Blair Witch

Heather Report

Blair Witch
2016 USA Directed by Adam Wingard
UK cinema release print.

Warning: I’ve actually opted for spoilers in this one because I want to talk about specific aspects. If you don’t want to know this stuff then don’t read.

This film, directed by Adam Wingard who made the excellent The Guest (reviewed here), was originally called The Woods when it was being shot and then trailered. I remember seeing the trailer for ‘The Woods’ a few months ago and thinking... “Wow. This looks like a remake of The Blair Witch Project”. Not more than a couple of weeks since I saw that trailer, it was revealed to the public at large that The Woods was not really the title of the film and that it was, indeed, to be called Blair Witch. The first thing I thought of was how perfectly appropriate it was that someone had managed to make a sequel in secret, given the way the original movie was initially marketed as a ‘real phenomenon’ documentary.

Now, I remember the buzz surrounding the original movie because, around about the same time, somebody at my work place had asked me to be one of two test subjects to spend time looking around the internet, getting familiar with it and trying to figure out if the internet and emails were something which would be worth getting for the business. I remember reading about the initial viral campaign and then, when all was revealed that The Blair Witch Project was just another horror movie... but extremely low budget and extremely scary... my interest was piqued. I remember one reviewer coming out of a screening at Cannes or Sundance or somewhere like that and she was visibly shaking because the experience had been so scary for her.

The film didn’t exactly start the found footage phenomenon in the genre... that claim probably, if memory serves, belongs to Cannibal Holocaust... but The Blair Witch Project did, indeed, popularise the technique for horror film audiences and it’s a style that certainly hasn’t gone back out of fashion in the 17 years or so since its cinematic release. There are loads of these found footage horrors made every year, it seems to me.

Adam Wingard’s new movie slyly sidesteps the horrendously disappointing first sequel, Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, without actually contradicting events in that story, from what I can remember of it. Instead, what  he’s done is to have one of the new crew of forest explorers leading an expedition because he is the brother of the lead protagonist of The Blair Witch Project, Heather Donahue, originally played by... Heather Donahue. Yeah, I know... it seemed to be a part of the first movie’s viral campaign that the characters were indistinguishable from the actors who played them. So, following the trail of some new footage found of the incident (which makes no sense to me), Heather’s brother James takes his friends out there, to hook up with the people who found the new footage and try to find the house that Heather and the others ended up in at the conclusion of the first movie.

And then, of course, when they all start camping in the forest the first night... things start to go wrong for them.

Now, I have to say I have a lot of respect for Wingard after The Guest and so, before I go into what some people may say is a weakness of this movie, I just want to say that I had an absolutely terrifying time watching this at the cinema, as my adrenalin levels rose and fell at every shadow and scream. So, in many ways, it’s the equal of the first movie in terms of being a scary experience but...

... I’d also have to say that it’s practically a repeat of that first movie. Which, in all honesty, is exactly what I was expecting from it after seeing the trailer for both The Woods and Blair Witch, at different times. It’s all in colour this time because most of the cameras used are high tech ear cams which the actors wear themselves. They also have a drone with a camera attached to it and all kinds of other things like satellite navigation. Of course, as you would expect from a film set in the Burkkitsville Woods of the first movie, none of this stuff is working properly for very long and even watches and mobile phone alarms are shown to be alarmingly off track when it comes to giving our hapless victims any help whatsoever in somehow managing to find their way out of these woods alive.

So... yeah, it’s also a lot less subtle a movie than the first one was. In the first one, the divide and bewilder routine worked over a series of nights, on a slow build, with lots of daylight conversations highlighting the fraught victims... and that became the main narrative anchors to stabilise the audience between scares. In this one, we have the first day, the first night, what’s left of the second day after some strange, time shifting stuff, and then we’re already on the second and, what appears to be final, night of the film. So the characters spend much less time walking around the forest trying to either find their way out or looking for a lost member of their party and much more time running in blind terror from actual seen, physical attacks on the group. Well, seen in the sense that you see things moving around by themselves and hear giant footstep sounds giving chase etc.

