BEFORE: Conan O'Brien AND Andy Richter carry over from "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On", and you can see why I chose that film to be my lead-in to the horror chain, it's because THIS film ended up on one end of the chain, and, like, how can I get HERE? These two talk show staples provided an easy in, although I really only needed one of them, they do kind of come as a pair. Now, here are the planned links for the rest of October: Jeffrey Donovan, Richard Brake, Justin Long, Ray Wise, Adrienne Barbeau, Stephen King, Lois Chiles, Genevieve Bujold, Jeremy Irons, Alden Ehrenreich, Keri Russell, J.K. Simmons, Bokeem Woodbine, Zoie Palmer, Robert De Niro, Scarlett Johansson, Frank Welker and Michael Madsen/Marg Helgenberger.
I know what you're thinking, some of those actors just DO NOT sound like they were in horror movies, but they were - it's just a question of WHICH horror movies they were in, because I've put together a mix here of new movies and some classic films from the 1970s and 1980s that I never got around to watching when I was a kid, or since then, and it's been quite a while since I was a kid. I was such a fragile child that I avoided horror movies for a very long time - I wasn't allowed to watch most of them, so that made it quite easy to avoid them. I didn't really start watching them full-force every October until I started this blog in 2009, and I've been playing catch-up ever since. The list of horror films that I still have NOT seen is still quite extensive, even after 15 years of doing this. But let me clear these particular 25 films off the list, because they do form a chain, and then I can think about what franchises I still would like to add to the list for next year. I'd love to do a Bruce Campbell mini-chain, for example, but it just didn't fit into my plans this year.
Tonight's film is a great example, sure, I've seen "The Blair Witch Project", back in 1999 everybody just had to watch it, because it had so much buzz. It kicked off that whole "found footage" style of horror movies, which became a genre all to itself, to the point where some people were convinced the film was REAL, as if those three teens were non-actors who would go into the woods with a three camera set-up, so they could constantly film their own reaction shots. Give me a break. Horror fans can be so gullible.
But, did I ever see the sequel? I know I haven't seen the 2016 remake, and this doesn't link to that, and I wasn't able to find another way to link to that, so that's got to stay on the list a bit longer, apparently. But first let's scratch the sequel film from 2000 off the list.
THE PLOT: A group of tourists arrives in Burkittsville, MD after seeing "The Blair Witch Project" to explore they mythology and phenomenon, only to come face to face with their own neuroses and possibly the witch herself.
AFTER: If you remember the original "Blair Witch Project" movie, three teens went into the cursed Maryland woods with a very shaky camera (because they apparently forgot their tripod or steadi-cam harness) to investigate the legend of the Blair Witch, who abducted kids and made them stand in the corner or something before she killed them. Yeah, the witch must have been a grade-school teacher before, I guess - really? That's the fear? Being made to stand in the corner? Anyway, they interview some local people about the legend and then they camp out in the cursed woods - like, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? - and after some very stupid sequences where they all get scared by little sculptures made from twigs, one gets kidnapped and then - well, nobody really knows what happened to them next, because it's impossible from the amateur shaki-cam to tell exactly what happened in the end, but it scared the crap out of some people in a way that it couldn't have if professional cameramen had been used. And the film footage is SUPPOSEDLY their "lost" footage after it was "found", but that's not possible, because there are shots in the film of all three of them so, umm, who's running the camera in those shots? Just saying.
Eventually people wised up (OK, well, some of them did) and realize that the film couldn't possibly have been all "found" footage, so therefore there was another camera person, and therefore those teens were actors, and oh, yeah, witches aren't real and they don't make you stand in the corner. Really, I'm still pumped by getting that "goof" from "80 for Brady" published on the IMDB page, I should keep it going and post a "goof" for this film that just says "witches aren't real" and another one for "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" that just reads "snails can't talk". I could really become a real pain in the ass with this - but the truth is that we hold animated films and horror films to a different standard, we allow for these breaks in reality because we want to be entertained or scared, and that becomes more difficult the more we impose reality on to the films we're watching. It's the "suspension of disbelief" that allows us (OK, most of us) to shut down the skeptical side of our brains and just enjoy the ride. But I usually can't do that, I know all films are fictional and therefore B.S. and I can't just switch that off. That kind of goes double for horror films - but it was the BELIEF that the first "Blair Witch" movie was real that made people so scared.
For the sequel, a title card at the start of the film lets us know that this film is a re-enactment, with actors, but it's based on a real story (even though it isn't) but at least now we can stop wondering how they had a camera outside the van aimed through the windshield at the character driving. Or how the omniscient camera always seemed to know who to cut to before they said their next line - see, the language of film is so ingrained in us now that most of the time we don't even THINK about this stuff while we're watching a movie, we just let the pictures go by and let the story play out without thinking about, "Well, damn, how did they get THAT shot?" but I always do. I was thinking during "80 for Brady" about how great those actresses were, for cheering at the Super Bowl taking place, when they weren't really watching a football game at all. Damn, that's some fine acting!
While I'm drawing comparisons, this movie's plot is similarly all over the place - so in some ways it's the "80 for Brady" of horror films, in that it can't seem to keep its own story straight. The van has a dented fender, no wait, the van got totalled, no the van is fine, wait now the van blew up. WHICH IS IT? Damn, it's the Super Bowl tickets all over again! Good luck trying to figure out who the killer is, too, I just watch this film and I have no idea. The excessive jumping around in time doesn't help, because Jeff is seen in an insane asylum, then he's being interviewed by the police and talking about being in the hospital a year ago, so is that the mental hospital, which would place those scenes in the past, or is he put in the mental hospital AFTER the police arrest him, which would place those scenes in the future? Honestly, I have no idea.
