There are two types of people who are going to go see the new Adam Wingard found footage film, Blair Witch (aka The Woods); those who saw the original Blair Witch Project back in 99′ and have been longing for a proper follow-up film and those who missed the phenomenon of the original film and are hoping to see some semblance of that cultural allure that the first one had. I’m the latter. The most distinct Blair Witch memory I have is listening to my mom post-laser eye surgery (of which the video was a horror film in itself) going on about how “nothing happened”. That was it. I was barely in 2nd grade, us kids didn’t know what this was about. Maybe there was an inkling of dread surrounding that notion that the original film actually happened due to the marketing, but this passed me by.
So the hook for me in seeing this long awaited sequel was the man behind the camera, Adam Wingard. If there was anyone who could muster up any possible interest in a found footage film, particularly in an age where the genre is so played out and exhausted, it would be him. His previous films, You’re Next and The Guest are both just flat out fun. If you haven’t seen either, put them on your October film list; the former is a quality callback to the Scream movies without being a knock-off and the latter is a unique genre mash-up of Terminator and Halloween. This guy and his writing partner Simon Barrett make the kind of movies that get major theater releases that I wish there was more of.
I’m not really upset to say Blair Witch is easily my least favorite of Wingard’s, because it is watchable, it is worth a theater experience as Halloween season rolls around and lord knows you’re not gonna go see that stupid “Why the hell is Vincent D’Onofrio in this?” Rings sequel. If anything, this film has really helped me understand the great misconception I’ve had about The Blair Witch Project this entire time, one that I think a lot of people actually have. While it’s easy to declare that the mega successful first film is the epitome of the found footage genre, the fact of the matter is that no film that’s followed it actually seems to copy that extremely-low-budget aesthetic. When I think of what a basic found footage movie is, I’ve actually been thinking about this 2016 Blair Witch movie the entire time.
I don’t necessarily mean this in a negative way, but this version of Blair Witch is the definitive found footage movie. It has everything I’d expect to happen in it; a stripped down plot with characters who clearly exist as “normal” people because they joke around and are awkward in front of a camera but really have no subtextual definitions to them other than dialogue that is rooted in emphasizing the plot, basic sets and design that are meant to be “realistic” as though this could happen to anyone, and camera movements that are herky-jerky at just the right moments conjoined with frivolous screaming and hysteria to heighten what you are not actually seeing. Some people are always irked by the “logic” of why these people would be filming and/or why they continue to film after things start to go sideways, of which this movie gets by just fine (though it doesn’t explain how the footage was found, but when does that ever happen?). But the essence of most found footage films are exemplified here. That doesn’t mean it’s a failure, but it is interesting in how as a follow up to the original film, it seemed to mutate into everything that was not learned from that first film.
Two side notes:
- We watched this in “D-Box”. This is not a movie to watch in “D-Box”. I lasted the longest, but still had to turn it off after being shook around like a rag doll as the characters on screen were shrieking and swerving the camera every which way.
- One of my friends who joined us managed to watch the first Blair Witch movie before seeing this one. His observation was that the movies are nothing alike, if that helps anyone who was wondering.