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Kin
Nov 4, 2003

Sometimes, in a city this dirty, you need a real hero.

MisterBibs posted:

I don't get that premise. Regardless of how ambiguous films like this try to paint their goings-on. unless the movie actively and blatantly provides another explanation for the events, the movie about a supernatural thing is going to have the supernatural thing being true and real.

Take the first film. Three kids go into the woods and get lost. Okay, that's realistic (people just can't walk in straight lines after all) but the minute piles of rocks are cropping outside of their camp (that nobody knows about), their tent gets fluffed up with the sounds of giggling kids, they walk into a house that literally is not supposed to exist, the whole ambiguity goes out the window. Not to mention the whole "we found pieces of our friend and now we're hearing him in random places begging for help" thing, or tie-in stuff explains that the footage for the film was found surrounded by dirt that has been unmolested for so long that there's a layer of ash from when they burned down Rustin Par's house fifty years previously*.

In the first film, Healther undercuts the notion that there's a mundane explanation for all of this - "Nobody knows we're out here, though." The second movie ramps up faster because it's hinted that the Blair Witch targets people who know too much about her and what she's done. The trip is sponsored on someone who was related to Healther, Hoax Duo gets hit the hardest, and the first dude to be murdered was a guy who tromped in her forest after the events of the first film.

* I know, outside footage, but what made BWP so memorable was how far they pushed the 'this was real' angle.

The difference is the first film heavily implied something supernatural was doing all of that. You never actually saw anything that couldn't have been done by some dude with sneakers and that sucks you in visually as you're watching it. It's like, "yeah, ok, a pile of rocks isn't an impossible thing to happen practically, i'll buy that"; "oh their buddy has vanished, we/they didn't see him leave, ok, that's realistic", "they found a bag of teeth? Yeah, that's hosed up but could happen".

This one chucks that all out the window and you have: flying tents, slenderman witches, pretzel bodies, tree topplers, a never rising sun, vanishing corner ghost buddy, auto close doors, spooky witch lady. They might as well have just outright gone and CGI'd a giant witch on a broomstick for all the suspension of disbelief it had left towards the end of the film.

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MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Kin posted:

The difference is the first film heavily implied something supernatural was doing all of that. You never actually saw anything that couldn't have been done by some dude with sneakers and that sucks you in visually as you're watching it.

There's no implication, there's flat out poo poo That Should Not Be going on. The movie ends with two of the people we've been following stumbling upon a house that no longer exists, hearing the third person (whose bits and pieces we see wrapped up in his clothing) calling them from upstairs, then downstairs. We're told that most people in Burkittsville don't believe the myths, but the ones that do do not go into the woods, and nothing in the film that a viewer can hang their hat on that presumes the existence of some dude with sneakers.

You can have ambiguous moments in a movie, but you can't have the ambiguity itself be ambiguous. Either you set up the potential for events to be ambiguous early on, or you don't.

It's why its-all-just-a-dream endings are so derided as copouts, because there's no seeding-the-clouds that poo poo might not be what we think it is. Interestingly enough, Blair Witch did this better than the original film, with having the first Shocking Stuff be revealed as a hoax early on.

Yoshifan823
Feb 19, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
Dope movie. Sound design was fantastic, and especially once they got into the house, it was gorgeous. There were some shots that looked straight out of a black and white haunted house film. I think the inclusion of the drone camera was kinda goofy, and the payoff wasn't really worth the buildup. I did like the humor in the first act as well. Peter giving a look to his buddy after looking at the confederate flag hanging in the redneck's living room was hilarious, even if I was the only person in the theater who laughed.

Honestly, I know that the Blair Witch legacy is all about found footage and fake-documentary trappings, but the best parts of this movie were all during the ear-cam scenes, which makes me think they should have just gone full First Person Horror (though that would have taken away the cool audio flourishes and static that really add to the experience). The documentary angle was really only good for making it a Blair Witch movie and for the joke that both the hicks and the main girl were making documentaries.

