I remember being completely terrified seeing it in the cinema, from that first, spine-tingling glimpse of the new footage (so much scarier once you know who it actually is) to the crazy, relentless ending.
The blair witch project 2016 full movie movie#
Watching it even now, just a few years after its release, makes it clear how much richer and more rewarding a horror movie experience it is than most of us gave it credit for. As Sanchez himself intones in the documentary, Blair Witch was the sequel The Blair Witch Project deserved. Wingard and Barrett wanted different growls for each monster and every different type of scare possible to be featured throughout - not just the usual quiet-quiet-bang typical of found footage. The final 30-40 minutes were edited like an action movie, which makes the intensity of the scares so much worse. He and Wingard wanted to split the difference between the authenticity of The Blair Witch Project and making a film that actually looked good, with original co-director and writer Eduardo Sanchez noting their movie was still subtle in spite of its much larger scale. As Corbin Reid, who played Ashley, attested, Blair Witch works because it plays “on primal fears.” Likewise Barrett agreed found footage “works best as POV horror.” The space measured just one inch bigger than her shoulders, with even the cinematographer freaked out by how tight it was. Likewise, Callie Hernandez, who plays Lisa (the Ripley of the movie, as per Wingard, who told her to watch Alien to prepare for the role) is really crawling through those tiny, claustrophobic tunnels at the end. They shot in the Vancouver wilderness, using only flashlights at night, where the actors confirmed it was genuinely frightening once darkness fell.įor Talia’s death, actress Valorie Curry was buried halfway underground with fake legs. Wingard and Barrett wanted to stick very closely to found footage rules, so it was important to put the actors in these situations as much as possible. Glitches were added to help the story feel more real, while additional footage was inter-spliced here and there to deliberately throw us off.
Hundreds of takes were captured, to ensure the actor and camera were always in concert with each other. The sonic identities of the different cameras were very important. Wes Robinson, who plays Lane, even shot most of his footage for real on the older Sony video-camera featured in the movie.
They stood behind the camera operators for that found footage effect during filming, and wore massive rigs on their heads whenever they were in the shot. The lesser-known cast of actors were given only “safe scripts” to read and weren’t even told what they were auditioning for at first. Blair Witch is an incredibly tactile movie, with Wingard adamant everything was done in camera, practically. Working as both sound designer and composer, Wingard created soundscapes to layer in as the subtle, barely-there score, playing with a lot of real noises to give that genuine, trapped-in-the-forest feel. As Wingard notes, “What really makes it scary is you don’t know what’s out there.” Everything is based on the core lore and mythology established in The Blair Witch Project, with the two making it clear that, although they didn’t want to show absolutely nothing again, what we do see definitely is not the witch. They wanted to make a “relentless” and “pure” horror movie, building an impressive, 3-storey set for the house where much of the brilliant final act takes place, similar to the original film, even making holes to match those glimpsed in its predecessor. It’s worth noting, too, that Wingard and Barrett were the first choices of the original filmmakers to handle such delicate material. The documentary accompanying the BD release of the movie showcases, to an almost painful extent, just how much work these two put into their Blair Witch. Wingard has since fought even harder battles with his re-imagining of the beloved Death Note (which wasn’t terrible by any stretch of the imagination) but it’s clear this one was intensely personal to him and Barrett.