The film also spends a lot longer on the inevitably climactic scene in the house at the end of the movie... as various characters are chased around by a, mostly, unseen terror... although Wingard has also opted for brief glimpses of the witch this time as a malevolent, supernatural (almost parody of herself) creature. The back story of her death is elaborated on earlier in the film, as the witch was tied to a tree and left exposed to the elements with weights hung from her limbs creating a makeshift rack as her punishment and execution. Here, the smartly considered “blink and you’ll miss them” moments where you get an impression of her, match the idea that she has very long, extended, spindly arms and legs as a visual echo of her original fate at the hands of the community she was at odds with. Luckily, the director and his team are smart enough to not let you get too clear a look at the witch herself and, like the rest of the movie, it’s pretty much all done with sound and constantly shifting, moving camera shots. It’s actually very effective.

The performances are what you usually get from found footage productions... very naturalistic and believable. This kind of movie making definitely seems to bring out the best, to an extent, in an actor and, if this is the kind of feel they want to create, then the cast here all do an admirable job. As does the director, who succeeded totally in making me clutch the arms of the cinema seat on this one. I think people have been a little rough on this film, judging by some of the tweets I’ve seen over the last few days. I understand how people are going to latch onto the fact that it’s almost a straight remake of the first in tone and content but... I can’t help but think that, for the first Blair Witch film in an incredibly long time, many of those same people might have complained if it was significantly different or progressive from the first one. Either way, as far as I’m concerned, Blair Witch is a big recommendation from me for all those of you who like horror movies and especially if you like the first movie in the franchise. I won’t be going into the woods alone for a while after this, I can tell you that.

End Game

Eleven Of The Most 
Powerful Movie Endings

Okay then people... look at the title of this article. That pretty much implies spoilers are going to be present, right? So you’ve been duly warned I’m going to just be discussing the final moments of these movies here. There’s no excuse for you to come moaning at me about this later on then, okay?

Proceed at your own risk...

11. Seven Samurai (1954)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Four of the seven protagonists lay dead and the surviving three look at their funeral mounds with the fallen warrior’s swords sticking up from them. The youngest of the three does not, as initially planned, go with the other two. He runs off to be with the woman he loves and to live the life of a farmer. Depending on which English translation you watch, Kambei, the leader of the seven, brilliantly played by acting legend Takashi Shimura, says “The farmers have won. Not us.”, signifying his acceptance of the throwaway nature of the ronin and their place as people outcast from society once their purpose is served. You then, perhaps, remember the armour which the farmers have “accumulated” over the years and the implications as to how they came into its possession, and realise the truth alongside these two remaining survivors.

10. Solaris (1972)
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
After his adventures on the space station, we find Kris, the main protagonist, is back on earth at his fathers house in a series of shots designed to recall the opening of the movie. However, when Kris goes inside the house we are soon aware something is very wrong because, like the small detail of not simulating buttons on the various replicas of Kris’ dead wife’s dress, rain starts to fall inside the house... not outside. We pull back miles to find that Kris’ dad’s house and surrounding land is actually replicated on Solaris. Is Kris really there or is this a copy of Kris? Indeed, was the opening of the film also set on Solaris instead of Earth and we just didn’t know (after all, the space flight is not seen and the metaphor of a long car journey is used to imply the emotional bleakness of the trip into space)? Once you start to think about this ending... you start to go down tangents and corridors you didn’t expect to travel. Welcome to... Solaris.

9. Kill List (2011)
Directed by Ben Wheatley
Okay... so this movie ending is powerful not because it takes you by surprise in any way. If you’ve made it through to the end of this sometimes harrowing movie, you will probably have figured out the dual identity of the not so mysterious “hunchback” mentioned in the final chapter title. You probably know the main protagonist is going to end up accidentally killing his wife and little boy so that, in itself, is no big deal. The real power in the ending is not the “what the heck just happened” of the last scene but the “why the heck did it happen” element of it. The sheer “this makes no sense” ingredient of this sequence which makes you want to immediately go back and watch it again to decipher the clues so you can figure out just what is going on all the way through the movie, is what makes it so damned resonant in the mind. Even though, I believe, the little breadcrumbs scattered through the movie are just one big, inscrutable tease to keep you hooked on the unanswerable puzzle element of the movie. A bit mind blowing the first time you watch it.
I reviewed Kill List here. 