One question that I suspected, but couldn't confirm: Was the clip that the redneck guy uploaded a clip of the events of the movie? The witch is clearly able to gently caress with time, and Lisa pointed out that his tapes were the same as the one that he found (and it's obvious that he didn't fake the video), it occurred to me as I was leaving the theater that the two looked remarkably similar.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Yoshifan823 posted:

One question that I suspected, but couldn't confirm: Was the clip that the redneck guy uploaded a clip of the events of the movie? The witch is clearly able to gently caress with time, and Lisa pointed out that his tapes were the same as the one that he found (and it's obvious that he didn't fake the video), it occurred to me as I was leaving the theater that the two looked remarkably similar.

Yup. The Witch left a tape that was a few seconds of events that would later happen, knowing Hoax Dude would find and upload it, knowing that Heather's Brother would pick it up on a search alert, which would entice him and his friends to go to the woods and film the events of the movie, which the Witch would remove most of and leave a clip of it for Hoax Dude to find and upload..

Should've brought an older Scottish dude with a buzzing electronic device.

f#a#
Sep 6, 2004

I can't promise it will live up to the hype, but I tried my best.
As a horror fanatic, it was competent and well-done, but the phrase "missed potential" kept on running through my head the deeper we got into the movie. Moment to moment, it was very effective, but taken as a whole, they could have done so much more with the more interesting and unique elements of the movie (specifically the drone, and the neverending night that worsened into a storm--like, make that storm a torrential downpour of supernatural proportions!). On the one hand, the claustrophia-induced sequence was done way better than the previous contender of The Descent, but on the other, the brief glimpses we got of the Witch was nothing more than a witch from Left 4 Dead, tit for tat, pun intended.

The calculated, mainstream nature of it clearly had an effect on my opening night's audience (which is part of the reason I love seeing horror movies), and I love Wingard's other work. But the original had this punk indie feel while this was clearly produced for a mass audience. All in all, it was a decent adaptation of the original with perhaps too many nods to more contemporary horror assets.

At least the token black couple gave us some well-earned comedic relief.

ps it was indeed better than Book of Shadows, although that movie was just trying something completely different, and actually i am going to watch that now and provide a trip report some time

f#a# fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Sep 17, 2016

The Saddest Rhino
Apr 29, 2009

Put it all together.
Solve the world.
One conversation at a time.



Yoshifan823 posted:


One question that I suspected, but couldn't confirm: Was the clip that the redneck guy uploaded a clip of the events of the movie? The witch is clearly able to gently caress with time, and Lisa pointed out that his tapes were the same as the one that he found (and it's obvious that he didn't fake the video), it occurred to me as I was leaving the theater that the two looked remarkably similar.

yes, it's when Lisa has just left the tunnels under the basement hatch after the Lane death, when she is running upstairs there's a quick shot of her looking at the mirror. That's the same poo poo which James was rewinding to in the first scene which he thinks is Heather.

One part I'm uncertain is what happened when Lisa and James are separated from Ashley. What were the twists and turns etc with the loud noises before James told Lisa to breathe and calm down? I was hoping something loving weird like they were suspended in the air by the witch happened, but it looked like Lisa was just panicking?

Also I agree the sound design is top notch other than maybe the more inconsequential jump scare stingers. By the third time when hoaxer girl returned and turned around it has kinda lost its impact but I'm glad everything after Ashley's fall from the tree became a spectacular watch, documentary meta narrative be damned. The house sequence is one of the best horror stuff I've seen this year.

I was disappointed that Ashley didn't get a The Thing storyline with whatever the gently caress was stuck in her leg, especially when it's obvious she's the city girl through and through ("yes, I seriously just had a pedicure. ") and the juxtaposition of her being the most affected by the Woods would make the most sense horror movie wise. Her death was more whimper than scream.

CelticPredator
Oct 11, 2013
🍀👽🆚🪖🏋

It's the Aliens to Blair Witch Project's Alien. It has to be basically an action movie.

Ehud
Sep 19, 2003

football.

The thought of being stuck in the woods at night for eternity with a horrible witch stalking you is actually pretty terrifying.

