The cracks and thuds of the sound design are the driving force of the terror, with splitting trees and far off howls ratcheting up tension even when the digital cameras artifact, blow-out and generally obscure vision. Unlike in its predecessor, there’s definitely something evil in the woods, but exposure is minimal. Temporal fuckery and actual factual witchcraft come into play to gruesome effect. The fiction of the Blair Witch is expanded on to give audiences something less ambiguous to grasp.
Care is taken to slowly build up to the point where the mood tips from tension to out and out horror, but when shit hits the fan, the film explodes forwards without a pause.
Where the film truly diverges from the original though, is in its relentlessness and its awareness of itself and its legacy. The four friends are joined by a pair of Confederate flag toting, death metal listening outcasts who accompany the group on the visit into the woods, adding a bit of tension between privileged teens and listless backwater folks. Being a modern film, the tech has improved, giving Wingard a greater range of movement and novelty than was afforded to the crew in 1999. Spurred on by documentary film student Lisa (Callie Hernandez), and joined by their mutual friends, he sets off to find some trace of the erstwhile party. Wingard takes us back to the Black Hills forest as James (James Allen McCune), brother of Heather from the original, has arranged to meet an amateur filmmaker who has supposedly recovered new footage from the first expedition. This marks it out as unique, but also too placid and cool to survive in the world of modern horror, where every film succeeding Paranormal Activity treats the Blair Witch Project as palimpsest. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s original film isn’t without its moments of shock, and it has a brooding atmosphere that’s as heady and oppressive as the forest air. For my money, the original is a terrible horror film, but an incredibly vital piece of experimental filmmaking that burst into the mainstream through a careful concoction of hype and intentional blurring of the lines between fact and fiction. Writer/director combo Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett are responsible for two of the best cult horrors in the past few years ( You’re Next and The Guest) so the revelation that their latest project, The Woods, was actually an ultra secret sequel to 1999's landmark found footage film The Blair Witch Project, was met with tentative cheers.īlair Witch then, is a remake that is in incredibly safe hands, but one that is poised in an interesting way. The mantra that there’s nothing new under the sun is… nothing new, considering Hollywood has been remaking its own films since the 1920s - the much loved Julie Garland Wizard Of Oz wasn’t the first time L Frank Baum’s story had been transferred to the silver screen, to name one pertinent example - so set down your torches for Blair Witch.
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