Ugh, I am just not a fan of this new BLAIR WITCH movie.
First, a little backstory. Back on February 20, 1999 a group of us old-time writers for the site gathered at somebody’s apartment to watch a videotape Harry had. I remember the date, because it was the day Gene Siskel died, unless my memory is playing tricks on me.
Harry had explained that it was footage found in the woods somewhere (which I knew was BS, but whatever). The movie turned out to be BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, but this was well before it was released in theaters and became the phenomenon that it eventually turned out to be. This was the perfect way to see the film — watching it on TV just accentuated the found footage aspect, and made it seem so much more real.
You have to remember that this was the first “found footage” movie*. It was so fresh and original that it managed to produce anxiety and scares in me that I’ve never seen another movie achieve since. I still remember it vividly — at some point our host’s refrigerator kicked on, and we all just about jumped a foot. That’s still one of the craziest scares I’ve ever had — it just goes to show the masterful job of building up tension the filmmakers had achieved.
Once I saw the credits, I recognized the name of one of the producers. He was the brother of one of my college roommates, so I emailed him to chat about this exceptional movie. I then followed the film as it grew and became an international phenomenon, and as the central conceit of found footage was copied, for better or worse, all over the world and across genres. The bottom line is that I feel a special kinship with the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT in the way that you would for a band that maybe a friend of a friend plays in that you started liking when nobody knew about them.
But if a band is the central metaphor here, this BLAIR WITCH is like a few members of the original band getting back together decades later with new people, but no new material, just to cash in on rehashing their greatest hits. They may have been brilliant a couple of decades ago, and you might enjoy seeing the old material again, but overall they come across as a little sad and disappointing.
The conceit here is that main character James is the (much younger) brother of Heather, from the original film. He’s obsessed with finding her, and recruits a team to go out into the woods to see what they can figure out. Everyone seems to be late teens / early 20s, and obsessed with documenting every aspect of their existence with state of the art video gear. It isn’t much of a spoiler to say that shit gets real out there in the woods, because it wouldn’t be much of a film if they didn’t find anything. With a larger budget this time, better effects, and more than a decade of found footage movies to draw tricks from, this outing is more amped up, and in some ways more sophisticated than the original BLAIR WITCH. However, in just about every other way it is inferior. The whole of the charm of the first film is its originality. This is just a sequel with a nearly identical plot. It adds nothing.
Even being a ripoff, it could conceivably have been redeemable. But a second major problem is that there are no good characters in the film. Almost everyone is a self-absorbed asshole, and they all make one utterly ridiculous decision after another for no better reason than to further the plot. None of the actors have a shred of charisma either.
Another problem is that the film takes a long time to build, and to keep things from getting too boring they use a lot of phony jump scares and annoying sounds coming from devices for no good reason. It just erodes at the credibility of the film, until by then end, when things really do start to happen, you just figure it is another bullshit fake-out.
And finally, any real “scares” here are just loud noises and fleetingly glimpsed things that disappear after a second or so. There is no resolution, no world building, no moving the ball forward in this potentially interesting universe where witchcraft and haunted forests are real. What a wasted opportunity. I feel like could write half a dozen more interesting films than this, set in that same world. I hate it when I come out of a movie thinking I (admittedly not a filmmaker) could have done better. I much prefer being blown away by creative genius. Sadly, you aren’t going to get that here.
I did see the movie with a packed house at Midnight Madness at TIFF. A good fraction of the crowd was really into it. So maybe the film will do some business. I don’t know though. The BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’s time has passed. And this movie was wholly unnecessary.
* For all you nitpickers, it was the first mainstream fully found footage movie, and the one that turned this into a genre.