Mr. Boogie
Apr 1, 2013

Is a meat patty something or nothing?
What the gently caress was up with the constant roaring and stomping that made it sound like the Smoke Monster was just around the corner? Why is the Blair Witch suddenly making all these crazy rear end dinosaur noises all the time when nothing like that ever happened in the original? The most we heard in that movie was sticks breaking and kids laughing, and now loving tents are being thrown through the air while we hear what legit sounds like a giant creature walking around? And why did the "it's always night and the sun never comes up" poo poo never happen in the first movie? I know there's some weird time travel poo poo going on in the original since they come upon the house at the end, but did the Blair Witch just lose any sense of subtly over the years? Now she's going balls out crazy and sending the characters through time on their second night there? Why did she gain all these loving insane abilities between films? It felt like these characters were experiencing a completely different witch with completely different powers in a completely different location. Weird movie.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Mr. Boogie posted:

What the gently caress was up with the constant roaring and stomping that made it sound like the Smoke Monster was just around the corner? Why is the Blair Witch suddenly making all these crazy rear end dinosaur noises all the time when nothing like that ever happened in the original? The most we heard in that movie was sticks breaking and kids laughing, and now loving tents are being thrown through the air while we hear what legit sounds like a giant creature walking around? And why did the "it's always night and the sun never comes up" poo poo never happen in the first movie? I know there's some weird time travel poo poo going on in the original since they come upon the house at the end, but did the Blair Witch just lose any sense of subtly over the years? Now she's going balls out crazy and sending the characters through time on their second night there? Why did she gain all these loving insane abilities between films? It felt like these characters were experiencing a completely different witch with completely different powers in a completely different location. Weird movie.

The people in the first movie were warned (the piles of rocks), but were given the slow torture when they wouldn't leave and started disturbing people.

The people in the second movie are (generally) those most responsible for thousands of people tromping around her woods. People who constantly bring her up, people who want to make films about her (again), and people who are directly related to someone in the first film.

She has a personal interest in making these specific people suffer.

Grem
Mar 29, 2004

It's how her species communicates

The tree from before they went into the house is the same as when they first went into the woods, right?

Caros
May 14, 2008

Grem posted:

The tree from before they went into the house is the same as when they first went into the woods, right?

Yeah, it's one of the better 'oh we are so totally hosed' moments in the film.

Shunkymonky
Sep 10, 2006
'sup
I can understand why some people might be lovely at the film since it just uses the lore of the Blair Witch story, not really respecting the film's original intent. But I went in just wanting a great roller coaster horror ride and I loving loved it. Only thing I got annoyed with in the last third was the under the house tunnels sequence, like it was claustrophobic but it didn't really seem to have a purpose? Did Laine(?) hide her down there as a sacrifice or to hide her?

As I walked out of the theatre though an old man started talking to me "How poo poo was that? All you could see was flashlight!" So no idea what he was expecting.

poptart_fairy
Apr 8, 2009

by R. Guyovich
I really enjoyed the film up until the point you started seeing the witch in a bit more detail. Something about her design suddenly brought back a rush of memories from the nightmares I had as a kid, and my panic induced laughter just turned into outright panic. My partner said he felt my hand go completely cold from that point. :saddowns:

Was especially frustrating as out of all the goddamn horror movies I've seen lately it's the only one to provoke that kind of reaction out of me.

Drewsky
Dec 29, 2010

That just sounds like it worked really well for you.

Tenzarin
Jul 24, 2007
.
Taco Defender
The time of the witch is here, they are remaking Hocus Pocus with Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Kate McKinnon while consisting of at least 200%-300% more queef jokes.

Huzanko
Aug 4, 2015

by FactsAreUseless

Mr. Boogie posted:

What the gently caress was up with the constant roaring and stomping that made it sound like the Smoke Monster was just around the corner? Why is the Blair Witch suddenly making all these crazy rear end dinosaur noises all the time when nothing like that ever happened in the original? The most we heard in that movie was sticks breaking and kids laughing, and now loving tents are being thrown through the air while we hear what legit sounds like a giant creature walking around? And why did the "it's always night and the sun never comes up" poo poo never happen in the first movie? I know there's some weird time travel poo poo going on in the original since they come upon the house at the end, but did the Blair Witch just lose any sense of subtly over the years? Now she's going balls out crazy and sending the characters through time on their second night there? Why did she gain all these loving insane abilities between films? It felt like these characters were experiencing a completely different witch with completely different powers in a completely different location. Weird movie.

Because this movie has a bigger budget. There is no other reason.

henpod
Mar 7, 2008

Sir, we have located the Bioweapon.
College Slice
The first movie is still probably the one film that scared me the most. Something about the forest in the dark, getting lost and slowly insane really worked.

