Blair Witch (2016)

 A needless 'sequel' which adds nothing to the legend created in the first film and only weakens its legacy.

Back in the late 90s I staggered into the Cameo cinema in Edinburgh one morning, beset with a hangover and fully intent on disliking the film I was about to see, the hysterically hyped The Blair Witch Project.  I did see it but I did not hate it.  I emerged from the Cameo blinking in the weak Scottish sunlight and chastened and humbled.  The film makers had accomplished what they set out to do - craft an effective, well made, innovative film.

(I know, Cannibal Holocaust, The MacPherson Tape and The Last Broadcast and probably several others beat it by varying numbers of years, but none of them had any significant mainstream impact.)

A genre was created with The Blair Witch Project, and effectively ended as well.  After that film, what else could you really do with  found footage style?  Other than endlessly repeat the same tropes and ideas.  Of course, that didn't stop Hollywood and every amateur trying.  Afterall, if you could spend an afternoon running around in the woods screaming, then sell the results as 'The next The Blair Witch Project' why not give it a go?  Bit Coin eat your heart out!  This was the 90s 'Get rich quick' scheme for aspiring film makers who couldn't be bothered trying to write a Tarantino styled wisecracking script.

With a few exceptions, the found footage genre rapidly became saturated and it turned out not just any bunch of mumbling doofuses could capture our imaginations, and some film makers really were just incompetent.  Which begs the question why - having seen so many projects come to grief after the success of the first Blair Witch film, anyone would want to return to the almost well twenty years later.  After all they have the fate of the second film, the (unjustly) scorned Book of Shadows as a warning.

Watching Blair Witch does not answer that question.

It's a woefully unimpressive project.  The scenario sounds not too bad on paper - some more footage is found in the woods and when it is posted on line James - brother of Heather from the original film - thinks he glimpses his missing sister in the images.  So he sets out to find her in the woods, dragging  along a bunch of friends - one of whom is an aspiring documentary maker who kits them out with all manner of tech - and a couple of local guides.

Whoever is behind this prank, they really committed.

Within about five minutes they are irredeemably lost and becoming progressively more menaced by the familiar creepy night noises and weird stick things you'll recall from 1999.

It's unashamedly cleaving to the formula of the first film, eschewing the slightly more ambitious ideas that underpinned Book of Shadows.  But given it doesn't do anything different to the first film, and doesn't do the bits it imitates anywhere near as well, you have to wonder why they bothered.

Here's why - even a crap Blair Witch Project sequel makes someone rich.  Source: Wikipedia

If you have to have another Blair Witch film, it would have been easy to make something more interesting.  What if it turned out the original film was faked?  Perhaps the original film makers are still alive, celebrated film makers who decide to stage a Blair Witch festival at the (unwelcoming) town of Burkittsville?  Or there existed footage, that did not make the final cut of the original, implicating either the locals or someone else in the disappearance of Heather, Mike and Josh, all those years ago? Or it turns out the locals are deliberately luring aspiring film students into the woods to feed to some evil more awful than the Blair Witch herself?  Or ... Or ... These aren't great or original ideas but at least they are ideas that are different to the first film.  I mean, it isn't hard to think of something other than "Some more dumbasses get lost in the woods and run about screaming."

Huh?  We ain't running no-where.

So, griping about originality aside, what is to like about Blair Witch?  The performances are on a par with the genre - naturalistic acting by fairly normal looking people, who shamble about in a half-assed way like the rest of us.  The flash kit that they have makes the film stylistically a bit less repetitive - we get drone shots, black and white motion sensor footage, funky little ear cams and old school video camera.  And no film where people run about in the woods at night screaming is entirely worthless, in my book.  There is some fun fine-tuning of the myth (whose house did Heather, Mike and Josh and meet their end in?  And what is the provenance of the mysterious tape that prompts James to mount his equally ill fated expedition?) 

But there isn't much more to say about it than that.  There is too much that is familiar, not just from the illustrious first film but from the countless found footage clones that followed it - corpses getting whisked off by Things Unseen and tunnels ... what is it with found footage films and tunnels?  And crawling towards the camera down said tunnel?  Why keep chucking it ahead of you like that?  Ditch it!  One kill scene in particular goes on too long, as the character tries to climb a tree to (unaccountably, given they are injured and terrified for their life) retrieve the stranded drone ... And there are too many characters - a deliberate decision by the film makers to allow more kills, apparently, but which only serves to slow things down and lessen identification and involvement,

Worst of all, the film does something the first film was at pains never to do, and shows us the Blair Witch - or at least something clearly malevolent and malformed creeping about amid the trees.  It just doesn't work - nothing could ever live up to the weight of audience expectations, and the shabby offering we're given would be disappointing even if it wasn't supposed to be one of the most feared and least seen cinematic villains since Chopper in Stand By Me.

So, yeah, skip it.  It offers nothing knew and tarnishes the reputation of the original.

Star Rating: *