In the middle of this past summer, one late July morning, I woke up and went to the bathroom for my annual morning pee. I sat (judge me for sitting to pee early in the morning, see if I care) on the toilet and skimmed my Twitter newsfeed:
"Why in the world is Blair Witch trending?!"
- I thought to myself as my bladder emptied out. I soon found out the reason behind this trending topic. Comic-Con also known as Homecoming for Nerds, held a special screening for a new horror film titled The Woods except it wasn't just any new horror film, it was a new installment of a preexisting franchise.
Thus began my nearly two and half months of anticipatory waiting until I could once again enter the infamous Black Hills Woods of Maryland and discover what the insidious legend of the Blair Witch had in store for me. It has been nearly 17 years since the original hit the big screen. Rumors of a third film in the franchise have been around for years, but the fact that one had been created in complete secrecy was almost too much for a film geek's heart to bear. I decided in July that I would see this film opening night, to protect myself from the spoilers that would inevitably run amuck online immediately following the mass release. The film tells the tale of James Donahue, the brother of Heather, the main protagonist of the original film. James and a group of his friends, along with two tour guides enter the Maryland wilderness in search of his long-missing sister after a tape recovered in the woods seems to indicate she may still be alive out there. While the original film relied on the POV's of just two cameras, this film's story unfolds alongside the perspectives of several different earpiece cameras, professional cameras and even a drone!
I had high expectations for this sequel, particularly because it had such a positive reception initially at its Comic-Con screenings. This was reinforced when the original directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick gave the new film their blessing as well. Now, after seeing the opening night screening for myself I have to say, one word came to my mind when all the screaming and shaky cam had stopped, and the lights came up... "underwhelming."
I am going to split this review into three sections that I'd prefer to focus on; Characters, Mythology and Plot.
Characters
The Blair Witch Project (1999) gave us three well fleshed out leads mainly because when a person is put in a life-threatening situation, their true colors tend to come out. Therefore by seeing Heather, Mike and Josh before and after they got lost in the woods we have a decent sense of their personalities, their habits and triggers, even their fears. In this film, the character count is plus three. You'd think, with six characters heading into the woods, we'd have even more substantial character development and story arcs for our leads. Unfortunately, the script does little to add color to who these people are. Ashley and Peter (the film's token black couple) have undefined characters and relationships. Lisa is compelling in her relentless dedication to document James's grief even at his expense, but her confidence becomes deficient when she plays the damsel in the latter half of the film. These errors end up being at no fault to the actors themselves. They are a competent bunch, but aren't given much to work with in terms of substance in the script. Character motivations wants and needs are abysmal. The most underdeveloped character is, unfortunately, our protagonist.
James is Heather's brother and the group's designated leader. We sympathize with him as audience members because we know what horrible fate fell upon his sister in the first film, and it's a similar one likely in store for him. The audience does NOT, however, gain a good understanding of why James truly believes she could be alive after all these years, or what his minimal relationship with her (he was four when she disappeared) must've been like. In truth, James hardly speaks about her before or after they enter the woods. It's a true shame because an emotional monologue about her loss could've been almost as effective as Heather's famous "apology" monologue in the first installment's third act. It would've added a human layer to this otherwise supernatural centered film. The human element is almost completely forgotten by the writers and it relied so much on James's character. I did not believe he truly felt his sister was alive or that he was even after the truth. He just seemed to be a chicken without a head blindly walking into the forest that took his sister 17 years prior. He hardly behaves as if he's even seen Heather's footage! If he had, he would've logically saw a lot more in this film coming and possibly understood some of the signifiers he was coming across as they got deeper into the woods, which brings us to the next point of discussion.