This movie was pretty good! I liked it and definitely had fun. My girlfriend had her hands in front of her eyes most of the time from fear.

I really liked how many times we had to endure them open up the tents, not know what was out there. Every time they did that i got tense as gently caress, wondering what was out there waiting for them. The drone was a wasted opportunity, the black couple were pretty boring and a few too many jump scares, especially people just suddenly showing up and making us jump.

I loved the fact the other two were on a different time than the main group and how the girl at the beginning was actually the main chick. Stompy dinosaur noises were pretty effective and scary and the house scene was great. I didnt get a good look at the witch because my girlfriend squeezed my arm so hard i dropped my popcorn.


So yeah, good movie if you're not a huge cynic.

Sierra Nevadan
Nov 1, 2010

I liked this movie a lot, but felt the first one was better/scarier. I did like most of the lore expansion though. I go camping/backpacking a lot by myself so this spooks me out more than most people I guess.

I thought the ending was pretty bad though. Especially the shots of naked, albino, hairless Slender Man. As soon as they brought up the 'well she was actually tied to a tree with weights on her limbs' I knew they were going to do some slender man poo poo. Felt it would be better with no direct shots of the witch.

The lame jump scares/random loud noises were annoying. After the first few, people in my theater started to be like 'what the gently caress.'

I also wonder if all the subliminal flashes in the video added up to anything.

Sierra Nevadan fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Sep 18, 2016

Abundant Atrophy
Nov 3, 2012

Shunkymonky posted:

Only thing I got annoyed with in the last third was the under the house tunnels sequence, like it was claustrophobic but it didn't really seem to have a purpose? Did Laine(?) hide her down there as a sacrifice or to hide her?


My friend and I would have sworn the movie was about to end like Last Sacrament right there.

I wanted to like it, and while I had fun with my group of 4 in an empty theater, I wasn't taken with it. It's not like there were glaring plot holes, but the drone, Ashley, and the stick figures not going anywhere disappointed me, honestly. My friend adored it as the scariest thing, so maybe I'll like it on a second watch.

Thundercracker
Jun 25, 2004

Proudly serving the Ruinous Powers since as a veteran of the long war.
College Slice
I liked this movie better when it was named Grave Encounters 2. Just kidding. Grave Encounters 2 was a much better movie. I seriously wonder if Wingard actually even watched the original Blair Witch Project. It's like a 180 version of that for people with attention deficit disorder.

There's literally, I'm pretty sure, zero jump scares in the original and this movie is just full of dumb jump scares. And the Witch seems to have trained in a hyperbolic chamber for 20 years considering her subtle powers of misdirection in the original versus her leet hacking, telekinesis, and wall-running skills in this one.

I'm sorry if I come off a bit harsh, but the original Blair Witch's positive qualities aren't exactly hidden. Anyone watching it knows exactly what it was trying to do, and it largely succeeds. This one seems like they threw together all the biggest cliches of the last decade of found footage movies and slapped the Blair Witch title on it.

Grave Encounters 2 (a terrible movie) also did the time loop thing as well.

Hibernator
Aug 14, 2011

Overall I dug the flick - I think it's well-made and I definitely got tense during the finale. But when I think about it the feeling that keeps coming to forefront is one of mild disappointment. I guess I was just hoping for something spectacular, which I know is a lot to ask of a film, but with the pedigree of the filmmakers and the weight of the Blair Witch I just felt like this needed to be something really special. Either push the techniques used in the original film, or really experiment with the form of found footage to give us something we haven't seen before.

There are elements of this film that do lean in that direction, and those are my favorite parts. Things like the time fuckery, the sound design, the broken stickman scene, etc. But I feel like they don't go whole-hog with any of them. They introduce a lot of really cool ideas but I don't feel like they truly play them out and pay them off as well as they could.

The standout sequence in the film is I think the tunnel scene. That's a really well set-up sequence. Things are already chaotic. She's got only one way to go. You don't trust what's in front of her or behind her, and the way they capture it from both angles is exciting. With every new cut you're expecting something horrible to happen. Good stuff.

But there are a lot more things that don't really follow through as well. While I thought the exposition was a little clunky, I really liked the sorta Medusa-fight element to the finale with her looking behind herself with the camera. That's such a cool idea that I haven't seen much in FF films. But that moment only lasts like 30 seconds before she falls for the exact same trick James did only a minute prior. I feel like there's an entire sequence to be mined from that idea, and they kinda ditch it right away.

