Ok we’ve got like 10 cameras that can record forever and never run out of battery life, let’s go find the Blair Witch and be jokey about it! Or are we serious about it? Who knows, lets just make loud noises in the dark.
Blair Witch (2016) Rant
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The Blair Witch was the type of movie you could only really make once, and I’m not even referring to it having a remake (or is it a sequel?) now. Haven’t there been, like, hundreds of found-footage horror movies released over the years that are basically The Blair Witch Project in a different setting, or something? I like the original Blair Witch movie fine, but it wasn’t an overdone gimmick when it came out.
I don’t mind when horror movies don’t explain things, because explaining something in a horror story almost always makes it less scary (fear of the unknown, and all that), but this movie sounds downright messy. I mean, did they actually show the Blair Witch in the movie? That goes completely against the first movie’s best quality — that the horror was almost always implied. Bah.
I enjoy your animation and toy reviews a lot, maybe even more than I did you horror reviews, but I still miss them.
I think there’s a real issue with having “found footage” as a genre. It’s not really something you can vary up enough to keep it relevent.
What I can’t stand though is directors who have no idea how to do found footage. you keep seeing the same mistakes over and over. Forgetting the camera isn’t someone’s first person view, so when a person feels sad, the camera droops…as if they lowered their eyes. Or if something scary happens, the camera’s swung around as if looking for what made the noise when in real life you’re likely to hold it fairly still because you’re concentrating on using your eyes, not the camera, to see.
Worse is when directors forget there’s someone holding the camera at all, so they film it as though the audience is holding the camera. “It’s more immersive!” pffth, sure. The camera man is an oft forgotten about character who just tags along, doesn’t get involved and stares dumbly at the events happening.
I think there’s this belief that found footage would be easy to do. Just film like normal, add some video camera UI to the shots and make it shaky as hell. When really it would take a lot of artistis skill and talent to make something like that actually look like a realistic depiction of what a camera would be pointed at in those situations.
Ever read the comments on Phelan’s “Abandoned _______” videos? Some people complain that his camera work is too fast or shaky, and one time some guy told him said he should carry a tripod around the woods! I guess fakey found-footage movies have made it so that these folks can’t understand that when you’re using a handycam in real life for really reals, you have to walk around with it and it’s never going to be perfect because of that.
Part of me would like to see you and Brad Debate this film since he seemed to have loved it.
Brad has seen so many more new shitty movies in theaters over the years that maybe he’s just happy when he sees a movie that’s not 100% crap?