnings of the zombie apocalypse. Using a range of found footage from news reports to webcams and videos uploaded to MySpace (remember that?), Diary of the Dead is a typical Romero film with plenty of blood, guts and subtext. With so many characters with cameras, it gives all new meaning to the idea of shooting the dead. There are also some great little additions to the found footage format with a scene where a character is filming while charging his camera at a plug socket and is therefore limited in his movements as zombies close in on him.  Romero seems to bemoan the rise of bloggers and vloggers taking over the airwaves as the mainstream media crumbles during the apocalypse. The jumbled transmissions of thousands of people with access to sharing their thoughts over the internet are more of a concern than the traditional shuffling zombies.

8. REC 2 (2009)

The only sequel on this list is a deserved entry into the found footage sub-genre with cops with helmet cameras attempting to survive in an apartment block full of repossessed zombies.  Following from its predecessor, the squad enters the quarantined Barcelonan apartment block to find more rabid, rapid zombies sprinting manically around the claustrophobic confines and we get front row seats, positioned as we are on the helmets of our heroes. It’s a mad rollercoaster ride of a film and just when the action seems like it might get a bit repetitive, we switch to seeing from the point-of-view of the camera of a group of kids who have made the fatal mistake of also entering the possessed residence.  Taking the story further than the first film and adding to the mythology can’t hide the fact that there is nothing that can compare to the terrifying final scene of the first film. But if you want the cinematic equivalent of a first-person shooter game like Doom, look no further!

7. Man Bites Dog (1992)

Ever wanted to get under the skin of a sociopath killer; find out what makes him tick, what he does in his down time between random slayings and the odd bit of rape? Well meet Ben, part time thief, full time psycho. A film crew follows him around as he robs, kills and rambles on and on about art, music and society. It soon becomes apparent that this film crew is becoming more than just documentary makers as they become embroiled deeper and more explicitly in Ben’s crimes. The line between watching and participating becomes increasingly blurred, implicating you in the audience as you keep watching this most realistic of Belgian mock-docs. Don’t be fooled by Ben’s apparently amiable nature, this is one sick puppy that bites as much as he barks.

6. Paranormal Activity (2007)

Arguably more influential than the number one film on this list, a couple of suburbanites Katie and Micah fall foul of a poltergeist/demon as creepy occurrences are caught on tape by Micah’s trusty camcorder. Bedroom antics are filmed for scares, not pleasure, as the nights get tenser with an unwanted entity attacking the pair in their bed. Filmed on a tiny budget and distributed by DreamWorks, this reminded young and poor filmmakers what could be achieved by the found footage horror genre when it’s done right. It started the biggest found footage franchise, out-grossing (but not grossing out) the Saw sequels and only just seems to have wrapped up with the (supposedly) final film in 2015.

5. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Banned until recently, this is easily one of the sickest, most despicable films you will ever see. So realistic the director was nearly tried for murder, Ruggero Deodato eventually had to bring his cast out of hiding to face the media so that the authorities would really believe he hadn’t killed them. How could a film be this realistic? Well, this is where found footage really began. After a team of morally challenged documentary makers disappear in the Amazon, their footage is later recovered. What the rolls of film reveal is that the local tribes didn’t take too kindly to having their homes destroyed by the documentary makers who were craving a bit of sensationalism. The inclusion of real scenes of animal cruelty makes this extremely hard to watch and deeply disturbing but if that doesn’t upset you enough, try the grueling and realistic depictions of abortion, rape and castration. That should do it.

4. Cloverfield (2008)

When a giant rampaging beast (think Godzilla but scarier) hits the streets of New York, ruining the leaving party of young professional Rob, his best friend Hud decides to document the night on camcorder. Taking the imagery of 9/11 - crumbling buildings, severed landmarks, dusty streets and a city in panic – and keeping the amateur aesthetic of so many 9/11 YouTube videos is exploitative but incredibly exciting. Director Matt Reeves (Let Me In) and writer Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) care little for the flimsy characters but Hud’s cinematography mixed with the destructive power of a truly awesome monster keeps you on the edge of your seat until the explosive climax.

3. REC (2007)

A TV presenter and her camera operator get more thrills than they bargained for when they follow a crew of firefighters into a zombie infested Barcelonan apartment block.  Quickly quarantined by the authorities, the fire crew and the presenter must work with the residents in order to stay alive while the camera operator keeps filming. These aren’t the shuffling zombies of Romero’s films; these are the speedy, terrifying zombies of modern horror. Think 28 Days Later but all shot by one of the characters in the story and all trapped in one claustrophobic location. The final scene filmed in total darkness with only the night vision camera allowing the characters to see is one of the tensest and scariest things you will ever witness.

2. Zero Day (2003)

Based on actual tapes created by the Columbine high school killers, two teenage boys create video diaries capturing their preparation for a school shooting massacre. The footage they produce is a scary, fascinating portrait of the banality of evil. These two kids are close friends, a little introverted and insular but pretty normal. But they are planning an unspeakable crime and are documenting their thoughts and actions as they prepare for their big day. It’s a worrying insight into how two seemingly normal teenagers can deceive the world and consider committing a terrifying act without a care for the consequences. Switching from their own camcorder captured footage to the CCTV in their school for the final scene, it’s a bleak, chilling reenactment of a frighteningly real phenomena. 

1. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

In October of 1994 three student filmmakers went down to the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary… the rest is cinematic history. Heather, Mike and Josh get lost, hungry and scared in their quest to get to the bottom of the Blair Witch mythology. Roaming in circles with no way out of the woods, they are surrounded by strange noises in the night as they try to sleep.  Then objects appear outside their tents, the sound of distant children crying wakes them and then one of the students disappears. Though the witch might never be seen, less is definitely more in this most influential of found footage films. The actors really shot the film themselves and with the directors only giving minor instructions and the actors’ genuine hunger, frustration and fear burn through the screen. One of the scariest films ever made. Please consider buying a copy of my book on The Blair Witch Project here.

5 others to find if you’re not feeling sick of shaky-cam action:

Paranormal Entity 2 a.k.a Gacy House (2010) See this if you loved Paranormal Activity.

The Magician (2005) See this if you loved Man Bites Dog.

Exhibit A (2007) See this is you loved Zero Day.

The Last Exorcism (2010) See this if you loved REC 2.

The Last Broadcast (1998) See this if you loved The Blair Witch Project.