Blair Witch (film)

Blair Witch
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Adam Wingard
Screenplay by	Simon Barrett
Produced by	Keith Calder Roy Lee Steven Schneider Jessica Wu
Starring	James Allen McCune Callie Hernandez Brandon Scott Valorie Curry Corbin Reid Wes Robinson
Cinematography	Robby Baumgartner
Edited by	Louis Cioffi
Music by	Adam Wingard
Production companies	Room 101 Snoot Entertainment Vertigo Entertainment
Distributed by	Lionsgate
Release dates	September 11, 2016 (2016-09-11) (TIFF) September 16, 2016 (2016-09-16) (United States)
Running time	89 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$5 million
Box office	$14.6 million

Blair Witch is a 2016 American found footage psychological horror film directed by Adam Wingard and written by Simon Barrett. It is a direct sequel to The Blair Witch Project and stars James Allen McCune, Callie Hernandez, Brandon Scott, Corbin Reid, Wes Robinson and Valorie Curry. The film follows a group of college students and their local guides who venture into the Black Hills Forest in Maryland to uncover the mysteries surrounding the disappearance years ago of Heather Donahue, the sister of one of the characters. Initially, the film's connection to the Blair Witch franchise was kept secret, with the film having been shot under the fake title, The Woods.

It screened at San Diego Comic-Con on July 22, 2016 and premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, before being theatrically released in the United States on September 16 by Lionsgate. It received mixed to negative reviews from critics and has grossed $14 million.

Plot

James Donahue finds a video containing a supposed image of sister Heather who disappeared 20 years ago in the woods near Burkittsville while investigating the legend of the Blair Witch. Believing she is still alive, James heads into the woods, accompanied by friends Peter Jones, Ashley Bennett, and film student Lisa Arlington, who wants to film the search for a documentary. Locals Talia and Lane, who uploaded the footage from a videotape they found, join them on their search.

Upon setting up camp for the night, Lane and Talia discuss the disappearance of Heather's film crew, as well as other mysterious occurrences in the region, all of which they ascribe to the Blair Witch. After hearing noises in the woods during the night and oversleeping until the afternoon, the group awakens to find strange stick figures hanging from the trees surrounding their camp. Unnerved, the four friends elect to leave despite Lane and Talia's reluctance. Lisa then notices twine hanging out of Lane's backpack and both he and Talia are banished after admitting to creating the figures. After several hours of walking, the four arrive back at their original campsite, their GPS being inaccurate. Lisa pilots a drone to obtain their location, but it malfunctions and crashes into the trees. Ashley becomes sick due to a wound on her foot sustained the previous day, forcing the group to camp again. Peter goes to gather firewood, but is chased by an unknown entity which causes a nearby tree to fall, gravely wounding him. James hears Peter's cries and runs to his aid, but when he arrives, Peter is gone.

During the night, James and Lisa hear more sounds. Moments later, Lane and Talia emerge, claiming they have been wandering around the forest for five days without a sunrise. Believing that he is hallucinating, Lane runs off while Talia stays behind. The following morning, James and Lisa are stunned to find that it is still night time, discovering larger stick figures surrounding their camp. Talia sees clumps of her hair tied to one of the figures. Ashley, devastated by Peter's disappearance, accuses Talia of crafting them and snaps the figure in half; Talia's body is then violently ripped apart as Ashley screams in horror. An unseen force then separates the group and Ashley pulls out an object embedded in her leg. She finds the drone, and climbs a tree to recover it, but falls to the ground apparently dead. She is pulled off-screen by an unseen force.

A rainstorm ensues as Lisa and James stumble across Rustin Parr's cabin. James seemingly spots his sister upstairs and enters the house. He soon realizes that something is chasing him and barricades himself in an upstairs room. Alone outside, Lisa spots a long-limbed, humanoid creature emerging from the woods, and runs horrified into the basement. She finds an aged Lane who, claiming to be under the control of the witch, traps her in an underground tunnel. Lisa forces herself through the crawlspace, but upon reaching the other side, she is again attacked by Lane, fatally stabbing him in self-defense. Chased by the entity she glimpsed outside, Lisa runs upstairs, seeing the reflection that James saw earlier in the original video. She reunites with James in the attic, where they briefly witness a bright light shining through the windows and cracks in the walls before fading. They try to barricade the door, but it's useless. James tells Lisa to face the corner of the room and he desperately apologizes to Lisa for their fate before an unseen entity enters. James is tricked into turning around, believing that he hears Heather's voice, and is killed. Lisa uses Lane's camcorder to indirectly view what is behind her and begins walking backwards. However, hearing James' apology again, she turns around before being attacked off-screen. The camera is dropped and cuts to black.

