Face the Corner. Exploring The Blair Witch Movies

[wonderer99]

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Well it is probably easier to just get the ratings out the way first, quickly and painlessly. So if all you care about are numbers and slashes them here we go......

The Blair Witch Project 9/10

Book of Shadows:Blair Witch 2/10

Blair Witch 6/10

So there you go. If you are on your way out to work or just cannot be arsed to read further then feel free to nod in mutual agreement or make a pffft sound and shake your head accordingly. If however you would like to hear a random internet users personal opinion on the above movies then thank you, I am glad you stayed. Please bare in mind their are major spoilers discussed in this post for all three Blair Witch related movies.

The reason I wanted to just get the ratings out the way is because, well, this is a discussion (hopefully) surrounding the The Blair Witch Project (TBWP from here on out). We all know from decades of popular culture, be it TV, music, literature or film, when something is as big as TBWP was then people tend to fall into two camps. They love it or they hate it. Fine, I know some people think the movie is just OK, just as some people think Kanye West is OK but for the most part, just like Mr West, people either love or hate TBWP. And they either really love it.....or they really hate it. To the annoyance of half of those that read this thread I am one of those really loves The Blair Witch Project.

So lets get out the way one thing everyone can agree upon. TBWP was HUGE. I dont mean huge in a money obsessed box office grosses way, although it is common knowledge that it grossed a ridiculous taking from its meager budget (Over $248,000,000 total from a $60,000 budget). No, TBWP was huge in a way that I don't think any film ever has been before. Star Wars was an event, as was Jurassic Park and Titanic. But as with most event movies, these were all big budget, popular movies that were never sold as anything other than just that. TBWP was something different. An event movie that nobody knew about. An turning point in cinema that made people throw up. It really was it own beast.



I was 18 in 1999. I had a girlfriend and a job and I was a grown up damn it. I didnt get scared by films anymore. I had great parents growing up but they were kind of shitty in some regards, one of which was allowing me to buy any rating VHS tapes I wanted from boot fairs (second hand sales for US readers). By the age of 13 or 14 I literally had hundreds of VHS tapes. I loved movies. I had seen all the great horrors, your Exorcists and your Hellraisers etc etc by my mid teens. I am mentioning this because I am pretty sure that this exposure to so many horror movies had a real effect on why I love TBWP as much as I do. This was the first film I saw that deeply scared me. I was young still so before TBWP horror movies had only ever fallen into two categories. The boo jump monster ones and the psychologically scary ones. I got used to the boo jump ones pretty early on and today jump scares are one of my pet hates. So they became ineffective to me as horrors, even at an early age. I was more interested in the cool creature effects that came with these movies. The more intellectual horror movies also had little affect on me, not because they were not good, just that I was just too damn young to understand or appreciate them. Then TBWP came along. A horror film that had no jump scares, no latex rubber monsters, no screeching symbol crashes telling you when to be scared.

My first knowledge of the movie was a small article in a newspaper here in the UK with the headline THE SCARIEST MOVIE EVER MADE. See, here in the UK we never had the "is it real" thing. I am not going to comment on how dumb people were to believe it could have been real but I will say that it was a different time back then. Deceptive marketing is a normal occurrence now but back in '99? Nope. Also a week or two before the movies opening The Curse of the Blair Witch was released. A 45 minute "documentary" chronicling the events leading up to the infamous "found footage", it did a great job (watched it a couple of hours ago) of shaping the world around the movie and created a genuinely believable set of stories to tie into the production. I think it is harsh (and very easy in hindsight) to say people were dumb to believe it could have been real. Remember the internet was only really just a thing. People were suddenly finding there was a whole terrifying world out there for real. Credit of the utmost needs to go to Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez for utilizing this new tool to the best effect. The documentary also gives certain clues and hints that expand the movie itself.



The footage was found in the burnt out foundations of Rustin Parrs house, the same house that is somehow intact and that the filmmakers enter at the end of the movie. In short, a whole backstory and world was created for the film that went above and beyond what would be expected of a movie. The ending to the film itself even maintains the simple documentary style credits when they could have just smash cut to black and blast some rock music credits in stylistic fonts.

