Found footage movies, though often disparaged as too heavily reliant on gimmicks, jump scares and bad writing, have arguably grown up in the last few years. Creep, currently viewable on Netflix, was a production involving only two people on the screen, yet was far more terrifying than most big-budget horror films of the last decade. The Visit, while not all that scary, was a cute and clever teen movie that had M. Night Shyamalan showing off his movie know-how in the most hated genre of the day. It even has its own subgenres, as with the technically stunning, monumentally creepy Unfriended. So it would seem that now—17 years after the original Blair Witch Project first revolutionized the style—would be the right time to bring it back and enhance the story that started it all.
Blair Witch
R, 93 minutes
Violet Crown Cinema and Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Unfortunately, for both the characters of 2016’s Blair Witch and the filmmakers who attempted to capture the magic of its predecessor by following its footsteps too loyally, it seems you really can’t go home again. It’s with no great pleasure that I report to you that on almost every single level, the much-hyped reboot of the franchise that all but invented the modern found footage movie is a dud, suffocated by its reverence for 1999’s The Blair Witch Project with no clear plan beyond using digital cameras and hiring a professional sound engineer. Gone is the existential terror of being tormented by an unseen force in a naturalistic setting that made the first film so resonant, replaced by moments one might call jump scares that never rise to the level of momentary startle.
The film follows James, the younger brother of Heather from the first film, as he attempts to track down his sister after new footage from the mysterious house has been recovered. He recruits his friends, two of whom are documentary filmmakers, to visit the woods and solve the mystery of her disappearance. From there it’s virtually the exact same plot as the original, with all of the same tactics. There are a few new ideas that go precisely nowhere; the abundance of cameras are not employed to greater effect, and plot threads are started then dropped with no explanation.
Produced in secret by director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett, the team behind the fantastic genre tribute You’re Next and the more memorable segments of V/H/S and V/H/S/2, the film was known only as The Woods until it premiered at Comic-Con with its real title. This marketing gimmick is clever, impressive and is a worthy successor to the strategy for the original film, which did everything it could to convince the world that it was real and that the people on the screen were actually dead. The plan worked, and The Blair Witch Project revolutionized viral marketing at a time when verifying information online was more difficult than it is today.
But there’s more to The Blair Witch Project than how it was sold; there’s the film itself, which is far more than the gimmick it is remembered for. Where most modern found footage movies are fully produced with genuine production value, The Blair Witch Project forced you into the perspective of the protagonists by seeing and hearing exactly what they did. The silence was almost scarier than the screaming. The art was in the seemingly shoddy production value, which rooted you in the moment and ripped away the crutches modern audiences had become accustomed to, leaving nothing between the viewer and the terror of the unknown. Added lore and clearer audio and visuals only serve to diminish the film’s appeal, especially when Wingard hopes to capture the exact same effect. Blair Witch is not just bad, it’s utterly pointless. Skip it.
Contact Kristofer Jenson at arts@c-ville.com.
Playing this week
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213
Bad Moms, Bridget Jones’s Baby, The Disappointments Room, Don’t Breathe, Hillsong-Let Hope Rise, Kubo and the Two Strings, Pete’s Dragon, Snowden, Star Trek Beyond, Suicide Squad, Sully, When the Bough Breaks, The Wild Life
Violet Crown Cinema
200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000
The Beatles: Eight Days a Week-The Touring Years, Bridget Jones’s Baby, Don’t Think Twice, Florence Foster Jenkins, Hell or High Water, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Light Between Oceans, Snowden, Sully