Blair Witch (2016)

In 1993, two film students at the University of Central Florida, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, after realizing they shared a mutual preference for documentaries exploring paranormal phenomena over traditional horror films, conspired to produce their own horror film that combined the styles of both. They developed a 35-page screenplay while leaving dialogue to be improvised, placing a casting call advertisement in Backstage requesting actors with strong improvisational abilities. The end result was The Blair Witch Project, a supernatural horror phenomenon that utilized the most basic of ingredients -- a trio of young unknown actors and the classically nightmarish setting of a forest -- to tell a terrifying story about the fear of becoming lost in the woods and hunted by an invisible but implacable force of otherworldly evil.

 

With the complete absence of special effects or even a glimpse of the titular witch, Myrick and Sanchez relied exclusively on the evocative power of natural sounds and the painstakingly authentic performances of their first-time cast to plunge their audience headfirst into a suffocating, elemental nightmare alongside their characters from which any chance of escape was nonexistent. The Blair Witch Project was so raw and immersive that, when first unleashed upon the public, audiences assumed that what they were watching was the actual found footage of a trio of real documentarians who went missing without a trace in the Black Hills Forest, never to be found alive. In the process, Myrick and Sanchez revitalized what has now become a familiar and cost-effective subgenre known as "found footage," the popularity of which has led to a plethora of like-minded horror films, most notably the ongoing Paranormal Activity franchise. 

One year after its release in 1999, a sequel titled Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was released, which abandoned the found-footage conceit and transpired in a world in which the original movie was canon. Unfortunately, the critical results were nowhere near as flattering, sitting at a 14% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes versus the original's 86%, with an average rating of 4.1/10 versus the original's 7.9. 17 years later, director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett, the filmmaking duo behind the exhilaratingly gruesome home-invasion slasher, You're Next, have produced a direct belated sequel to Myrick and Sanchez's landmark achievement simply titled Blair Witch that turns a blind eye to Joe Berlinger's 2000 sequel, playing out in a world in which the events of that movie simply never happened. That approach turned out to be the correct one.

In October 1994, three amateur documentarians, Heather Donahue, Mike Williams, and Josh Leonard, set out into the Black Hills Forest near Burkittsville, Maryland to make a documentary about a local legend named the Blair Witch. A year later, their footage was discovered, but their bodies weren't. In 2014, James Donahue (James Allen McCune), a paramedic and the younger brother of Heather, discovers a video uploaded onto YouTube in which the face of his missing sister seemingly appears momentarily in a mirror. James was only four years old when Heather left home and never returned, and the trauma of her unexplained disappearance has haunted him his entire life. Determined to figure out what happened to Heather in those woods, and with his faith in her survival suddenly reinvigorated, James resolves to travel to the Black Hills Forest and be led to the site where Heather's footage was discovered. Accompanying him on this journey are Lisa Arlington (Callie Hernandez), a film student seeking to document James' investigation for her documentary project, Peter Jones (Brandon Scott), James' lifelong best friend, Peter's girlfriend, Ashley Bennett (Corbin Reid), and the pair of locals who found Heather's footage and posted it online, Lane (Wes Robinson) and his girlfriend, Talia (Valorie Curry). 

Almost as soon as the six explorers set foot into the supposedly haunted forest, bizarre happenings ensue: Ashley injures her foot while crossing a river, they awaken the following day at 2 p.m., stick figures have been strung from trees, mysterious noises torment them in their sleep, and their GPSs cease to lead them back to their car.

The setup, as envisioned by Barrett, is utterly contrived. In order to draw a throughline between his sequel and the original Blair Witch, Barrett concocts a younger brother for Heather who was neither mentioned nor shown. In the opening segment of The Blair Witch Project, when Heather was in her home, someone was recording her saying her goodbye, but it likely couldn't have been a four-year-old. Then when she issued her tearful apology to the camera while lost in the woods, Heather proclaims her love for her parents. If she had had a little brother, wouldn't she have done the same for him too? Barrett attempts to make James' investigation into Heather's disappearance the emotional core of his story, but it falls flat, not because McCune's performance fails to convey the grief, desperation, or determination of a young man whose life has been defined by the craving for answers, but because it's conceptually preposterous that he would think Heather could still be alive in the Black Hills Forest 20 years after going missing. How would she have survived? By eating plants and wildlife? Barrett merely uses James' irrationality, which none of his friends think to question at the very least, as an excuse to assemble a fresh batch of young witch bait into the woods. 

