Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. The dynamic duo of Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard have given us some really quality genre stuff recently, going back to A Horrible Way To Die, cruising through with the great double whammy of You're Next and The Guest and finally bringing us to The Woods.
Rumors were swirling around this one going back a full year. It was late last year a trusted source told me Adam and Simon were going to make a big reboot/sequel of a movie with the initials B.W.
At the time I thought it'd be cool if this team tackled Blair Witch, but when the movie was announced as The Woods (complete with poster and trailer) I figured either the people I knew were mistaken or maybe they changed gears somewhere along in production and decided to make it an original horror film.
Last night at San Diego Comic-Con they held their first public screening and wouldn't you know it... the damn thing actually is a sneaky sequel to/reboot of BLAIR WITCH. Here's the new trailer for proof!
Kudos to Lionsgate for keeping the secret so well and not buckling when the rumors of this being a Blair Witch movie started surfacing online. That first Blair Witch was a cultural phenomenon. I remember lines around the theater for it and my own first viewing, which was a not exactly legal VHS tape right after it premiered at Sundance and the word hadn't gotten around yet that it was a fake doc.
It's hard to tell people exactly what it was like to watch the original under those circumstances, in that era, and just how much creepier it was when you thought it could possibly, potentially be real.
Obviously they don't have that luxury on this one, so it's gotta be a bit bigger. The trailer looks like they're going that route and all the word I've heard from friends and colleagues who saw it in San Diego last night it's scary as hell.
Damned excited to see it for myself, I gotta say. What about you?
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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