William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. I suspect you’ll come to the same conclusion I did, that the best-kept secret in Hollywood wasn’t so much revealed tonight, as it was blurted.
If you’re going to see it, see it without watching the trailer, and then watch the trailer right afterwards. You see a whole lot of images of what’s about to happen in the trailer, but without any of the suspenseful craftsmanship that would make those moments effectively scary.īlair Witch arrives in theaters on September 16, 2016. This preview doesn’t lay out the whole plot, but I think you’ll agree that, once you’ve finally watched Blair Witch, it shows way too much of “the good stuff,” and in a way that doesn’t represent the actual film that Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett made.
I’ve often argued that any information the studio is comfortable putting in a trailer cannot reasonably be called a spoiler, but that’s not the case this time. It’s online right now. But the thing is, you can’t unsee it afterwards. Obviously, you can still watch the trailer if you want to. And familiarity just doesn’t go hand-in-hand with terror (unless you lead a particularly terrifying day-to-day existence, at any rate). Audiences who go into Blair Witch having seen the new trailer will already be familiar with the film’s most disturbing shots and set pieces. But when the movie you’re marketing isn’t consistently flashy, and you put a very large percentage of the big scares in the trailer anyway, then you’re actively doing the movie a disservice. Marketing materials usually have to rely on flash to get their point across, as quickly and as effectively as possible. Honestly I’m actually rather sympathetic to the marketing team. It makes you wonder why, if director Adam Wingard ( You're Next, The Guest) had enough skill to generate chills, he couldn't have made a smart, emotionally engaging movie.Lionsgate Also: Comic-Con 2016 Review | The (Blair) Witch is Back!īut the Blair Witch trailer doesn’t work that way. The shaky-cam footage can get tiresome, but the film's stark lighting, spooky woods, and even spookier cabin at the climax are actually, genuinely hair-raising, relying more on goosebumps than on jump-scares. Ideas like a flying drone camera and the two locals initially faking some scares are dropped or never explored they seem more like desperate filler than actual content. The characters' reason for going into the woods is ridiculous, and the friends are selfish and treat each other callously. Blair Witch has more in common with the rushed, boneheaded Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) than it does with the crafty, groundbreaking original.
As it grows more unreal, this "threequel" to the original Blair Witch Project becomes intensely scary, but it's undone by a weak set-up and irritatingly dumb, shallow characters.
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