#BLAIR WITCH 2016 MONSTER MOVIE#

To do this, the actors were sent into the woods to film with the filming equipment and a GPS tracker.

To push the film’s realism, the directors cast unknown actors and wanted them to improvise all their dialogue. And the film furthered its connection to reality by employing a different kind of filming process to get its performances.

#BLAIR WITCH 2016 MONSTER MOVIE#

But the low-grade film stock, shaky camera, realistic audio, with no score, and no monster made this movie seem like someone’s home movie, not a professional film.

Audiences were used to slickly produced horror films. The Blair Witch Project was among the first movies to use an unprofessional style to create an air of authenticity. Just give me that moment where roots erupted from her foot, then from her thigh, then from her stomach, then out her mouth and eyes.It’s hard to believe now, as found footage is a staple of the horror landscape, but the style was once both new and credible. Ultimately, I wish they wouldn’t have been cute or coy. So when Ashley has something in her foot, we think, “Is that a leech or something leech-like?” When she eventually pulls the thing out of her leg, we’ve been primed to see it as a creature moreso than twine or tree-related. Audiences don’t really expect a line like that to be throwaway. The film also complicated matters by mentioning the river had leeches. Why have her cut in the river and not by a thorn or branch, something actually…woodsy? However, these elements are so minimally built upon and add up to nothing that the payoff seems confusing for audiences rather than meaningful. Especially with the movement up her body, and the supernatural river (sigh). So I can see how that sonic match would then hint at some sort of tree transformation. But the snapping sounds we heard would resonate with the tree snapping sounds we heard throughout the film. Personally, on first viewing I thought what she pulled out was a centipede creature and that made no sense to me. Which makes the whole thing a means of checking-off some horror genre trope, rather than anything meaningful to the plot, a subplot, or themes. That’s not really what anyone would describe as “elegant” or “a logical progression”.Īt worst, Ashley’s leg is a thrown-in subplot to have a moment of slow-burn, ew-that’s-gross body horror that the movie would otherwise lack. Ideally, we would have seen her become a tree, or a stick figure as Patches thought, or another figure just like the Witch (who maybe isn’t the Witch)? Even then, it would have been kicked off from a river injury that was foreshadowed by a story about drowning. Witch or aliens, neither really helps us with Ashley’s leg.Īt its best, Ashley’s leg hints at a mutation subplot that’s totally unexplored in Blair Witch. So is Patches saying Barrett confirmed that Kedward and the Witch are two different entities? That could fit into the theory that the Witch isn’t the main source of what’s happening but aliens are. If she survived the movie (death didn’t stand in Elly’s way, after all) it’s likely she’ll complete her transformation and become one of the Black Hills’ living plants.Īccording to the lore Elly Kedward IS the Blair Witch. We see hints that Ashley’s suffering the same fate, including above, when she yanks bark out of her slashed calf. That’s not the “Blair Witch,” Barrett confirms, or Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. The original Blair townfolk strapped her to a homemade vice, stretching her out into a shape resembling the “stick figures.” At the end of the movie, we see a tree-like creature running amok in Rustin Parr’s cabin. Lane reveals early on that there’s more to the Elly Kedward story than we previously realized she wasn’t simply burned alive. Here’s where I extrapolate from Barrett’s teases based on gut feelings: Ashley is slowly turning into one of the Blair Witch stick figures. She could have been doing anything else and still suffered the same fate. What ultimately ends up happening to her has no connection to her injury. But we as viewers aren’t really privy to that information.Īll we see is that Ashley’s injury has her close to death, then she removes a single thing, then she’s climbing trees like nothing ever happened to her, then she’s stolen by the witch. Now, Barrett and Wingard (writer/director) could have a perfect explanation of what this thing was and what it represented and how it ties into the lore of the Blair Witch.

Blair witch 2016 monster