Blair Witch

It’s been a long time since Heather Don­ahue and her two-man crew ven­tured into the woods of Burkittsville to become a part of the local leg­end that they were there to doc­u­ment. Back in 1999, Daniel Myrick and Eduar­do Sánchez’s ultra low-bud­get The Blair Witch Project would rev­o­lu­tionise genre cin­e­ma, as its com­bi­na­tion of an uncan­ny idea, can­ny viral mar­ket­ing, and a pseu­do-doc­u­men­tary found footage frame would end up being emu­lat­ed ad nau­se­am by every would-be film­mak­er hop­ing to make their mark on the world of hor­ror. Inci­den­tal­ly, The Blair Witch Project had one of the most spec­tac­u­lar ROIs in the his­to­ry of cinema.

Since then, there have been Blair Witch books, comics, video games, and even, in 2000, an ill-received fea­ture sequel, Book of Shad­ows: Blair Witch 2 – but no one saw all-new sequel-to-the-first-film Blair Witch com­ing, not least because it was a pro­duc­tion shroud­ed in secre­cy, with a work­ing title ​‘The Woods’ to throw peo­ple off the scent – until the film’s true title was revealed at the San Diego Comic-Con.

Made by the genre dream team of direc­tor Adam Wingard and writer Simon Bar­rett (A Hor­ri­ble Way to Die, The Guest), Blair Witch turns out to be as self-con­scious­ly sequel‑y as a sequel can be, with Heather’s younger broth­er James (James Allen McCune) attempt­ing to retrace his sister’s last steps in the Black Hills For­est as his col­lege friend Lisa (Cal­lie Her­nan­dez) turns his jour­ney into a doc­u­men­tary project. Shar­ing their camp­site are friends Peter (Bran­don Scott) and Ash­ley (Corbin Reid), and Burkittsvil­leans Lane (Wes Robin­son) and Talia (Val­o­rie Cur­rie), offer­ing new­found footage and local knowledge.

The rest is pret­ty much by the book (of shad­ows). Con­tra­dic­to­ry accounts of the Blair Witch are heard, things go bump (and crack and rum­ble) in the night, co-eds get lost in the woods and left a‑cowering in their tents. We know that these char­ac­ters are all lambs for the super­nat­ur­al slaugh­ter, and that those still around for the final act will be drawn to their doom in a creepy old house that does not appear on any map.

Real­ly the only inno­va­tions here are the upgrad­ing of ear­ly-2000s DVs to new­er kit – mul­ti­ple ear­piece GoPros, high-spec digi­cams and even a drone-mount­ed cam­era – and a cer­tain reflex­iv­i­ty in the script­ing to sug­gest that the film­mak­ers know that we know the tropes being used here. ​“I wish you would stop doing that!” Lisa shouts after the third or so time that one camper has fright­ened anoth­er by sud­den­ly appear­ing behind them – and not long after­wards, a GoPro allows us to see a sim­i­lar scare turned inside out from the unwit­ting frightener’s POV.

Yet no amount of self-aware decon­struc­tion or revised media can mit­i­gate the sheer pan­ic of the film’s cli­max, or explain away its unnerv­ing irra­tional­i­ty. So maybe it is about time we were tak­en back into the woods.