To nestle it into the "Blair Witch" mythology that provoked so many imaginations starting in 1999, Barrett culled from backstory-building material written around the releases of The Blair Witch Project and its 2000 sequel, Book of Shadows. That was really enticing."Īnyone who caught Blair Witch this weekend knows the movie is full of violent paranormal activity and theory-worthy twists. And as a fan, I always wanted to see a more direct sequel to what they were building in the first film. "But there were ancillary materials that took the mythology in a different direction. "If there was just the The Blair Witch Project and nothing else, if it was just a classic found-footage horror film, I don't think I would have been as excited ," Barrett tells Thrillist. That was a risk Barrett, the new movie's writer, was willing to take. Seasoned horror veterans Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett saw an opportunity to add to the Blair Witch Project mythology, but for their sequel, Blair Witch, to do justice, they had to play in the sandbox without kicking up too much sand. Audiences never saw who or what attacked the trio an unseen force "knocked" the camera out of Heather's hands and that was that. Though the 1999 movie is littered with mythological hints, Heather, Michael, and Josh's search for answers amounted to their untimely deaths. The Blair Witch is back… and now that she’s here, it’s time for things to be a little less safe and a lot more dangerous.This post contains massive spoilers for Blair Witch, the Blair Witch Project sequel that arrived in theaters this weekend.Īnyone hoping for The Blair Witch Project to reveal its mystery could go screw. I get why the filmmakers stayed on the path paved by the original film, but since the groundwork has been laid (or relaid, for that matter), I’m also more eager to see what Wingard and Barrett could do now that the franchise has been retooled and reintroduced. The scares come fast and furious, and they do not relent until the very last frame, leaving the audience thoroughly shaken. It literally feels like being locked inside of a deranged funhouse with your worst nightmares. The final 20 minutes are home to some of the most claustrophobic and nerve-wrenching moments the horror genre has seen in quite some time. When things get cooking, the film takes a pretty relentless approach to the scares, and the last act is undeniably intense. Wingard and Barrett definitely bring their own flavor to the world created by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, expanding upon the mythos and everything we thought that we knew while planting a veritable treasure trove of easter eggs within the film for the fans to discover. Make no mistake, though Blair Witch is very much a sequel in every sense of the word, and at the end of the day it’s the movie we’ve all been hoping for. Given the fact that the second one was so far out of the box in comparison to the original, I’m guessing the decision was made to play the events close to the chest, if only to salvage the fanbase and introduce Elly Kedward to a brand new audience. Well, one thing’s for sure… director Adam Wingard and his longtime collaborator, writer Simon Barrett, certainly do and they’ve done so with hardly any missteps.īlair Witch only really makes one mistake… it never strays too far from the groundwork laid by the original movie and at times feels like more of a remake that takes advantage of today’s technology than it does a sequel. It seemed as if no one understood how to make a follow-up to the phenom that was the original film. As a result it remains one of the more reviled sequels of all time. It goes off the rails and never delivers the goods that the original film and even the various stellar TV tie-ins such as “Curse of the Blair Witch” and “The Burkittsville 7” did. It was literally the sequel that nobody wanted. ![]() In the year 2000 when Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was released, the Blair Witch fanbase cried foul. It doesn’t take very long for stuff to go sideways, and when it does, it does so in spectacularly frightening fashion. Together they travel back to the famed sites… Coffin Rock… the infamous creek that Mike kicked the map into nearly two decades ago, etc. Along for the ride and experience are three of his friends, one of whom is making a documentary about their trip, providing a reason for them all to be sporting small ear cameras. After the discovery of some new footage of the house Heather went missing in hits online, Heather’s brother (McCune) arranges a meeting between himself and the couple responsible for uploading the new footage to find out where it came from. Seventeen years have passed since Heather, Mike, and Josh disappeared in the Black Hills Forest of Burkittsville, Maryland. Blair Witch is a direct sequel to the original 1999 film.
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