Blair Witch PC, Xbox One
Developer/publisher Bloober Team Format PC, Xbox One (tested) Release Out now
Love or hate it, on its 20th anniversary The Blair Witch Project feels as much of a one-off as it did back in 1999. Despite a slew of imitators, a sequel, a reboot and a variety of expansions across various media, it stands alone: a never-to-be-repeated phenomenon built around a brilliantly orchestrated marketing campaign that convinced some its story of three student documentary makers going missing in the Burkittsville woods was real. Yet despite provoking such a violently polarised reaction (and despite its cast spending most of their time bickering, snivelling or shrieking) it’s defined by its restraint: this is the rare horror film that’s almost entirely gore-free, that works precisely because of what it chooses not to show. Two decades later, enter Layers Of Fear developer Bloober Team, whose maximalist approach to the genre never seemed like an ideal fit for a Blair Witch videogame. So, alas, it proves.
Set two years after the original film’s events, it casts you as Ellis, a cop with a dark past who has ill-advisedly joined a search in the same woods for a missing boy, accompanied by his dog, Bullet. (If you’re excitedly wondering whether the dog’s name might be an oh-sosubtle hint towards that dark past, then Blair Witch may well be the game for you.) Ellis, it soon becomes clear, is not a well man. He has a fractious relationship with his partner Jess, with whom he occasionally has short, awkward conversations on an authentically ’90s mobile phone that may well be the best thing about the game. It’s obvious he has some prior connection to the woods and is suffering from post-traumatic stress. He’s a walking bundle of clichés, in other words, but there’s some effective shorthand storytelling here, just enough to get us onside with a fairly unsympathetic character. The dog helps, of course. You hold out items you find for him to pick up the scent before he scampers off and barks to alert you to discoveries. You can praise him and toss him a treat for being a good boy, or scold him – though he rarely gives you cause to do so, and what kind of heartless individual would take that option anyway?
Even when you’re being led by Bullet’s nose, these early moments evoke a feeling of disorientation that’s surprisingly true to the film. Exploring the local area around an abandoned camp, you’ll follow a path, only to stumble back across the same tent and the same extinguished campfire, and you wonder whether it’s just your terrible sense of direction or that the woods are actually playing tricks on you. Credit to Bloober Team for daring to let its players get lost – or at least feel lost – though, as with so much of Blair Witch, it can’t resist taking it too far. When you’re deposited back at the same camp later in the game for what feels like the 14th time, you can’t help but feel the idea has run its course. It doesn’t help that the clues you need to move on are sometimes easily missed, and that neither Bullet nor Ellis’s intrusive voiceover bother giving you any kind of direction. The creeping unease steadily wanes, leaving you frustrated and occasionally outright bored.
But then Bullet will growl and your meagre torch beam becomes a weapon in short combat sequences reminiscent of a firstperson Alan Wake. Vaguely humanoid creatures, gnarled and spindly, sprint between the trees as you try to track Bullet’s gaze and turn your light toward them. They’re too fast to get a proper look at, which makes them feel all the more threatening, though a few sustained flashes and they’re gone almost as quickly as they came. More frequently used is a video camera, upon which you’ll watch found tapes that have a transformative effect on the environment. It’s a smart, unsettling idea at first, as objects from the past appear in the present, and fallen trees rise up once more. But over time it becomes nothing more than a glorified key: you’ll find a locked door, rewind the appropriate video until you see someone open it, and move on.
Still, that’s an improvement on one sequence where you find yourself running from whirling piles of leaves, which conjures memories of M Night Shyamalan’s accidental comedy The Happening. Yet even this intangible threat is preferable to the introduction of a more traditional antagonist. “Did you really think it would be that easy, Ellis?” they taunt over a walkietalkie. Then, not a minute later, they confirm that Ellis was quite right in his assumption: “The key is under the table.” It’s not all bad, by any means. One claustrophobic crawl beneath the roots of a tree is a real nerve-shredder at first, though Bloober Team can’t resist layering on would-be spooky voices which shatter the spell. At other times, the anticipation of a reveal is far more chilling than what follows: the arrival of a phone message that simply reads ‘look up’, for example.
It’s a pity it doesn’t trust enough in the inherent scariness of its setting. The Blair Witch Project expertly played upon that primal fear of being lost in the woods; Bloober Team, by contrast, can’t resist repeatedly pulling us out of them. Flashbacks and nightmarish visions cause environments to bleed into one another: an excuse for the developer to pull off some nifty aesthetic tricks, but it’s the kind of visual showboating that is anathema to terror. Disorientating? Sure. Clever? Sometimes, such as one puzzle where fiddling with a car’s headlights changes night to day. Scary? Nope.
But then the writing was on the wall – or the forest floor – from the very start. When the camera pulls up to reveal the signature stick-figure symbol hidden within the thicket of trees, it’s a warning that Blair Witch is mostly content to rely on the iconography of the original to frighten you. As Ellis crushes his umpteenth fistful of twigs, you’re merely reminded of a far superior, far more disturbing journey through the woods near Burkittsville.
There’s some effective storytelling here, just enough to get us onside with a fairly unsympathetic character