Blair Witch

I was twelve years old when I heard about The Blair Witch Project.  I remember reading about it in a newspaper; I don’t remember what the article said, or if it even mentioned what the film was about, only that it was terrifying.  Then a month or so passed and the first commercial for the film came on my television, and it instantly tapped into that part of my mind that makes me afraid of noises in the dark. The commercial didn’t show much other than some black and white footage of teenagers interviewing people about the Blair Witch inter-cut with those same teenagers running in the woods.  Running away from something.

From something.

You see that’s where the fascination came in, that’s the real reason why the film made so much money back in 1999.  Of course the film being in the found footage style was an original concept that also fascinated people, but it was that something that made people want to go see it.  Why are these kids running?  What are they running from?  What is it going to do to them if it catches them?  It’s the unknown that scares us the most; it’s what may be lurking in the dark that makes the dark so unsettling. The Blair Witch Project knew this, and in it’s best moments, used it to great effect.

Time is rarely a story’s friend though.  The best ones find ways to transcend time’s obstacles, but most stories show their age so swiftly, it feels like it happened overnight.  The Blair Witch Project has given way to films like The Paranormal Activity series, that while not having the same initial impact of the former, they’ve taken it’s idea, or gimmick, and have used it to a greater technical effect.  If someone were to watch The Blair Witch Project  today, I doubt it would have the same impact it did seventeen years ago.

So when it was announced that Adam Wingard’s new film, initially titled The Woods, was actually a sequel to The Blair Witch Project, I became very excited.  Wingard is a strong horror filmmaker, and here was a chance for the foundation of a type of horror film, to return with an angry vengeance.  A chance to use all of the bells and whistles a greater budget affords a director, in order to make something new out of something that’s shown it’s age.  A chance to be original where previous ideas have become stale.

The good news is that when Wingard tries this, he succeeds; the bad news is that he doesn’t try it enough.  His film is, for the most part, a remake of it’s 1999 predecessor with better cameras and jump scares throughout.  This isn’t always a bad thing, but it doesn’t do enough to warrant a sequel to something that could’ve benefited from finding new ways to be genuinely frightening.  Then the final twenty minutes happened, and they assaulted me in a way that I wasn’t expecting, giving me exactly what I wanted from the film in the first place.

The film tells the story of James (James Allen McCune), the younger brother of Heather, from the first film.  James has found a video online that claims to show Heather’s final moments in a house in the Black Hills Forrest, where the Blair Witch makes creepy stick figures.  James sets out with three other friends and two strangers, that claim to know the area, into the very forest his sister disappeared in. He’s looking for answers for what happened to her; he and his group find something worse.

The problem is that most of the film plays out the same way as the first one, though there are double the characters, in that they get lost, walk in circles, and see familiar stick figures and rock piles.  Because of these similarities, it results in less effect on the audience than the characters, as we’re not surprised by these developments, but more waiting on what the film can do to surprise us.  It attempts to hide these faults with jump scares that make the film feel even less original.  It’s worse that most of these jump scares are just one of the characters suddenly appearing in front of the camera.  Sure, some of them work, but it makes the situation feel less dangerous, which hurts the film.

I did like how Wingard, and his writers, make the excuse to have most of the film take place at night; I won’t reveal that excuse here.  Nighttime brings the unknown, and allows for noises in the woods to be much more than that.  The film does a much better job when it focuses of what could be making those noises than when it tries to cheaply scare the audience.  It also has a better relationship with gore than the first film, as one character’s death is particularity gruesome and ingenious.  The cast sells all of this well enough, some better than others, but they’re mostly just here to be picked off one by one.

But it’s in the final twenty minutes that Wingard brings the fury of his talent to the story.  Those last scenes in the film are some of the most frightening in a horror movie I’ve seen this year, and this has been a good year for horror.  Wingard assaults the eyes, ears, and minds of the audience.  He shows us nothing, and then just enough to make us fear looking at the screen.  I hate to recommend a film on it’s last moments, but I actually think they’re worth it here, as they gave me exactly what I wanted from Blair Witch, and then some.  What I wanted is what I felt back in 1999 when I saw those commercials; I wanted to want to look away in fear of what I’d see next.  The fear of what awaits us in the dark, of what we may see if we turn around.

Are you afraid to turn around right now?  No?  Turn off the lights then…and listen…and wait.  Because then, just then, you may realize something you’re afraid of, is waiting for you.  Wingard’s film, when it’s right, makes me wonder what’s there in the dark.

Grade: B-