Or another example would be the way the woods gently caress with your perceptions. All that crazy sound design of the trees crunching and coming down is awesome, but we only ever hear it at night or in their tents. What if that stuff happened during the day too? What if you could hear all this stuff happening right next to you but could see that there was nothing there? Your senses at war with each other. That would be really creepy.

Anyway, I think I'll be a little warmer to the film on a rewatch, and enjoy it more for the thrills that it delivers rather than thinking about what might have been.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.
Weirdest thing about this movie to me is why they didn't sit on the release and let it out closer to Halloween. Having said that, this thread convinced me and I'm about to go smoke a bowl, order a slice and check out a matinee. I'm overdue to got to the cinema.

poptart_fairy
Apr 8, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Drewsky posted:

That just sounds like it worked really well for you.

Oh sure, it just caught me off-guard that I had such a visceral reaction to the film. Haven't had a panic attack in years and this is what sets me off for gently caress's sake. :v:

Emissary666
Sep 6, 2010

Just saw Blair Witch. I get up from my seat going, "That was great!" and by the time I leave the building I'm thinking "That was horribly disappointing." I am not a big fan of The Blair Witch Project, but I respect it for what it did for the horror and found footage genres, and Blair Witch feels like Wingard completely missed the point of what made the first movie a hit. The mystery and ambiguity of the first film are absent. It is a good horror movie, but a horrible sequel to the original film; Book of Shadows had a better understanding of the first film, for all its flaws, it kept some degree of ambiguity as to just how much supernatural stuff was going on as well as not featuring The Rake/Slenderman.

The Vosgian Beast
Aug 13, 2011

Business is slow
People keep saying Slenderman but I thought the witch looked more like a huge Gollum from LOTR

Kin
Nov 4, 2003

Sometimes, in a city this dirty, you need a real hero.

MisterBibs posted:

There's no implication, there's flat out poo poo That Should Not Be going on. The movie ends with two of the people we've been following stumbling upon a house that no longer exists, hearing the third person (whose bits and pieces we see wrapped up in his clothing) calling them from upstairs, then downstairs. We're told that most people in Burkittsville don't believe the myths, but the ones that do do not go into the woods, and nothing in the film that a viewer can hang their hat on that presumes the existence of some dude with sneakers.

You can have ambiguous moments in a movie, but you can't have the ambiguity itself be ambiguous. Either you set up the potential for events to be ambiguous early on, or you don't.

It's why its-all-just-a-dream endings are so derided as copouts, because there's no seeding-the-clouds that poo poo might not be what we think it is. Interestingly enough, Blair Witch did this better than the original film, with having the first Shocking Stuff be revealed as a hoax early on.

I think you've missed both my point and what makes the original so genuinely unnerving to watch.

You can go into the first one 100% sceptical and come out thinking something loving creepy was going on but not supernatural. Someone, not something was messing with them.

That gave you a feeling which would stop you from going camping in the woods because all it would take is someone to hide in a bush after leaving out some weird twigs/stones to freak you out.

The new one doesn't instil that same anxiety because you know there aren't slendermen in the real world, you know that the sun's going to come up, you know there aren't invisible stompy tree toppling monsters.

And that's why it doesn't work in a found footage film because the core premise of that type of film is its ability to suspend disbelief.

Kin fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Sep 19, 2016

Emissary666
Sep 6, 2010

Kin posted:

You can go into the first one 100% sceptical and come out thinking something loving creepy was going on but not supernatural. Someone, not something was messing with them.

This is an accurate description of the making of the first film. The actors had no idea what was going to happen or when and all the stuff that happened was the result of the filmmakers just going out in the middle of the night to mess with them.

Mike N Eich
Jan 27, 2007

This might just be the year

Yoshifan823 posted:

Dope movie. Sound design was fantastic, and especially once they got into the house, it was gorgeous.

I actually thought the sound design was awful and distracting. It was like taken from a video game or something - every step and creak was so absurdly loud it didn't feel accurate or real at all. A person climbs a tree and it sounds like they're hacking logs of wood together.

Black Baby Goku
Apr 2, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
It was meh. That's about all you can say.

Ehud
Sep 19, 2003

football.