It's ironic because there are missing hours in the group's found footage, the film seems to skip ahead two hours during the night, and the overall story skips around in time, also - to the point of making impossible to re-create a coherent chain of events. Ugh, I hate that - and I hate that I have to go to Wikipedia right after I watch a movie to learn what exactly happened in the film I just watched. Why does everything need to be so obtuse?
Similarly, Tristen is pregnant when the group is out in the woods, but then she has a miscarriage, and she goes to the hospital - she's out like the next day and she seems fine, but does that make sense? Or do the scenes which follow, back at Jeff's house, take place at a totally different time? And then Jeff makes reference during his interview by the police about it being Tristen's blood in the van, so was that from the trip to the hospital or from another incident? Can anybody explain all of this? No, of course not, because it's a story that never happened and it doesn't need to be coherent, it just has to have a lot of wacky and scary shit going down. OK, gonna read the whole plot breakdown now so I can understand what happened...
OK, so as best I can determine, the group blacked out while they were camping on the site where the house of the Blair Witch (as seen in the previous film) used to be. There's a giant scary tree where the living room used to be, which makes no sense but is still kind of spooky. The five campers get high and then black out, and wake up with no memory of the previous six hours - so far this all makes logical sense, I mean maybe their pot was laced with something stronger and they don't remember what happened. But then they find the camera's VHS tapes under the house (where the "found" footage was found last time) and after bringing Tristen to the hospital, they go back to Jeff's place to review the tapes.
But then they start having weird dreams, or weird breaks with reality, and they realize they're covered in pagan symbols (or they imagine that they are) and Erica goes missing. When they review the tapes a few hours are missing, but then with a weird suggestion from Tristen they decide to watch the footage backwards and they see different images - only, NITPICK POINT, this isn't the way VHS tapes work.... But then they realize that while they were blacked out, they all participated in some kind of ritual or orgy or both, and based on their flashbacks, THEY were probably the ones who killed those other five missing tourists at the next campsite. So, were they forced to become killers by the Blair Witch, or were they all just tripping balls?
OK, no more spoilers except to say that later the police get involved, and across the board, these teens are betrayed by their video-tapes, which tell very different stories from the events that they remember. So are they killers, or victims, or just teens who shouldn't have wandered into the woods? So very much is unclear here - but it's clear that the sequel was rushed into production to try to take advantage of the popularity of the first film. But doesn't a band's second album always kind of suck, for this reason?
Very good NITPICK POINT on the IMDB goofs page - I didn't think of this but it's certainly worth mentioning - while watching the tapes, the gang sees one of their members hiding the tapes under the house. But the tape their watching would have been one of the tapes she was hiding, only it was still in the camera at the time - so how could the tape be both in the camera and also be one of the tapes being hidden? It couldn't. But maybe she hid three tapes, then took the fourth tape out of the camera and hid that one in the same place? It's possible - yet so many other things in the film weren't, it's a bit weird to get stuck on THIS point.
You can also sort of tell what year this film was made just by the confusion in the title - if it had been released a few years earlier, it would have properly been titled "The Blair Witch Project 2: Book of Shadows" - even though there's not a book to be found in the whole film, but that's a separate issue. At some point the Hollywood executives commissioned some kind of focus groups and they determined that some people don't like sequels with numbers in the title, because then everyone who didn't see the FIRST film in the series is not going to go see the SECOND film in the series, because they think they'll be totally lost concerning the plot, and coming in the middle of the story, so they just don't go buy a ticket. So they started downplaying the numbers in the titles, putting the emphasis on the new part of the title. But then when people didn't really turn out for the sequels that were titled this way, they probably commissioned a new focus group that highlighted the new problem - now the people who DID see the first film were also staying away because they didn't realize that this was a direct sequel to "The Blair Witch Project" because the title was so confusing.
So if this had been released a few years later, it would have been titled "Blair Witch: Book of Shadows" with no number, but with the franchise name coming FIRST, as in "Avengers: Age of Ultron" or "Spider-Man: No Way Home" - so now it's up to the fans to keep track of which movie comes in what order, there are no numbers to turn off the first-time viewers, and everybody knows what franchise it belongs to, and everyone is equally confused, until they start over with the reboot movie with no number and no chapter name. For further reference, look at the numbering and very confusing titles of franchises like "Halloween" or "Alien" or "The Fast and the Furious", you can practically track the bad decisions made by the marketing departments.
Well, this year's horror chain is off to a VERY confusing start - but the good news is, I'll never ever have to watch this film ever again. So that's something.
Also starring Jeffrey Donovan (last seen in "VIllains"), Erica Leerhsen (last seen in "Magic in the Moonlight"), Stephen Barker Turner, Kim Director (last seen in "Split"), Tristine Skyler (last seen in 'Cadillac Man"), Lanny Flaherty (last seen in "Men in Black 3"), Lauren Hulsey, Raynor Scheine (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Kennen Sisco, Kevin Murray (last seen in "Aftermath"), Keira Naughton, Joe Berlinger, Briiane Bowman,
with archive footage of Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard (last seen in "Men of Honor"), Michael C. Williams, Roger Ebert (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Jay Leno (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Kurt Loder (last seen in "Tina"), Chuck Scarborough (last seen in "The Paper").
RATING: 3 out of 10 cans of Underwood deviled ham spread (their logo was a cartoon devil, I see what you did there...)
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