8. Betty Blue 
aka 37°2 le matin (1986)
Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix
After Betty finally succumbs to her inevitable nervous breakdown, she pokes her own eye out and flips over the edge into madness and catatonia. Her lover finally finds a way to sneak into hospital and put her out of her misery by smothering her with a pillow. When he returns home he finds that Betty’s dream of him becoming a successful writer starts to pay off. While writing his next novel, he glances at his new companion, a cat, and we hear Betty talking to him in his mind, as though she has become the cat. We realise Betty will be inside his head forever.


7. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
Lots of running around as the surviving two “camera eye” kids run around the strange house, presumably belonging to the Blair Witch. As heroine Heather is jumped/knobbled by “something bad” and the camera drops to the ground, we see the other survivor, Mike, standing away from camera with his face in the corner of the room.... which goes right back to a reference in an interviewee’s report of the Blair Witch legend from right at the start of the movie. Now the film has ended, the slaughter is about to begin. This ending really seems to grab people by the throat and I remember seeing a midnight performance of the film in Barnet when it first came out, and a dazed and puzzled stranger I’d never met before came up to ask me about what the ending all meant because he couldn’t make head nor tail of it. It packs quite a wallop the first time around.

6. The Last Broadcast (1998)
Directed by Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler
An absolutely genius of a film, not least because I actually didn’t see the end coming until about 30 seconds before it actually happens. A cameraman is recruited by two local cable access TV personalities to accompany them into a forest in search of the legendary Jersey Devil... but only the new guy returns alive and is assumed to be their killer. A local movie maker starts to make a documentary film integrating the huge amount of footage, some badly deteriorated,  the two dead men recorded in the hopes of learning more about what bizarre happenings took place. The film maker talks you through things and at the end of the film, he is talking directly to the audience while a woman is computer cleaning and enhancing footage which is about to, hopefully, reveal what really happened to the two men. Then she, in the background, discovers the key to the mystery... tries to escape but, to no avail. The documentary filmmaker kills her in grizzly fashion, just like it turns out he killed the two men, dumps her body in the forest, and then calmly continues narrating his documentary. This is totally unexpected and, because of the performances, is not something you are going to forget in a hurry.

5. The Shining (1980)
Directed by Stanley Kubrik
At number 5 I’ve picked the first of two Stephen King “adaptations” for this selection. The ends of both those adaptations were pretty much added on by the filmmakers and didn’t end this way in King’s original source material.

In this version of The Shining, after going mad in the Overlook Hotel and terrorising his wife and kid, Jack Torrance is dead and frozen in the “snowed up” snowy snow. All fine and dandy, but then, right at the movies last shot, we focus on a photograph of people at the hotel from way-back-when old timey days (well, maybe it was just the twenties, I forget) while a period song is rendered seriously spooky by its juxtaposition with this chilling shot.

Why is it chilling and powerful?

Because the picture includes Jack Torrance as one of the people in the photograph? What’s going on? Has the house claimed his soul and whacked him into the photo as a keepsake? Or was he always a guest there and always fated to come back to the hotel in various incarnations? Who knows? Probably not Kubrik, I’m guessing, who successfully manages to bugger up your mind here if you think about it too hard... um... I mean, the inherent paradox will be vaguely disturbing as you ponder all its multiple possibilities and variant riffs. Either way... this movie stays with you after because of this beautifully unsettling coda.

4. The Mist (2007)
Directed by Frank Darabont
And coming right at ya, we have the other Stephen King adaptation in this list...

After being terrorised by bizarre monsters all through the novella, the main protagonist and his son drive off into The Mist in search of a possible hopeful haven from their trouble. In Frank Darabont’s movie version though, it’s a gazillion times more bleaker than that. After the main protagonist David, his son Billy and their two companions, find David and Billy’s gorily dead wife/mother who they have been trying ot get back to all movie, the four decide that there’s going to be no help coming from the impossible world-changing terror which has struck. So, they decide to end it all as they still have some rounds left in the hand pistol they brought with them. However, there are only three bullets for the four of them. David volunteers to figure something out after he’s dispatched them all and he kills all three of them, including his own son, one shot apiece. In his grief, he barrels out of the car and keeps firing empty chambers into his own head... in time to see “the cavalry” arrive in the form of the military who have rescued all of the people who were left holed up in the supermarket in which they’d spent most of the film hiding. If he’d just waited another few minutes... all of them would have been saved. The accompanying vocal wailings by Lisa Gerrard on a special film version of the Dead Can Dance track The Host Of Seraphim just emphasises the utter pointlessness and bitter tragedy of this final, haunting sequence.

