Fresh scares in short supply
When cinemagoers rolled up to San Diego Comic-Con back in July for a screening of horror movie The Woods, few could have predicted what would happen next.
Within moments it became clear that the film’s title was fake and director Adam Wingard’s flick was actually a sequel to 1999’s groundbreaking, much-imitated since, Blair Witch Project.
The stunned audience lapped up the unexpected treat – but without the element of surprise, does Wingard make a better fist of following up the taut, tense original than Joe Berlinger did back in 2000 with the risible Book of Shadows?
Perhaps inevitably the answer is yes, and having honed his horror-thriller talents helming the likes of You’re Next and The Guest, Wingard and his regular writing collaborator Simon Barrett are quickly establishing themselves as leading lights in both genres.
Barrett’s script sees the brother of the first film’s lead Heather, James (played by James Allen McCune), travel into the Burkittsville woods with three friends and two locals in search of his lost sibling.
Like its forebear, the cast is small – six credited – and full of little-known actors who quickly fall into familiar horror movie tropes that makes you feel like shouting at the screen to warn them about the inevitable repercussions of their foolish actions.
In fact, the similarities between Blair Witch 2016 and 1999 are so frequent this almost feels more like a remake than a sequel; foundfootage trappings, things going bump in the night, creepy stick figures and terror-stricken straight-to-camera confessional are all recycled.
But nostalgia is quickly rivalling comic book adaptations as the most common slice of in-vogue cinema and, as Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jurassic World proved, there’s nothing wrong with rebooting a tried-and-tested formula – if it is entertaining in its own right.
And Blair Witch is never anything less than an uncomfortable, tense journey of terror and at its best presents scares that unsettle even more than anything in the original.
Barrett also expands the mythology of the Blair Witch and cleverly connects James and his camping buddies’ experiences with those suffered by Heather, Josh and Mike 17 years ago.
Technology has moved on considerably since the first visit to Burkittsville and Wingard’s use of modern gadgets and camerawork is both hugely effective (intercut head-cam footage) and unnecessarily forced (overhead drone).
It all builds towards a chaotic finale that revels in its unabandoned carnage before ending in – surprise, surprise – a similar abrupt fashion to the original.
Solid scares and laudable respect for its predecessor there may be, but Blair Witch could’ve done with casting a few more new spells.