Cast

• James Allen McCune as James Donahue
• Callie Hernandez as Lisa Arlington
• Brandon Scott as Peter Jones
• Corbin Reid as Ashley Bennett
• Wes Robinson as Lane
• Valorie Curry as Talia

Production

Wingard first ran into the original Blair Witch Project filmmakers, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, at Sundance while promoting V/H/S/2, and asked them why there were not any more Blair Witch films. Although at the time, nothing came of the meeting, looking back on it, writer Simon Barett had opined that the conversation led to them being asked by Lionsgate to produce the sequel. Barett recalled that, in the initial pitch meeting, Lionsgate had already crafted a synopsis for the film, and simply asked if he would be interested in making it, and the "only thing I really pitched was the other characters; they’d originally conceived the film as more similar to the first film, following its narrative fairly closely, with only three or four characters, I think, but I wanted more characters to give us more scare sequences. I also wanted a unique dynamic within the group from the start, so I pitched the idea of introducing some Burkittsville locals to the group."

Barrett would later note that the team found the found footage genre challenging, as they have only previously worked with it on the V/H/S anthology movies. Barrett noted that with the V/H/S series, there was an inherent entertainment value, where the segments "were never meant to feel entirely real", an element that did not work for the Blair Witch series. Speaking on the issue to Bloody Disgusting, Barrett stated "even if our scares didn’t work in V/H/S, hopefully people would still be entertained, and if they weren’t, well, another short would start in a few minutes"; he added that if a scare did not work in Blair Witch, "we’d have nothing to fall back on, we’d just have failed completely, and publicly." To prevent this from happening, Barrett and Winger extensively went over each "scare" to discover why it was scary and how the audience would react to it. For some sequences, multiple approaches were tried differently, "to give us options in the editing room."

Prior to the film's premiere at the 2016 Comic-Con, the fact that that the film was a Blair Witch sequel remained a closely guarded secret, as the film was shot under the title The Woods. According to the film's writer, Barrett, the film's secrecy was done to prevent backlash amongst internet commenters, who the filmmakers felt would react negatively to news of a reboot. Prior to the official premiere, Lionsgate went as far as to release a trailer for the film incorporating actual footage, while still keeping the film's lineage a secret. The film was still publicly known as The Woods even at Comic-Con, prior to its first screening, with io9 reporting that the initial theater for the screening was filled with posters for the fake film. After the screening (during which audiences realized that the film was a sequel), all the promotional material in the theater was changed to reflect the film's actual title.

Release

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2016 and was theatrically released on September 16, 2016.

Reception

Box office

As of September 18, 2016, Blair Witch has grossed $9.7 million in North America and $4.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $14.6 million, against a budget of $5 million.

In the United States and Canada, the film was released on September 16, 2016, and was initially projected to gross around $26 million in its opening weekend, from 3,121 theaters. Lionsgate's expectations were more conservative, however, with a projected $15–18 million opening, although rival studios were predicting significantly higher numbers, noting how horror films saw solid performances throughout 2016, including Lights Out, The Conjuring 2, The Purge: Election Year, The Shallows and Don't Breathe. However, after grossing $765,000 from its Thursday previews and $4.1 million on its first day, opening projections were lowered to $10 million. It ended up grossing $9.7 million in its opening weekend, below expectations and the lowest opening weekend of the series.

The film received a day-and-date release in many countries in conjunction with its North American debut.

The film cost $5 million to produce, with an additional $20 million spent on promotion, advertising and marketing costs.

Critical response

Blair Witch has received mixed to negative reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 37%, based on 133 reviews, with an average rating of 5.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Blair Witch doles out a handful of effective scares, but aside from a few new twists, it mainly offers a belated rehash of the original – and far more memorable – first film." On Metacritic, the film received a weighted average score of 46 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "D+" on an A+ to F scale. Critics considered the film as an improvement to Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.

IGN reviewer Chris Tilly awarded the film 9/10, stating that Blair Witch is "so good it'll make you forget that Book of Shadows ever happened." Bloody Disgusting's Brad Miska gave the film a positive review, commenting: "Blair Witch is that game-changer horror fans desperately have been waiting for."

Josh Kurp of Uproxx gave the film a mixed review, saying "Blair Witch is scary, but it lacks surprise, and without surprise, you’re left with a bunch of kind-of annoying people shakily filming themselves wandering the woods and reacting to loud noises."

Conversely, The Hollywood Reporter's Leslie Felperin criticized the film, commenting that it is "a dull retread rather than a full-on reinvention," enlarging the cast numbers this time but sticking to the same basic beats. New York Post's Kyle Smith condemned the film by calling it "not terror, but sorrow," and gave it 1.5 stars out of 4.

Soundtrack

1. "Hakmarrja" – N.K.V.D
2. "Pagan Dance Move" – Arnaud Rebotini
3. "Rien à Paris" – Liz & László

External links

• Official website
• Blair Witch at IMDb
• Blair Witch at Rotten Tomatoes
• Blair Witch at Box Office Mojo
• Blair Witch at Metacritic
• Blair Witch at Wattpad