3. The Wicker Man (1973)
Directed by Robin Hardy
This is actually not one of my favourite movies, although I will give it another look someday in the not so distant future in case I change my mind. Throughout the film, Edward Woodward investigates strange occurrences in a village where, it turns out, everyone is into a pagan-istic, devil worshipping style kind of groove. Woodward’s character is seized by the villagers at the end and dragged to be burned inside a large Wicker Man as the piece de resistance of their annual ritual. As he’s dragged closer to realise the danger, the audience is waiting for the obvious deus ex machina which will free our hero and allow him to punish his persecutors... but instead, he is put inside the Wicker Man and burned alive, screaming for the religious deity who has forsaken him, without intervention. End of movie! Scarifyingly powerful stuff... especially if you’re not expecting it.

2. The Great Silence (1968)
Directed by Sergio Corbucci
Well this really takes the biscuit for completely gloomy endings and was banned in a lot of countries (I think here in the UK too) for a couple of decades until it started getting screenings again. I first saw it screened under the title The Big Silence, as part of Alex Cox’s Moviedrome season on BBC2, back in the day.

The mute, title character of Silence is played by famous French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant as he tries to save the rag tag bunch of so-called “outlaws” in a small community from the evil bounty killer Loco, played by Klaus Kinski. The film is both bleak and beautiful in that it’s a snow bound Spaghetti Western with a wonderful score by Ennio Morricone, but the ending really kicks you in the gut. Silence is wounded and has fallen for the woman who has asked him to avenge her dead husband, unfairly killed by Loco. They now form a romantic bond but Loco and his men have got all the so-called outlaws, who are really the victims, tied up in the saloon in order to coax Silence out of his hiding place. Silence, our hero, goes to save the day... his new girlfriend follows him. As he approaches the saloon and he and Klaus face off for a Leone-style staring match, one of the bad guys shoots Silence through both hands so he can’t fire the snazzy automatic Mauser pistol he’s been using all through the film. After a bit more Morricone backed staring, evil Loco shoots our hero dead. The girlfriend runs into the scene to avenge him, and she is promptly shot dead too. Then, all the tied up victims in the bar are massacred by the bounty killers. The bad guys win all the way on this one and it’s a scene which stays with you a long time after your first viewing.

In recent years an alternate ending which was shot, possibly to appease some countries censors, was found. I don’t think it’s known if this ending was ever used in any territories but it deserves a brief mention because of the sheer preposterousness of what happens in this alternate take in the face of everything else that’s happened in the movie leading towards this scene. In this version, Silence is shot in the hands like before but as Klaus Kinski goes to finish him off, the “funny sheriff” played by the late, great Frank Wolff, rides in out of the blue on a horse to shoot Loco... even though he was quite definitively seen going to his death earlier in the film. Silence then also bursts into life, seemingly unaffected by the hand shooting, jumps into the saloon and kills all the bad guys. All the good guys are saved and Silence’s girlfriend undoes the bandages on his hand to reveal that he is wearing half a knight's metal gauntlett around his hand, presumably as a mini reference to the plate of metal Clint Eastwood wears under his poncho in A Fistful of Dollars, and they all live happily ever after. It goes without saying though, that if the film had been released with this silly ending, the film would not be remembered and kept alive with much the same enthusiasm that genre fans have done over the years.

If you’re not expecting that original ending... it’s a pretty powerful conclusion to a movie.

1. The Third Man (1949)
Directed by Carol Reed
And my number one pick is perhaps less “in your face” than any of my other choices... although it’s more powerful than any of the endings I’ve mentioned so far...

Harry Lime (Orson Welles) is dead and our hero Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), who has been pining over Harry’s ex-girlfriend all the movie, as played by Valli, is waiting for her as she walks down a long street away from Harry’s second funeral of the movie. As she walks towards the camera, with Cotton waiting at the side of the screen, in a long unbroken shot accompanied by Anton Karas’ beautiful zither music, we hope she will forgive Holly for shooting his old friend and her ex-lover dead, and embrace the uncertain future which Holly may be able to offer her. Instead, she completely blanks him and continues walking past both him and then the camera... a sad ending to an absolutely brilliant movie and my pick for the most powerfully moving end sequence of all time. I never knew the old Vienna...