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'The Woods' (2016) - A Secret Sequel to 'The Blair Witch Project'?

Started by St_Eddie, May 11, 2016, 05:50:25 PM

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holyzombiejesus

Load of cack. Incomparable to the BWP. Whereas the original had genuinely unsettling bits, bits that I replayed in my mind and made me anxious to go back home to our unlit house, this excrement offered nothing apart from stupid duhcreepy moments and eurghmaggots. The 2 black characters were really unlikeable (I am NOT racist), the 666 people were laughable, particularly when the bloke turned up looking like Robinson Crusoe and, as everyone says, the climbing up a tree to get a drone was shit. (How did she have the controller anway?). That bit where the woman got thrown in a pit and got stuck in a soil tunnel with torches in it?! That stupid long limbed monster?! God, it was awful. That 666man calling his string 'rope' was annoying too.

Custard

Right, now imagine going to the cinema alone to watch it, and you are the only person there

Desolation, mate

BlodwynPig

Yeh, they shouldn't just shoe horn black people into these movies because of diversity quotas, they need to develop their characters better. Racial diversity doesn't matter in films like Cube, but here its wrong.

holyzombiejesus

Quote from: Shameless Custard on February 12, 2017, 02:22:23 PM
Right, now imagine going to the cinema alone to watch it, and you are the only person there

Desolation, mate

My friend went to the Odeon in The Trafford Centre with a big bag of cans and watched Van Wilder: Party Liaison on his own. I think that trumps BWP2


purlieu


SteveDave

I saw this last night. There was very little peril and I hated everyone in it.

There was an opportunity to do something interesting without just repeating everything that happened in the first film but...BIGGER!

Has there ever been a found footage film where the person filming has lowered the camera so it's upside down and filming what's behind them (as it would do if you had your hand in the little band camcorders used to have) and then the monster/beast comes up behind them? That would be good.

purlieu

Finally saw this. I have a soft spot for found footage in general, despite it routinely resulting in unsatisfying and often poor films. Fuck knows why.

I genuinely do wonder whether this started out as, or at least incorporated elements of, another film. There are plenty of ideas there that could have been focused on and expanded on to make a different and much better film. Weird inexplicable monster in the woods, nasty spreading infection with something growing inside it... there was lots of stuff that didn't remotely work in the Blair Witch universe, but could have worked in another film. It kind of felt like there were two films going on, basically an exact retread of the first film, plus something totally different, which is why it was so busy and cluttered.

I thought the bit in the tunnel was really effective and quite nasty. The only part of the film that actually unsettled me, though. That said, it felt a bit confusing. Lane talked about tunnels underneath someone else's house, and yet these seemed to be under the original house.

At no other point did I actually believe what I was watching was real. Plus, with all the effects and make-up and stuff, it was hard to imagine they were really alone out there in the way you can with the first film. The time dilation with Lane taking what looked like weeks to get as far as the rest did in two days I felt was the only time an element of the original was expanded upon in a worthwhile way. The time paradox near the end would have been excellent if it wasn't inherently flawed: if Lane already found that camera and only found a few seconds worth of footage on it, how was it later recovered by the search team?

The creature we see on screen apparently isn't actually Elly, although it's certainly presented that way. If we get more sequels or anything maybe that will be expanded upon, although I can't imagine any of that being satisfying at all.

I found this film really frustrating as there are occasional glimpses of expanding on the weirdness of the original, and ideas that would probably work much better in another film, but they're just bodged together and the whole thing is full of shitty jump scares. It did leave me feeling quite tense, just because I'm quite sensitive to sound in general so the continual jump scares and loud noises definitely had an effect on me, but not a "that was a good film" one sadly.

St_Eddie

The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sanchez recently spoke with comicbook.com to talk about the direction he would care to see the series take, should there be any further installments...

Quote from: Eduardo Sanchez"I still think that there is a way to bring back a little bit of the mystery of Blair Witch, which is the newness of it.  I'm not sure if going on the sequel route is the way to do it. For me, it would have to be a uniquely singular film. It'd have to be a film that somehow had, not found footage again, of course, but something that does something that doesn't look like a normal film, that doesn't have the same subject matter as a normal film."

"I think that the Blair Witch film property should have gone backwards. We should have gone back in time and done period pieces of the mythology, and those elements. But again, bringing a unique vision, whether it's a new filmmaker or a new screenwriter or somebody, but bring a unique vision to it, that sets it apart from everything else in the universe, in that world."

"I've always had a desire to do the original story of how Elly Kedward was found guilty and banished into the woods, and what happened to that, Blair Township, in the late 1700s. What happened to them? To me, that was the movie that I wanted to make after the first Blair Witch.  I know Dan and I and [producer] Gregg [Hale], when we talk Blair Witch franchise, we always felt that each of the films would have their own signature. First of all, they obviously shouldn't be found footage, especially the period pieces. We were thinking of shooting the Rustin Parr story in black and white and shooting the Elly Kedward story with completely unknown actors from Europe, with really thick accents. Making it as unique and authentic as possible."

I wish that Lionsgate would hand the keys to the franchise back to Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick.  Their ideas on where to take things are very interesting.  I doubt it'll happen mind, especially given the poor box office performance of Blair Witch (2016).  A man can dream though.

purlieu

Yes, everything I've ever come across them say about how they would have continued the franchise always sound really good. Why have the production company decided that they don't want good films and instead want to do shit ones instead?

St_Eddie

Quote from: purlieu on July 15, 2019, 04:21:26 PM
Why have the production company decided that they don't want good films and instead want to do shit ones instead?

Most likely because studio executives aren't generally creatively inclined and go by replicating a previously successful formula and following current market trends.  Therefore, we got Blair Witch (2016); a retread of the first film (found footage and the same basic premise), executed in a manner which plays up to the current trends in horror (lots of jump scares).