The introductions for said witch bait succinctly establish the relationships between them -- Peter is James' childhood best friend, Ashley is Peter's girlfriend, Lisa is James' love interest using his search for Heather as the subject of her documentary class project -- but are choppily edited by Louis Cioffi, who cuts haphazardly between the protagonists watching Heather's found footage in James' bedroom, sitting at a bar arguing over the ethics of Lisa exploiting James' lifelong trauma for her own project, dancing on the dance floor, and goofing around in a motel room. He doesn't sit still long enough to bond us to the characters as intimately as he could have.

Barrett's plot for Blair Witch emulates the bare bones of the original: a group of young adult would-be documentarians enter the Black Hills Forest, quickly become lost and separated from one another, scream out their names into the air ad nauseam, travel in circles back to their original campsite, get picked off one by one by the Blair Witch off-camera, and stumble across Rustin Parr's supposedly demolished home for a final life-or-death confrontation (ending inevitably in the latter). Along the way, humanlike stick figures are inaudibly tied to trees, only much larger than before, piles of rocks are systematically arranged outside the characters' tents, and loud, mysterious noises like the snapping of twigs are heard in the dead of night. 

However, while the filmmakers amplify elements no longer original, as is standard for a sequel, they're clever enough to weave a handful of chilling twists into the story. The most terrifying is the refusal of the sun to emerge, trapping the characters in eternal darkness. While Heather and her crew had the miniscule relief of reliable sunlight each morning, James and his friends aren't so fortunate. Barrett intermixes the supernaturalism with a sprinkle of science fiction, isolating his characters in alternate time frames: for James and his companions, they've been in the forest for one day; for Lane and Talia, after they've separated from the group, they've been wandering the woods for five or six days without food or sunlight. Likewise, the inciting YouTube video that serves as the catalyst for James' investigation is revealed to be a pre-recorded premonition for the predetermined ending. Lane's motivation for insisting on accompanying James and company to the Black Hills Forest is left ambiguous: was he ordered by the Blair Witch to lure them from the beginning, same as Rustin Parr was to abduct seven children and murder them in his home? A seemingly jokey comment at a campfire suggests as much. 

To satiate the appetites of modern horror fans who crave a sprinkle of blood on their off-camera supernatural terror, Barrett and Wingard incorporate a trace of body horror in the form of Ashley's foot injury in the river. A gash in the base of her foot is accentuated in a series of close-ups by cinematographer Robby Baumgartner, advanced from a nasty but apparently ordinary wound to something far more sinister once it unexpectedly spasms in Peter's hand. Then, in the most shocking and unforgettable centerpiece unlike anything in the more understated original, the infection spreads to Ashley's leg, through which a slimy, thick, slug-like parasite slowly and nauseatingly emerges. The visual is smartly protracted, physically jaw-dropping, and wince-inducing. 

Although Barrett's screenplay doesn't advance the mythology established by Myrick and Sanchez' creation, Wingard succeeds in recapturing their chilling lore through campfire conversations, during which Talia and Lane are deployed as exposition devices to restate the legends of both the Blair Witch and Rustin Parr. In the case of the titular former, Elly Kedward was accused of witchcraft by children after sampling their blood and subsequently tied high up to a tree by townsfolk, who strung rocks to her limbs and left her to die on a makeshift rack. Her body mysteriously vanished, and soon after, so did the children who accused her, their families, then others. In the case of Parr, Barrett deepens his mythology a bit, revealing that after he was found guilty of murdering seven children, allegedly under the tutelage of the witch, he was hanged and his home torched. The latter piece of information makes the previous and impending manifestation of his wooded home even scarier. 