This level of detail is ultimately what differentiates TBWP from the likes of Paranormal Activity. That movie and the many (MANY) found footage movies that followed TBWP never seemed to try to be anything other than Hollywood movies with shitty camerawork. Never do you believe that you are watching anything other than a movie. Aside from the impressive Blair Witch legend created for the film the single thing that makes TBWP work is it three actors.

Bare in mind that we have to use the term actors in a looser sense with this movies. Were the three onscreen actors? Yes, they were. Did they know they were making a movie? Yes they did. Did they also have much indication of what was going to happen during the shoot? No they didn't. Were they genuinely damp, miserable, freezing cold and pissed off at each other? You bet. Not only is the acting great when they needed to act but so much natural expression and emotion is evident due simply to actually just being in the cold woods for days not knowing what the hell is going on half the time.

In short these always felt like three real kids and not just like three actors trying to play real kids. This is a fundamental thing that the sequels and most other horror movies get wrong. With these three you sense them falling apart, you see them losing the plot and genuinely feel desperate for them in a way that is infinitely more harrowing than watching another barefoot blonde wander round a dark house in her underwear. No scene is a better example of a relatable character moment than when all the shit is hitting the fan we get a scene in the tent of Heather repairing a hole in Mikes jeans, talking with a torch in her mouth. A brilliant scene that shows the three trying to hold onto normality as best they can. It is a scene you just would not see in the final act of a typical Hollywood horror movie.



TBWP is scary simply because it asks you to do all the work and lets face it we will always conjure up better monsters than the filmakers purely because WE know what scares us. Yes it will throw a few little scraps your way but make no mistake, you are doing most of the work. When Heather screams "What the **** is that. What the **** is that?" while fleeing the tent the actress does an amazing job of conveying pure fear but it is you the viewer who conjures up whatever it is she is seeing (for the record I believe she saw one of the directors dressed in a white sheet or outfit running alongside them in the woods).

The fear is real because you have no idea what the hell your meant to be fearing. And that is ****ing scary, at least to me. The screams of Heather in the house at the end are genuinely chilling, made all the more so by the sound design, hearing Heather's screams while we are seeing through Mikes camera. The film is so divisive because its scares are based on suggestibility. If you need to be told what to be scared of or need buckets of blood, a pair of tits or a grotesque monster reveal in the final act then this movie probably wont work for you. And that's OK.

90% of horror movies shoot their load in the last twenty minutes. And it nearly always results in suckage. Remember when Mama was a shadowy, creepy thing until she was revealed to be a cgi cartoon? Same with Boogeyman and any number of modern horrors. Even popular horrors cant help themselves. I facepalmed when I saw the crappy CGI nun in The Conjuring 2. Fear.......gone, in an instant. TBWP never sold out right up until the very end. The scariest thing you actually see on screen is a few teeth in some cloth and one of our main characters stood in a corner. Yes this lack of latex monsters or cg was probably born mostly from a lack of budget but horror has repeatedly shown us that a lack of funds seems to indicate a steep rise in effort and creativeness on the part of filmmakers. The filmmakers never sold out right up to the end. So TBWP thrives on sticks and stones. Now this is probably one of the best indicators on whether the film works for you or not. When Heather emerges from the tent to find a pile of stones heaped up outside (left there overnight by the directors) or a bunch of sticks you will either be pretty creeped out and join in with the characters with the general WTF feeling of the discovery OR you will look at your watch and think "Jesus, how much longer does this crap go on for" Now if you fall into the latter camp then I am not going to say you are wrong and have no imagination but, well, you ARE wrong and you certainly have no imagination. I jest of course.....kinda.



These little things creepy enough I guess on their own but what makes it as creepy as it is for me is that their are no real explanations for them. We don't get some lazy story or early scene of the witch making stick figures in some lair. They are just there. There you go. Make of it what you will. It is the same deal with the ending of the movie ultimately. Screaming. Thud. Shot of the floor. Black. Thanks for coming. As mentioned, no CGI, no gratuitous witch face jump scare. Just nothing explained. Even as the credits roll we still don't know if it might have been locals ****ing with them. Some drugged up teens messing with them. Outside of the mentioned mysterious house risen from the ashes the only clues of supernatural events come from the shot of Mike standing in the corner and the fact they walked all day south and arrive right back where they started.

