The Blair Witch...Twice

Certain films can be remembered long after they are seen, and engrave themselves into the thoughts of the people who choose to watch them. One of the main genres that is notorious for their memorability are suspense/horror movies. Many directors have adapted the idea of the staged documentary type of filming, also called a “mockumentary”. This filming style has been adapted by many different movies thus far, and is a way of portraying mysterious and tragic events through the lens of someone who has experienced them directly. Professional and amateur directors alike have been inspired to create their own mockumentaries, but only a few have managed to create something so unique and disturbing that it becomes etched into our brain and the way we incorporate the film into our daily life afterwards.

            Blair Witch is a film that uses found footage to further the mockumentary style. This film is about a young man named James and his three friends, Lisa, Peter, and Ashley, who take a trip into the Black Hills Forest in hopes of finding James’s missing sister Heather. Heather disappeared 17 years earlier and James and his friends believe that Heather going missing is related to the legend of the Blair Witch. Two local thrill-seekers, Talia and Lane, find an old tape that may be linked to Heather’s disappearance, and James can’t help but explore it. The group sets out on their journey equipped with every type of technology available to ensure that nothing goes left undocumented and the two locals offer aide to the group in navigating their way around the forest. When the decision to stay overnight in the forest is made, a sinister presence makes itself known and the group soon realizes that they are faced with a furious force that will stop at nothing to get what it desires.

The Blair Witch Project is the original film in The Blair Witch Series, which makes Blair Witch the sequel. The original movie was completely based on three film students who travel to a small town to get footage for their documentary about the legend of the Blair Witch, a local serial killer. The students interview native people of the town for several days to gather evidence on the old tale. The students then venture into the Black Hills Forest where they get lost and find themselves faced with the Blair Witch herself. The original movie was one of the first found film documentaries of the 90’s, making it seem far more advanced than the other movies that were being produced at the time. The Blair Witch Project will go down in history as one of the scariest movies of all time, with a paranormal horror that seemed almost too real for a movie screen. In both films, the actors used their real names, instead of character names, to make the movie seem more genuine to the reality of the actual events. The Blair Witch is a tale that will haunt people forever, it’s an unforgettable event that was turned into a found footage film and flipped the world of horror movies around.

The remake of the 1999 hit focuses on jump scares, “unexpected sounds, sudden cuts and things jumping into the frame are guaranteed to startle the audience” instead of tactics that challenge viewers to elaborate on what is actually happening to cause true fear (Scott par.2). The movie was eerie, with the image of the Blair Witch finally being revealed to the audience, but that was the only real difference between the first and the second film. The New York Times described the movie as, “89 minutes of screaming, flashlight waving and falling trees we are watching has supposedly been assembled from the images these luckless souls gathered during their ordeal”, and I completely agree (Scott par.1). The found footage shtick has been worn out by many movies after The Blair Witch Project, and the only thing I really took away from the familiar filming and cheap scares was a headache. The beginning of the movie was mediocre when the characters were calm, for the most part, and no one was running. After the first 20 minutes, however, it was just an hour of some teenagers tossing a GoPro around.

The old folktale of a woman who was stranded in the woods by her village in 1785 named Elly Kedward and the story of serial killer Rustin Parr are two particular stories about the Black Hills Forest that Blair Witch expands upon (Shaw-Williams par.2). The story of Rustin Parr is that he killed seven children in this forest because the voices told him to do it. In the movie, this story was portrayed by many noises spooking the characters throughout the entirety of the film, and even voices trying to tempt the characters towards the end of the movie. Shaw-Williams, the author of this article thinks that “the loud crashing, booming and creaking noises . . . could very well be the sounds of the forest physically shifting around the characters, in order to ensure that they can’t find their way out”, which explains why they always end up back in the same spot and continue to be haunted by strange noises that seem to have no source (par.9). The folklore and supernatural aspects of Blair Witch tie into culture today by taking an old tale that parents would tell their children to keep them out of trouble and turning it into a plot for a horror film. The supernatural and old folklore are two of the most widely used themes in today’s society and tie into almost every horror film. What makes The Blair Witch Project Series unique though, is how many aspects of folklore they could tie into one movie by still staying true to the original film.

There are things that work well, and things that work out very poorly in the plot of all movies, and the actual plot of Blair Witch was fairly well executed. The storyline connected extremely well with that of the original movie but had its own twists to it. Making James the brother of one of the original victims who is searching for answers on his sister’s disappearance was an extremely smart choice on the director’s part because it made the film similar, but not identical to the first. Although the movie was predictable, it was not so in the sense that it made the film boring. There were a few jump scares that spooked me, but the actual fear that came from this movie was the reveal of what the Blair Witch truly looked like. The Blair Witch was a human looking creature with elongated limbs, but it did not have any features on the outside of its body. The dirt covered creature stood seven or eight feet tall, and was adapted from the old folktale of Elly Kedward.  Elly was accused of practicing witchcraft in the town of Blair, Maryland in 1785 and was thrown into the woods by the local townspeople during the coldest winter in human history. The locals supposedly hung her from a tree by her neck and left her there, which in time the townspeople thought gravity would have caused her arms, legs, and neck to elongate (Shaw-Williams par.2). The movie adapted this creature that had been stealing the towns children, and put a twist on it. In Blair Witch the legend is that if you look at her directly you will die from fear, and that is exactly what happened to James and Lisa when they found the notorious house in the middle of the woods. The beat up white house is the same house that the audience was introduced to in The Blair Witch Project and after 17 years, James believes that his sister could still be trapped there. Predictably, James goes in the house and doesn’t end up coming out, like brother like sister.

In the end, I ended up liking the movie as a whole. The “found footage” movies are beginning to come to an end of their popularity, and I’m already tired of them. The cameramen did make the filming look authentic, and the actors did a great job of making you feel like you were watching a documentary and not a cheaply shot horror flick. I liked the film for the incorporation of a historical background, and I highly recommend anyone who wants to watch the series should definitely do a little bit of background research. I also liked that the location that they used to shoot the film was extremely close to that of the first movie and the old folktale. I wouldn’t say that this is the best documentary I’ve seen by far, because The Blair Witch Project tops it, but it would be in my top ten of mockumentaries due to the fact that the plot was fairly decent, even if it is not as good as its predecessor.

watch the trailer here!

References

Scott, A. O. “Review: ‘Blair Witch’: Don’t Go Back Into the Woods”. Rev. of Blair Witch, dir. Adam Wingard NY Times. 15 Sept. 2016. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.

Shaw-Williams, Hannah. “Blair Witch 2016 Ending & Original Connections Explained”. Rev. of    Blair Witch, dir. Adam Wingard ScreenRant. 17 Sept. 2016. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.