In compliance with the more savage demands of modern horror that dictate only so much can be left to the imagination, Wingard places a stronger emphasis on gory physical violence. When a stick figure tied with clumps of Talia's hair is snapped in half by Ashley, Talia's body miraculously follows suit. While assaulting Lisa on the witch's orders, Lane is stabbed in the neck. Under Myrick and Sanchez' direction, there was no tangible evidence of otherworldly activity afoot. The presence of the Blair Witch was only implied and felt, never glimpsed or outright confirmed. In effect, she was gaslighting Heather into believing that her own selfishness and inflated self-assuredness resulted in her and her companions' downfall. On the surface, their journey appeared to be a case of simply becoming lost in the woods. By contrast, Wingard and Barrett render the supernaturalism overt, forfeiting the psychological ambiguity and unraveling of the original. Aside from Talia's aforementioned spontaneous contortion, a tent behind a panicking Ashley levitates. 

In Wingard's most unnecessary and desperate device that occasionally spoils Blair Witch's commitment to slow-building horror with the feel of a more generic modern haunter, various characters pop up in front of the camera for no logical internal reason other than to elicit a cheap jump scare from the viewer. At the very least, the filmmakers show a scintilla of self-awareness by allowing Lisa to react realistically: "Can everyone stop doing that?" she whispers in annoyance. 

To transport his story into the present, Barrett equips his protagonists with pieces of modern technology that weren't available to Heather and her crew when they undertook their journey, such as earpieces that double as GPSs and drones. The latter device captures stunning forest scenery through aerial shots, providing an expansive view as it hovers lazily over an abundance of trees. POV shots depict various characters walking through the forest at night, staring at trees and greenery. Wingard paces these myriad late-night excursions slowly to allow the stifling suspense that defined the original to percolate, never in a juvenile rush to climax with a jump scare or off-screen kill. Baumgartner's camera shakes relentlessly when the characters run to convey mounting chaos, but comes with the double edge of obscuring onscreen action. The camera drops to the ground to imply the demise of the holder. Sometimes it elevates and shakes back and forth with no one holding it. After a while, the shaky cam grows repetitive more so than immersive, as though Baumgartner is being instructed to cover for a shortage of genuinely frightening material.

The most striking element of The Blair Witch Project was the ironic visual lack of the Blair Witch herself. For the entire 81-minute runtime, the villain was kept off-camera, her existence verbalized in a series of interviews with believers and skeptics alike, her presence only hinted at in the sound of footsteps, the giggling of unseen children, the shaking of a tent, the crying of a baby in the distance, and the characters' impossible inability to find their way out of the forest. Understanding the sequel rule that you must give your returning audience something to latch onto, Barrett and Wingard offer glimpses of their titular menace in the final reel. In this way, they satiate their audience's curiosity as to her appearance without stripping her of her mystique altogether.

The filmmakers earn few points for character design; as glimpsed, the Blair Witch is a tall, pale stick figure with spindly limbs. However, what they lack in design innovation, Wingard and Baumgartner make up in cinematographic presentation: a wide shot shows the witch emerging from behind a tree, and in an instance of off-center framing, Lisa stands on the left side of the frame, aiming a camera at her battered face, and the witch steps into the right side in the background before quickly retreating at Lisa's scream. Beams of light shine through the upstairs of Parr's home, flickering at first, then freezing. As Ashley reaches out a hand to reclaim a drone that's crashed atop a tree, a glimpse of a hand falls from the top of the frame and taps Ashley's, causing her to fall from the tree onto the ground, where her motionless body is dragged away by an unseen figure just out of view. 

The entire sextet of actors is outstanding, crafting characters who feel credible and earn our sympathy and interest in their survival. The two standouts, however, are the central women: Callie Hernandez and Corbin Reid, both of whom hurl themselves body and soul into the physical challenges dictated by the script. Hernandez's hair is soaked in rain, her face caked in blood and mud. In a breathlessly claustrophobic set piece that recalls The Descent, she's required to squeeze her slender frame through an underground crevice, in which she becomes stuck. At first, Hernandez whimpers in despair, then takes deep breaths, whispers to herself, "Breathe," regains her composure, and carefully and calmly resumes her crawl. At the sight of supernatural occurrences, Hernandez delivers raw, unrestrained, traumatized, guttural screams that rival those of her predecessor, Heather Donahue. Once Ashley's foot wound becomes infected, Reid physically embodies her painful transformation, her eyes rolling into the back of her head, accentuated in an unsettling close-up, switching in the same breath from composed and hopeful to crying "No! No! No!" in frustration, desperation, and powerlessness, developing an imposing aggression that culminates in an accidental fatality. 