I had mixed feelings about the movie. Somebody said that this is the "Aliens" to Blair Witch Project's "Alien" and that is probably the best description. It's balls to the walls with the supernatural elements and doesn't leave any room for interpretation.

I thought that it would have been interesting to keep going with the Lane and Talia might be behind the whole thing angle. They started down that road and I got excited about the premise, but they confirmed there is an actual witch fairly early on.

toiletbrush
May 17, 2010

Kin posted:

And that's why it doesn't work in a found footage film because the core premise of that type of film is its ability to suspend disbelief.
I really, really want to see this film because I loved the original, but really don't want to see it because the trailers made it really obvious this film has a ton of unambiguously supernatural stuff it in, and with a couple of exceptions stuff like that tends to snap me out of a movie. Plus with the comments in here it sounds kinda cliched, derivative and lazy, which is a shame, because...

Jst0rm posted:

hehehe... Give it a bit more time guys. All will be revealed.
Is this film a run of the mill jump-scare horror or does it actually do something new with the genre?

Ehud
Sep 19, 2003

football.

toiletbrush posted:

Is this film a run of the mill jump-scare horror or does it actually do something new with the genre?

There is nothing new about it that I can think of, but the last 30 minutes are very frantic and stressful and I enjoyed that.

Quote-Unquote
Oct 22, 2002



toiletbrush posted:

Is this film a run of the mill jump-scare horror or does it actually do something new with the genre?

There are a few dumb jump scares, almost all of which are from someone approaching somebody else without announcing their presence and then the person suddenly shrieking when they realise someone is nearby. I liked the little bit of fourth-wall breaking where a character openly says "Will everyone please stop doing that?!" and then everything goes loving crazy.

I really like the time/space fuckery in this movie, but I generally love stuff like that (Grave Encounters, The Shining, House of Leaves) and it genuinely creeps me out. And the last 20 minutes or so are some of the most intense scenes I've seen in a horror movie since Evidence (the found footage one from 2012, not the 2013 murder mystery thingy). It's nothing new, but it took a whole bunch of stuff from films that I already liked and mashed it together into some gloriously tense insanity.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Kin posted:

The difference is the first film heavily implied something supernatural was doing all of that. You never actually saw anything that couldn't have been done by some dude with sneakers and that sucks you in visually as you're watching it. It's like, "yeah, ok, a pile of rocks isn't an impossible thing to happen practically, i'll buy that"; "oh their buddy has vanished, we/they didn't see him leave, ok, that's realistic", "they found a bag of teeth? Yeah, that's hosed up but could happen".

This one chucks that all out the window and you have: flying tents, slenderman witches, pretzel bodies, tree topplers, a never rising sun, vanishing corner ghost buddy, auto s. close doors, spooky witch lady. They might as well have just outright gone and CGI'd a giant witch on a broomstick for all the suspension of disbelief it had left towards the end of the film.

While you're not wrong about things being different, very little in this film is strictly impossible either.

Blair Witch has always been about how 'normal people' can be led to believe in the supernatural. The five original films are Hound Of The Baskervilles murder-mysteries, where the only actual supernatural claim is some ancient aliens bullshit from Curse Of The Blair Witch ("no human being could pile dirt like this!"). Not coincidentally, the writer on this film discarded all previous 'canon' except for Curse.

But the implicit point of all the Blair Witch films is still that every person making a documentary will end up with a different witch. Always a witch because that's what they're primed to expect, and always different because there is no actual witch. 'Witch' is just the name given to anything traumatic or inexplicable - the blank spots in the narrative. (The VVitch is basically an unofficial Blair Witch prequel, given its basis in historical documents, and how the characters conjure up a witch to explain away all the problems in their lives.)

This particular film just amps up the conspiracy-nut side of things by introducing Sasquatch and alien abduction imagery into the mix - but that's still ambiguous in the same way that 'real' Sasquatch evidence is. The creature is this blurry tree-looking thing that, whenever we pan back to where it came from, is revealed to be just branches or roots. When the pink-haired girl is killed, it's ambiguous as to whether she was struck or not. That's the logic this film is working with: each individual event is only slightly exaggerated beyond plausibility. So, shoving a girl causes her spine to break. The footage at the start of the film is not just similar but identical. Noises are amplified, and so-on. And that has a cumulative effect.

