![]() ![]() In this new film, Jason, the brother of lost filmmaker Heather, seeks to find the truth of what happened in 1994. That is how both The Blair Witch Project and Blair Witch work. No matter how many times, or in what detail, a friend tells you about roller coaster, the experience of riding can never be spoiled. It is analogous to riding a roller coaster. Both films operate as journeys, and the tension is created in the process and not the story itself. In other words, even if you know what is going to happen, your viewing experience won’t necessarily be spoiled. However, with that said, neither The Blair Witch Project nor Blair Witch are heavily dependent on plot elements for enjoyment. If you haven’t seen it, you can stop here. However, in 2016, as witch films have made a return to the screen, so has the Blair Witch.īefore going forward, this review will discuss some, not all, details of the new film. With the end of the witch film cycle at hand and the poor showing of the second film, this seemed to be the end for The Blair Witch Project. In 2000, New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden had some kinder words for the film, but added, “For all its clever notions, ‘Book of Shadows’ often seems more like a montage of pasted-together images than a coherent horror story.” Hard-core fans and reviewers often remark that they would simply like to forget that the second film even happened. However, the sequel, costing $10 million, was unsuccessful, failing to capture the original’s grit or poignancy. The breakout success of the original Blair Witch Project led to a 2000 sequel, titled Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, which was directed by Joe Berlinger. It seemed to be a doorway into the new millennium of how we tell our stories. What is real and what has been falsified? Can we trust what we see in photos and film? In that way, The Blair Witch Project at its very essence captured not only its own time, but also what was to come. This new digital medium, far more than its analog counterpart, also increasingly allowed for the construction and the reconstruction of recorded reality, leaving much room for the manipulation of our nonfictional storytelling. In addition, new technology was quickly eliminating barriers to indie filmmaking, making the film’s concept very possible. Outside of the early buzz created by the SyFy Channel’s pre-release of the mockumentry, The Blair Witch Project captured the imagination of a viewership already engrossed with supernatural or paranormal entertainment vehicles (e.g., X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, So Weird, Ancient Mysteries). According to a Fortune magazine article, the film cost $60,000 to make, and earned $1.5 million at the box office on the first weekend, while only in 27 theaters. ![]() Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, The Blair Witch Project was an indie success, a technical novelty, and a marker of its time. While the Blair Witch project did begin in earnest 1994, the entire film venture is manufactured, including the plot, the legend, the town, the footage, and even the made-for-television, promotional mockumentary, titled Curse of the Blair Witch (1999). This weekend, the story continues in a new film, with the brother of one of the lost filmmakers traveling to the mysterious Black Hills of Maryland in hopes of learning exactly what happened 22 years ago. One year later, their equipment was found, and the footage became the film The Blair Witch Project (1999). It had a golden opportunity to lean into basically a whole new genre and continue the story in an interesting way but the closest we got to that was that video game about the Gulf War vet.TWH – In 1994, three student filmmakers walked off into the dense woods near Burkettsville, Maryland in hopes of a discovering the truth behind a local legend. ![]() Like the rumors of the disappearances, the stories of Rustin Parr and even the apparent folklore surrounding the witch could have been ways we as humans tried to make sense of the eldritch nature of a place we cant ever fundamentally understand. ![]() I think leaning more into that premise would have distanced this movie from the original in terms of plot and would have lent itself to more subtle scares keeping the "spirit" of the original intact. I gotta say though the attempt to sprinkle in cosmic horror with the more apparent time shenanigans was interesting and made it seem like the forest was more of an antagonist like the Overlook Hotel in the Shining. Blair Witch 2016 was inoffensive which as far as most found footage horror goes is a fine baseline but as a follow up to the Blair Witch Project? The first Blair Witch encapsulated the notion of 'less is more' so following it up with something more conventional feels wrong regardless of the films own merits. ![]()
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