Brandon Scott imbues his best friend role with biting humor, heart, and common sense, giving James a consoling hug, marching threateningly toward Lane to scare him into breaking off, laughing derisively at his claims of rocks having a symbolic significance and the deaths of townsfolk validating a supernatural curse, insisting on leaving the forest due to Ashley's worsening injury and traces of unnatural activity, advising Lisa against exploiting his best friend's lifelong trauma for her assignment.

Production designer Tom Hammock deserves props for faithfully reconstructing the infamous Rustin Parr home down to the last nightmarish detail, from the painted children's handprints dotting the walls to holes in the slats to peeling white paint. Located in the middle of the woods, this building resembles a relic from a bygone era. Hammock embellishes Ben Rock's original construction with a cellar and tunnels, making the house feel paradoxically more expansive and claustrophobic. 

The state of found-footage horror has changed drastically in the 27-year interim since The Blair Witch Project. What was once groundbreaking and subgenre-defining in 1999 has now become commonplace and derivative. When audiences first experienced the harrowing, psychologically deteriorating journey of Heather, Mike, and Josh as they set out into the woods to make a documentary about a legendary witch, only to become lost, disoriented, and fatally tormented by an otherworldly force daringly concealed from view, it felt gritty, grainy, dangerous, and all too real. As far as they knew, this wasn't a found-footage horror movie, it was actual found footage, discovered by chance in the woods and projected grotesquely on the silver screen. Heather, Josh, and Mike weren't actors playing would-be documentarians, they actually were would-be documentarians. A promotional website presenting fabricated missing person posters of their faces certainly helped sell the illusion. 

By the traumatizing final shot, when a screaming Heather finds Mike standing face-first in the corner of Parr's basement before her camera suddenly drops to the floor, it was as though we had just witnessed (or rather heard) the unsolved murders of three real people, not characters in a screenplay. The uncertainty was so powerful that Heather Donahue struggled to secure acting work in the following years, ultimately changing her name to Rei Hance and occupation to a medical marijuana grower. (Ironically enough, Josh Leonard has gone on to prosper as a horror-movie actor, much like how Johnny Depp achieved movie-star fame after his unremarkable supporting turn in A Nightmare on Elm Street while franchise queen Heather Langenkamp somehow faded into obscurity.) 

Cut to present-day, in a horror market saturated with titles like Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, The Last Exorcism, The Devil Inside, VHS, Creep, and many more, and the cat has been long let out of the bag. No longer are we convinced that the events unfolding onscreen might be authentic. At this point, the formula for the found-footage subgenre, whether successfully employed or not, is clear: assemble a small cast of unknown actors (hiring anyone recognizable would immediately shatter the illusion), isolate them in a single setting, make a series of creepy noises off-camera, and let the viewer's imagination fill in the blanks. And majority of the time, expect every major character to either die or become possessed by the time the end credits roll. 

17 years after The Blair Witch Project haunted the silver screen and established this subgenre template, does Wingard and Barrett's continuation distinguish itself from either its source inspiration or the countless other found-footage chillers that have emerged in the intervening years? Aside from a few brilliantly disorienting twists and an all-around emotionally invested cast, not a whole lot. Blair Witch doesn't continue the story in a way that's essential. It doesn't expand on the backstory of either the Blair Witch or Rustin Parr, mostly regurgitating the tidbits imagined by Myrick and Sanchez in 1999. As executed, it doesn't need to. By recapturing the atmosphere of campfire creepiness that made the original a living nightmare translated to celluloid, and interspersing a quiet, deliberately paced buildup of tension with flashes of jaw-dropping gore, centered around sympathetic characters worth rooting for, whose affection for one another prompts a mutual feeling from the audience, Wingard and Barrett deliver a sequel that's taut, visually disquieting, soaked in suspense, and loaded with judiciously timed scares. For fans of the trailblazing original, Blair Witch marks a familiar but viscerally satisfying return trip to the Black Hills Forest.

6.8/10