But you still need to go back to the characters to see why this is happening - beginning with the clear incestuous undertone to James' search for Heather. Like the entire point of the movie is that he's chasing this image of his sister, and this woman literally turns out to be his love interest(?). James is clearly uncomfortable with Lisa's sexuality because of the resemblance, covering up her bare legs and so-on. And that's unavoidably linked to the very ending, where he kills her. It's his voice. All the stuff about witches and time-travel is just there to literalize this conflict.

Mike N Eich
Jan 27, 2007

This might just be the year

SuperMechagodzilla posted:



But you still need to go back to the characters to see why this is happening - beginning with the clear incestuous undertone to James' search for Heather. Like the entire point of the movie is that he's chasing this image of his sister, and this woman literally turns out to be his love interest(?). James is clearly uncomfortable with Lisa's sexuality because of the resemblance, covering up her bare legs and so-on. And that's unavoidably linked to the very ending, where he kills her. It's his voice. All the stuff about witches and time-travel is just there to literalize this conflict.

Ah, thats a neat touch - I definitely picked up on the unconsummated sexual tension, didn't pick up on this. Good stuff. (Why does James care so much about a sister he hasn't seen since he was 4 years old? He would barely know her. Project a ton of sexual baggage onto her.)

Stan Taylor
Oct 13, 2013

Touched Fuzzy, Got Dizzy
Caught it Friday night and I hate to admit I'm pretty disappointed in it. It felt like they rushed the initial slowly losing sanity bits and wasted some potential there. The whole thing felt like it could have benefited from some breathing room. There were some really creepy bits (twig snap, "you look exactly how I remember you") but coming off of Wingard last two movies it feels really boring.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Kin posted:

You can go into the first one 100% sceptical and come out thinking something loving creepy was going on but not supernatural. Someone, not something was messing with them.

I don't understand how you can come out of the first one and not understand that something supernatural happened. There's no evidence that anyone went out there to gently caress with the kids; if anything they make it clear that the people of the town wouldn't do it. Either they don't believe in the Blair Witch, or they do believe and aren't about to start poking the Witch's backside.

A bunch of rednecks can't build a house that was burned down 50 years prior, or make someone's mechanical compass not work. When a movie has the word Witch in the title, and you don't see people being the culprit, there's a loving Witch in the movie.

Unrelated, does anyone know the URL for the original Blair Witch thread?

Jst0rm
Sep 16, 2012
Grimey Drawer

toiletbrush posted:

I really, really want to see this film because I loved the original, but really don't want to see it because the trailers made it really obvious this film has a ton of unambiguously supernatural stuff it in, and with a couple of exceptions stuff like that tends to snap me out of a movie. Plus with the comments in here it sounds kinda cliched, derivative and lazy, which is a shame, because...

Is this film a run of the mill jump-scare horror or does it actually do something new with the genre?

plenty of people have seen it. Ill let them respond to that question. We got to let it go into the wild and what will be will be. These things live on their own. 2nd place at the box office isnt so bad. 15 mill opening weekend world wide? I know money doesnt mean something is popular or good but yeah. I think that it turned out more enjoyable for people who haven't seen the first one or didnt have certain hang ups about the methods of the first one. There is no way we were gonna bring in 250 million from this. Its a different world. Nobody going in was going to think this was real.

Anyways my favorite review is this one lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcSI613_XqE

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CelticPredator
Oct 11, 2013
🍀👽🆚🪖🏋

MisterBibs posted:

I don't understand how you can come out of the first one and not understand that something supernatural happened. There's no evidence that anyone went out there to gently caress with the kids; if anything they make it clear that the people of the town wouldn't do it. Either they don't believe in the Blair Witch, or they do believe and aren't about to start poking the Witch's backside.

A bunch of rednecks can't build a house that was burned down 50 years prior, or make someone's mechanical compass not work. When a movie has the word Witch in the title, and you don't see people being the culprit, there's a loving Witch in the movie.

Unrelated, does anyone know the URL for the original Blair Witch thread?

There's no evidence that a bunch of hillbillies didn't gently caress with them either. Or Josh might've been loving with them. You don't know! You will never know! It's up to you! You believe it's a witch? Awesome! You believe it's an Alien? gently caress why not! There's no answer and thats why TBWP owns.

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