Blair Witch… Again
The
movie I chose to go see was Blair Witch
which movie is a sequel to the 1999 film The
Blair Witch Project. The original film is about a woman named Heather who
goes into the woods to make a documentary film about the legend of the Blair
Witch. The 2016 Blair Witch film
follows the same film making technique of a point-of view production. Also, the
movie follows the theme that the characters are making a documentary, thus each
character has a camera to show his or her point-of-view. This film also takes
place in the same woods and just 17 years later. Although this film make sound
appealing on paper, there are many flaws that make it different from the
original.
The movie starts out very calm and opens up with a group of friends. The
main character is James Donahue who is a college student who was four years old
when his sister, Heather, went missing. She is investigating the legend of the
Blair Witch in the Black Forest hills near Burkittsville, Maryland. James
recently finds a video on the internet of a haunted house and a woman who he
says is his sister. It is then uploaded by locals named Lane and Talia who said
they found the film in the woods. James asks his friends Peter Jones, Ashley
Bennett, and film student Lisa Arlington who wants to make her own documentary
of their experience and of James’ story to head out in the woods and camp out.
After a few mysterious occurrences, they all agree they have had enough and start
packing and head back to their cars. Then, after walking for hours, the group
finds themselves at their original camp site and are forced to stay. Peter is
awoken to strange noises and takes off running, causing a tree to fall on him.
The next “morning” they discover that the sun has not risen and there are dozens
of stick figures hanging from trees with real hair on them. Ashley wakes up and
is furious about Peters disappearance. Talia offers no help to the situation
and Ashley spitefully snaps Talia’s stick figure in half resulting in Talia
snapping in half. They then hear a mysterious sound and the three take off
running. Ashley gets separated and removes something strange from a cut she got
earlier in the film. She then finds the drone that they had lost on the first day
and tries to retrieve it from a tree, but she falls to her death and the camera
shows her body being dragged off. While
looking for Ashley, it begins to storm and James and Lisa find the house they
believe is from the video of Heather on the internet. James goes in even though
Lisa begs him not to while Lisa stays outside and continues to scream for
Ashley. However, everyone knows not to go in the big scary house.
Although Blair Witch may fit the genre of a horror film, some may disagree
that it doesn’t deserve it. A horror film to most people is filled with
suspense, scare to the point of nausea, and should be enough to make your hair
is on end. The movie itself has its moments of scare but they seemed to be the
cheap ones such as thunder storms, a main character popping out of nowhere just
to get a little jump out of the audience, or a tree branch falling. Brian
Tallerico, a film reviewer, stated, “it sounds like a bulldozer is going
through the woods… there’s nothing relatable creepy about that” (Tallerico).
The loud noises made the most contribution to the scare level in the movie, but
does not seem to be enough to give goosebumps or to make one shake. Tallerico
also states, “ ‘Blair Witch’ has plenty of yelling, but not nearly enough that
gets under your skin” (Tallerico). The
loud noises definitely give a little scare and sometimes enough for you to
jump, however, a good horror film is not all about the cheap scares. As
Tallerico said, “enough to get under your skin.” All and all it was simply a
movie with little horror, but it is not enough to be called a horror film.
Overall,
I would have to give this movie a poor review. However, there were a few
positive things about this movie that made it a little more enjoyable. First, the actors really sold the movie and
gave it a fairly realistic feel. Another strength in this film was the realism
of the sound effects. The audio in the movie was very life-like and created a
lot of tension and suspense. However, the sound seemed to be some of the only
suspense that was created in the film, which was one of the down falls of this
film. The sound affects seemed to be the only source of scare in this film.
There were more weaknesses, such as that the movie was created in a
point-of-view shot which means that the movie was created as if we were inside
the character’s head. In the film, they are creating a documentary about the
Blair Witch and each character has a camera and microphone attached to their
ear. This may seem like a good idea at first, but as a viewer it was very
nauseating to watch and understand what’s happening. There are times in which the
characters are running or experiencing something traumatic and as they are
doing so the camera follows making it hard to watch and follow. I found it
difficult to get the real effect of horror when all I could hear was the sound
of the incident rather than actually watching it unfold. Another problem was
that the suspense and scare did not start until the final thirty minutes of the
movie, making it a slow and uninteresting start. Although the cheap scares at
the end did not amount to much, in my opinion, the movie itself would have been
a lot better if the end were building up to a great finale rather than an
ending of cheap scares. Finally, another weakness was the plot itself. As a
viewer, I left the theater still uncertain of what I had watched and what the
movie itself was all about.
Technically, the plot of this movie was
about a man looking for his sister when he finds a video on the internet and
believes it to be her. However, the movie was a mesh of superstition that did
not lead up to anything until the last ten minutes of the film. I am still not
sure if this movie will lead to a third installment or perhaps they ran out of
funding because in total the movie was only an hour and fifteen minutes and
seemed to leave me and the rest of the crowd hanging, and not in a good way. I
left the theater confused and not quite sure of what I had seen. Also, the
originality was less than par. It was your typical horror film that takes place
in a haunted woods. Towards the end they find the haunted house which cues the
audience to say “don’t go in to the scary house, you idiot!” and of course the
main character goes into the houses and does not come back out. There were also
your typical scares of the tree falling, the thunderstorm, and the scary
unknown voice. There were even the scary stick figures that hung from the trees
and scary locals. One by one each character was picked off and it was even
predictable. It was predictable in a sense that it seems to follow the theme of
your typical horror film. The movie also seemed to repeat itself and the first
movie, The Blair Witch Project. One
reviewer even stated, “if I am disappointed in the final result, it’s because
the film doesn’t do much more than repeat the previous picture” (Mendelson). The film itself had a great concept it however,
simply failed to execution.
Blair
Witch may have not been the best horror film, but it did displace a few
cultural messages, one of them being the popularity in the belief in the
supernatural recently. This movie hit on a recent spike in the number of
supernatural shows on television and scary movies in theaters. People hope that
there is always a reason a person left us and we find it unsettling if we do
not know what happened to them. Today, many of the haunted shows are based on
living people who believe that their loved ones are trying to reach out. We as
humans find it hard to accept that our loved ones may be truly gone, so we
create an idea that they might be still with us still somehow. By believing in
the supernatural, we may also believe that there are others out there that are
trying to communicate with us. James believes that the video he saw on the
internet may be a sign from his sister who is trying to communicate with him. Unfortunately,
we never find out if it was his sister in the haunted house which in turn left
for an awful and unenjoyable cliff hanger.
Mendelson, Scott. "’Blair Witch’
Gets Lost in the Woods." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 13 Sept. 2016.
Web. 26 Sept. 2016.
Tallerico, Brian. "Blair
Witch Movie Review & Film Summary (2016)." Rev. of Blair Wtich, dir. Adam Wingard. All Content. N.p., 16 Sept.
2016. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.
To watch trailer, click here
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