“Don’t come close, it’s a trick!”
At the 2016 San Diego Comic Con, Lionsgate announced that an under-the-radar horror film called The Woods was actually Blair Witch, a secretly-produced followup to the languishing but still influential franchise begun by The Blair Witch Project and sullied by Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. It was an incredibly savvy marketing maneuver, one that got the film a lot of press and a lot of buzz. It landed with a thud (critically at least; it made a hefty profit at the box office). Blair Witch isn’t a disaster, but in 2017 it’s hard to see it as anything more than a regular-ass found-footage movie. I will give credit where credit is due, though: this film swings for the fuckin’ fences, and at times it’s downright audacious.
A nice running thread throughout these two films (I’m ignoring Book of Shadows, as one should) is that they actually provide a decent justification for the found-footage approach. This time, James Donahue (brother of Heather) is traveling into the woods outside Burkittsville because he saw some footage on YouTube that included a half-second glimpse of what could be his older sister. He’s accompanied by Lisa, a film student, who’s following him for a documentary called The Absence of Closure. It might seem like a narrative contrivance to have yet another film student in one of these movies, but honestly, I would watch the hell out of Lisa’s documentary – guy goes into the haunted woods to search for a sister who disappeared twenty years ago? Yeah, sign me up.
Blair Witch is nicely updated for the 21st century. Lisa and James take a drone, walkie-talkies, and earpiece cameras with them; additionally, through the characters of Peter and Ashley, the film is nicely diverse. Peter in particular is an engaging, funny presence; hungover the day of their departure, he deadpans, “You’re asking if I regret drinking the night before going camping in the woods? I do not.” They’re joined by Talia and Lane, who posted the video of the cabin under the name DarkNet666 (Peter teases Lane about another video of his, that of a pile of rocks, a nice callback to the first film).
The story is pretty straightforward; it’s common knowledge that a Blair Witch film lives and dies on the success of its environment. Director Adam Wingard really enjoys playing with the metaphysical implications of the Burkittsville woods. This was the most successful part of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s original film, and the upgrade in video quality is a nice reversal of the first film’s lo-fi charms: you can see clearly just how screwed these people are. The earpiece cameras are a nice touch as well, affording us multiple perspectives (which does, to be fair, kind of screw with the found-footage conceit, because switching viewpoints makes the film look compiled and not found).
Blair Witch takes more time with its characters as well. Here we get to see more of them being friends before they go into the woods, which adds narrative heft; Talia and Lane are basically harbinger figures, but Wingard utilizes them well. They provide a reason for everything to fall apart, as it’s revealed that they faked the familiar stick figures strewn about the campsite. “We faked it because it’s real,” Lane insists, and it makes you wonder how much of the legend of the Witch is real. But what Blair Witch wants you to wonder, in its boldest narrative gambit, is this: is anything real?
I said before that this is a film that is unafraid to go big. The best parts of Blair Witch are the scenes that exhibit Wingard’s naked ambition and eye for spectacle, even on a scale this small. The film isn’t always successful, but Wingard acquits himself nicely enough to make me excited to see him take on Godzilla vs. Kong and a remake of the terrific Korean revenge film I Saw the Devil (you, uh, can probably skip Death Note). The best, and strangest, part of Blair Witch is the way it plays with time; in the middle of the night Peter asks what time it is and says his watch is showing 2 PM. After being kicked out of the group, Talia and Lane reappear, disheveled and frightened, saying they’ve been wandering the woods for five days. This begs an interesting question of the first film: just how long were Heather, Joshua, and Mike in the woods?
At its weakest, Blair Witch just repeats story beats from the first film, such as the disappearance of Lane, or the way the group hikes all day only to find themselves back at their original campsite. At its best, it emphasizes the subsuming effect of the woods (but in a lame contrivance, the Witch’s spell only works if you spend the night in the woods). One of the film’s best shots is of Ashley yanking down on one of the stick figures and breaking it, only to see Talia’s body snap and contort in an identical fashion.
It’s in the climax that Wingard’s propensity for going big lets him down, because it plays as a louder remix of the original’s (with a few twists, to be fair). Lisa and James find the cabin, and I’ll admit that Wingard does a good job of playing with space and expectations, as the two of them ascend stairwells and descend into a basement, all of which makes you wonder at the enormity of the cabin (if it even exists). There’s the now-standard long-limbed monstrosity, which thankfully isn’t the Witch, skulking through the hallways; more interestingly, a bearded Lane is found in the basement, frantically telling Lisa, “You’ve got to do what she says!” When the Witch does show up – heralded by blinding white light, in a very cool touch – Lisa tells James to face the corner so they can’t see the Witch, which is a retcon that the film doesn’t need. Blair Witch ends in a more or less predictable fashion: very little conclusion, leave it open for another sequel.
But I think we can close the book on this franchise. Neither this film nor The Blair Witch Project are bad – the first is certainly a trailblazer – but there might not be anything left to say here. It’s fine to leave things unresolved, or open-ended. After all, that’s what works so well about this franchise.
10/1: Dawn of the Dead
10/2: Drag Me to Hell
10/3: Pet Sematary
10/4: The Descent
10/5: Repo! The Genetic Opera
10/6: Desierto
10/7: The Blair Witch Project
10/8: Blair Witch
10/9: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
10/10: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
10/11: Prince of Darkness
10/12: 30 Days of Night
10/13: Friday the 13th (2009)
10/14: Slither
10/15: Tremors
10/16: Pandorum
10/17: It Follows
10/18: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
10/19: Poltergeist
10/20: Paranormal Activity
10/21: Creepshow
10/22: VHS
10/23: Nosferatu the Vampyre
10/24: An American Werewolf in London
10/25: The Witch
10/26: The Rocky Horror Picture Show
10/27: Cronos
10/28: The Hills Have Eyes
10/29: The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
10/30: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
10/31: Halloween (2007)
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