Mythology
Blair Witches's fictional mythology is much richer than most people seem to know. Countless comic books, mockumentaries and dossiers have been released over the last several years that have expanded greatly on the rivetingly disturbing folktale. Director of the new film, Adam Wingard claims to be a longtime fan of the Blair Witch and its accompanied works, but he and screenwriter, Simon Barrett do little in the script to explore these potentially supple plot lines. Elly Kedward, Rustin Parr, Coffin Rock and Robin Weaver are all mentioned by the hiker's during a traveling montage as they're trekking through the vast greenery. Their stories are recounted with false allurement to the audience that they will do anything to serve the plot. THEY DO NOT! We learn nothing more about Parr's slaughtering of those seven children or the little girl who was drowned in the creek by a mysterious hand pulling her in. All we are given is an alternative theory to the "standing in the corner" myth, but this addition ends up not fitting well with the pre-established history. In this movie, it is stated that if you look at the Witch directly, that's how she kills you. This makes little sense in the Blair Witch Universe however considering that neither Mike nor Heather directly view the Witch in the first film and yet it is heavily implied that they died, especially Heather who falls to the ground. Also Mary Brown claims to have seen the Witch with her own eyes when she was a little girl, and she lived to a ripe old age so she could tell Heather and the film crew all about it! Why contradict a pre-established trope when they had so much untapped material to work with already? Why didn't Coffin Rock play a more significant role in the story or Elly Kedward and the historically abandoned town formally known as Blair? Wingard and Barrett only made the popular tropes (the house at the end, standing in the corner, the stick figures) significant without breaking any real new ground in the mythology at all. All this film did was reinforce the already widely accepted fan theory that the woods have the ability to distort and alter time. After 17 years and a smorgasbord of mythology to work with, I expected much more dammit. It's like filling a rocket with supplies for the moon and forgetting to light the damn match!
Plot
The film's first half-hour is extremely well-paced. We meet the characters, understand their primary goal and are off into the woods well before the half-hour mark. We get some pretty drone shots of the enormous Black Hills Forest and a history lesson from Lane and Talia, two local Blair Witch buffs who found the footage that prompted James to go back and search for his sister. Once nighttime falls, however, an unrelenting fright-fest begins. The second half of the movie is predominately set in prolonged nighttime, the Witch apparently toying with time and space to keep the group blanketed in darkness. Talia and Lane go off on their own and return hours later to say they've been traveling for five days. Again the time-bending element is alluded to, but never fleshed out. When the film begins to get truly horrifying is when it starts running into its primary plot problems. Ashley's foot injury is set up to be something disturbingly terrifying and maybe even gross, but all she ends up doing is extracting a piece of a tree branch from her leg! She should've been transformed into a giant stick figure or gotten possessed! Okay, neither of those ideas are very good, but still, come on! Her injury and illness is another example of the film offering a glimmer of originality before squandering it at its most interesting point. If you saw the trailer, you know how Talia dies, and this death would've had a greater reaction in the cinema had it not been a part of the marketing campaign. Peter is done away with off-screen. Unsurprisingly Lisa and James are the last two standing and when we finally reach the infamous house, are ending is beginning to shape up into something...ridiculous. The house in this film is treated as a haunted house maze in an amusement park, with various rooms and corridors that serve no purpose and add nothing to the storyline unfolding across the screen. It's clearly larger in structure, and yet it has much less impact than the small run-down shack found by Heather and Mike in the original film. Lane shows up again, now with a beard and seemingly under the Witch's control, but if this is true, he should've been the one to kill James and Lisa, the way Parr killed those seven children. Some even theorize that Josh killed Heather and Mike in the climax of the first, under the Witch's spell. Lane's reentrance into the plot makes little sense and comes off as convolutedly vague when it should be intriguingly ambiguous. Why is Lane experiencing time so different than the others, and why did the Witch choose him to possess? Josh was chosen because he was a nonbeliever, Lane was an adamant Blair Witch aficionado! A tunnel scene is effectively used for those who fear claustrophobia more than witchcraft, but the tunnel ends up going in a circle which makes the entire sequence feel pointless in the end; much like most of the film's second half. The ending scene in the attic (a nice reversal on the basement set ending of the first film I will admit) is frightening and suspenseful, but at the same time, it feels half-hearted. It's unsatisfying because the film doesn't guide you into it as well as the first film excellently carries its unsuspecting audiences into its hauntingly memorable conclusion. What should be profoundly horrifying comes off as, meh.
Closing Thoughts
Overall would I recommend horror fans to see this long-awaited sequel? Honestly, I would because while the film has its many faults, it is nonetheless made with a reasonable degree of respect to the Blair Witch name and legacy. It's well-intended, if not naively misguided to adhere to today's cliché horror movie conventions. It is hesitant to be innovative but still manages to evoke fear in interesting ways many times throughout the plot. I have confidence that if this film sparks a continuation of the series and I hope it does, future films can and will expand on the mythology in the way it so desperately deserves to be told on a larger scale. Until then the Witch and her devilish antics may be appreciated in this well-crafted but ultimately all too familiar sequel; Good ideas, dressed up in old clothes.
Note: During research today, I discovered an article with an interview with Adam Wingard and would like to clarify that the Witch is NOT seen in this movie. Those of you, like me, who thought or think otherwise are incorrect in your assumption. Still what the hell was that thing chasing them at the end? Possibly a scorned fan?
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