Is TBWP perfect, no of course not. There are a couple of scenes which just do not ring true and suffer from some less than steller acting. The "I kicked the map in the creek" scene is one and an earlier scene with a couple of guys fishing while being interviewd is another. Another issue I have is that the passage of time is not achieved in the greatest way. The entire movie is shot in the same woods and it can become a little easy to think they become a little desperate too soon. These are small issues for me though.I am not one to use the usual hyperbole comments such as best/worst film ever. It is however my favorite horror movie and I genuinely believe one of the best horror films ever made. I do not believe the filmmakers set out to achieve that but I do think that's what they accomplished. I believe its effectiveness as a horror can be measured somewhat by the level of backlash the film received and still does to a degree. Simply put there a billion crappy horror films out there that you don't know about because they are bad films. TBWP is cemented into movie history because it deserves to be. The maddening thing is that Hollywood never seemed to understand what made the movie such a success. Everybody wanted into the cheap found footage genre but nobody understands what worked with TBWP. If they had then they would never of made.........

Book of Shadows:Blair Witch 2 (2000)

So, um........er, look. Its probably best to just not mess around with this. Book of Shadows:Blair Witch 2 is not a good film. Director Joe Berlinger has recently gone on record to say that the studio messed with his movie quite a bit. He claims that his movie was more subtle and that, ultimately, there is a better film out there. Sorry Joe but I think you are wrong. Some movies improve with a directors cut. But your movie, Mr Berlinger, will not be the next Kingdom of Heaven. No amount of re-cutting, editing, scene removal or insertion will make BOS a good film. Why? Well simply because BOS just does not have any idea as to what it wants to be. And even if it did pretty much every aspect of the film lets it down, from the acting to the direction, soundtrack, script and aesthetics. Everything falls short.



But lets not get off on a downer. I don't want to sound like a butt hurt fanboy of the original so I will address the positives. It was a really good idea to take the sequel left-field and have it set in our world in which the original film was the original film. We are following fans of the movie as they set out to discover the locations and events of the film. This is a great idea although not an original one. Wes Cravens New Nightmare and the Scream movies played games like this long before but it was a wise move nonetheless. However this idea only seems to last for the first half hour of the movie at which point all cleverness disappears and we chug along as if it were a straight sequel. Another interesting thing happens around the same point in time. The Blair Witch and her mythology is also almost completely forgotten about. By the halfway point of the film there is hardly anything that tells you that your watching a Blair Witch film. I'm sorry, it seems I cant discuss even a positive about the film without it veering into the negative.

So. Other good things.

Well the first 10 minutes of the movie are easily the best. Alluding to the first film, it sets up a number of interviews with Burkittsville locals who are pissed that the first movie brought in a lot of unwanted /wanted tourism depending on who you ask. News reels and even an appearance by Roger Ebert gives the movie a clever opening that frustratingly is never fully realized. I also enjoyed the continuation of the theme of time being messed with as we see a large tree growing through the remains of Rustin Parrs house only for it to be a much smaller tree later. I'm afraid that's it. I cannot find any other redeeming aspects of the movie.

I will not go on too much regarding the negatives. One because there seem to be so many but other than that it just seems a bit mean spitrited to keep pounding away like a movie review version of Glens death scene. I will just give a few examples of the worst offenders. Now these criticisms are not just why it was a bad Blair Witch film exactly but more why it was a bad film in general. First is the awful acting. The decision to go with a straight, normally filmed sequel never really bothered me. Why try and copy the original? But whether a film is found footage or not, whether it is a drama, action, sci fi or horror, if your cast cannot act then your movie will suck. Great acting can make awful dialogue sound great. Bad acting can make fantastic dialogue sound awful and there is not one actor or actress in this film that is anything even slightly above mediocre. Imagine how well the first film would have worked had the three main characters acted like teens from I know What You Did Last Summer. It would have ruined the film entire. The sheriff in this movie is a borderline cartoon. Seriously, go watch it again. Watching the movie the characters felt lifted straight out of Scooby Doo. Seriously, they even drive a Mystery Van. At one point some Chinese tourists pop into the scene like a US sitcom with cheap jump scares.



I was however annoyed by the movie long before the first character appeared on screen. It was during the opening credits which basically showed more blood and nudity in 30 seconds than the first film showed in its entirety. I knew this would not end well for me. All accompanied by a metal score that hurt my ears with its teenness. Yes, this film was very, VERY much in the vein of the deluge of teen horror movies of the late 90's. But while Scream and The Faculty are smart teen horrors, this is cheap and lazy. Incredibly lazy. Make no mistake this movie smacks of desperation to cash in on the original movies success as soon as possible. This was released a year after the first. As mentioned the fact that the entire Blair Witch mythology is pretty much just given up on turns the film into just another crappy horror. I know it is not fair to insult a film due to what was popular at the time but the 'scary' backwards walking, jerky ghost girl is pretty much just hilarious today. A perfect example of let your mind do the scary work that the original did so well.


Now I may have missed it so forgive me (I struggled to care by the end) but I dont believe that it is ever explained that the Blair Witch played a part in the deaths in the film? We know the group murdered a bunch of people but a number of times throughout the film we are told/shown they are partial to drugs and alcohol. Now I don't need everything explained, for sure the first films mysteries are a big part of my love for it. However it seems, barring the mysterious tree appearance then everything else has the potential to just be the kids got off their tits and murdered a bunch of people and actually had nothing at all to do with the titular character. OK fine but what a cheap and crappy way to continue one of the biggest horror hits of the previous decade.

This movie felt like it was never meant to be a Blair Witch film but a random 90's teen slasher script dusted off and re jigged with a few Blair Witch tweaks. Package it and sell it.

What is the Book of Shadows anyway? We never find out. Whether they were caught up in a drug fueled killing spree or were controlled by the witch to commit the acts we have no idea how or why they all managed to get dressed again before they woke up. What exactly was up with the naked witch chick and was the pregnant woman really behind it all or not? I dunno. It may have all been nicely explained but I may have glassed over and missed it.



So I am sorry to all the fans of the film, of which I know there are actually quite a few. Many like it more than the first. My brain does not compute this but each to their own of course. Lets end on another positive shall we? The Book of Shadows does nothing with its story that disrespects the original or takes it down any paths designed to cash in on the name. The film could have cheaply set up another sequel and it did not do this. For this I am eternally grateful. I would have puked if Berlinger had directed Blair Witch 3.

Blair Witch (2016)

But luckily he didn't. Neither did anyone else actually for an incredible 16 years. If anything indicates just how bad a film Book of Shadows was it is the time it took to get back to the franchise.

So, the big reveal. The scary little horror film The Woods was actually a Blair With sequel. Surprise! I must admit this news took me by surprise last year (was it last year already?) By now the original film had cemented its place in my favorite movies list. It was untouchable. I had all but forgotten the second film and was pleased to hear that this new feature respected its existence but did not acknowledge it in any way. So with that out the way I got pretty excited. Initial reviews trickled in and bold statements such as 'scariest film ever' and 'terrifying' were batted around. Could it be? Could I finally be getting a great sequel to such an important movie to me? So I watched it and the answer was.......no, with a healthy dollop of yes thrown in.



I have watched the film twice now. I finished the second viewing not an hour before I began to write this and my initial score of 7 dropped to a 6 and I was mulling over a 5. In short the initial 7/10 score came from the fact that the final 15 minutes of the movie were genuinely scary to me on first viewing. Now I do not scare easily anymore and maybe it was because the film was set in a world I have grown up with and that has always filled me with dread. But the last third act had some great scares. It was the closest thing to a genuine Blair Witch sequel worthy of the name. I will come back to the ending but lets discuss the (much) more disappointing first half of the film.


OK so the films first, second and third issue was once again finding actors who suck. This film utilized the originals found footage technique. Now this is fine but the second this decision is made your actors need to knock it out the park or the whole thing comes crashing down. The only time a character did not feel like an actor was Lisa (brunette) in the last act. Everyone else was just bad with special mention going to Peter (black guy) who was particularly bad. Look, the problem is it doesn't matter how good your scares are, if you don't believe it is real then it just doesn't work. If you don't care about the characters, the game is already over. Heather, Josh and Mike felt like real people. The first movie was culled from hours and hours of random footage those guys actually shot amateurishly in the woods. It felt real. This footage is rough, but feels faked. This film felt like the cast of Glee tried to make a horror. There was nobody in this film that came close to being as naked and raw as Heather Donahue was in the original 'snotcam' confession scene. They all looked too pretty, too 'Hollywood teen horror movie victim' to really convince of anything other than they were actors.



The film also falls foul of the same flaws that every other found footage film does in that the cameras used either seem to glitch constantly (complete with post production glitch noises) or the tiny ear cameras they have produce cinema level quality and compositions. Just like 99% of ff movies the camerawork feels like professionals pretending to be amateurs. The camera is always in just the right place at the right time. A Blair Witch film should not feel story-boarded as much as this. Same as the scene in the club early on. They are wearing ear cameras again (no idea why in a club) but the thumping music is picked up nice and clear along with all the vocal speech clearly. It just does not ring true and its the little things like this that take you out of a movie like this pretty sharply.

OK so the actors were bad but a film can still be scary right, even if the actors suck? Well yes, but cast your mind back to the beginning of the thread where I mentioned that a pet hate of mine is cheap jump scares. Dear sweet baby Jesus. Maybe it was because I wanted this film to be good so much but I actually got angry over just how many shitty jump scares there were in this film. No less than 4 times do we get the 'person appears from nowhere making another character jump' scare complete with sudden screech music. It literally happens twice, exactly the same way within 30 seconds of one another. So disappointing. And why is it that when a jump scare is needed anybody can walk around a bone dry woods without making a single sound?

Cheap. Lazy.

The next biggest frustation is another horror cliche. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for the 'characters do dumb stuff that makes no sense purely to move the plot along and get killed' cliche. "Hey guys, I am just gonna go get some firewood in the dark by myself" "Oh no my drone fell out the sky, I am just gonna wander off and get it by myself" "Oh good, your back. You wait her while I run off on my own in the dark to find the other guy who wandered off alone and still hasnt come back"

Oh f**k off.



OK, so now that's done, the good.

I mean, there must be good right? I did give it 6/10 after all. Yes, there is a lot of good stuff in this film. I will add that a lot of criticism the film took was that it merely a rehash of the original. I think this is unfair. There is enough deviations and progression of the mythology that it goes quite a bit beyond the first film. The second film already tried something different. It didn't work. Adam Wingard deserves a lot of credit for staying true to and respecting the original while taking it in interesting new directions. And for me, that is the films greatest achievement. It really does progress the Blair Witch story and mythology. We suspected from the first movie that the woods seem to have a life of their own and this sequel backs that theory up and times it by ten. The woods seem to actually move around the characters, nights never end and times flows differently in different parts of the woods. Oh I would also like to mention that these are clearly not the same woods that the original was set in. Not a massive negative, just a notable annoyance.

One of the originals greatest aspects was its fantastic use of sound. This film ups the anti with some fantastic sound design. Its incredible just how much fear can be summoned by some good sound effects. The crackling, cackling and creature noises are all incredibly eerie and one of the best aspects of the movie.

Ultimately I did enjoy this movie in spite of the negatives above. It is very much a sequel to the first film and I have to love it a little for its clear admiration of that movie. There are plenty of nods and homages to TBWP such as the lingering shot of the characters cars as they walk away from them.



So the ending to this movie is where it really picks up the baton and runs with it. It seems to turn into a different movie and I can tell you exactly where it happens. It is just before the hour mark and one characters spine is snapped in two after another destroys a stick figure that had her hair on it. At that point cheap scares seem to be replaced by a relentless dread closing in toward the group. They are being maneuvered toward the infamous house (which again appears out of nowhere right where there was no house in a earlier scene)

We get fleeting glimpses of creatures and the revelation from the director that we never see the Blair Witch in the movie leads us to speculate as to what it is that Lucy spots hiding behind the tree outside and that chases he through the house. If its not the witch then could it be Ellie Kedward is just another of the witches pawns like Rustin Parr? The elongated limbs suggest it could be. Either way the glimpses we get of the spooky beasties are fleeting enough to not be cheap scares or big reveals. There are some things left unanswered (the lights outside) and more questions asked so it feels at home next to the original in a way the first sequel never did.



I am pretty bummed that the film did not do great with both critics or audiences as I think it does enough right to justify its existence. I would welcome another movie by the same directors but judging by their reactions in the commentary it wont be happening any time soon.

Oh well, I can wait. I still have one great BW movie and one good one. Book of Shadows still sucks though.

Feel free to discuss (if there is anything left to discuss) these movies. I would genuinely like to hear from anyone who liked the second film. I dunno, I guess it would nice to see another perspective. We all come at films from different angles so there is ultimately no right or wrong, just what we enjoy and what we dont.