Blair Witch

Let’s give the Blair Witch some credit: She may be a vengeful demon from the 17th century who likes to torture documentary filmmakers and camping enthusiasts, but as monstrous hell-beasts go, she’s pretty tech-savvy. Back in the olden days of 1999 when the first Blair With Project came out, cell phones and GPS barely existed; tricking unsuspecting college kids into getting lost in the backwoods of Maryland was a relative snap. This new generation of victims come equipped with all kinds of gadgets: GoPros and cell phones and drones capable of surveilling dozens of miles of land — all of which might help these truth seekers make their way back to civilization. The witch disables them all; draining the batteries from their surveillance equipment, blocking the signals from their global positioning systems, and crashing their drone in a tree. Mercifully, she doesn’t deactivate any of the cameras they’re wearing, so we can see her incessant torture of these poor unfortunate souls.

The Blair Witch Project we know today is 90 minutes of building anxiety that leaves you hanging on the edge of your seat. But what about the other 17 and a half hours of footage that’s long been hidden from fans?

The Blair Witch Project was such a success partly because of the film’s marketing-- even though we all know it’s not, a lot of it’s popularity came about because of the insistence that it was all real. Now it looks like the surprise sequel Blair Witch might be capitalizing on that phenomenon with a new viral marketing plan.

Y’know those back to school ads for Staples? The ones that repurpose the Christmas standard “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” to celebrate children going back class? I always hated those ads as a kid. Going back to school was not a time to celebrate. It was a time for grief and mourning.

It’s back to the woods we go in the newest trailer for ‘Blair Witch,’ the surprise sequel to The Blair Witch Project that had one of the coolest reveals in recent memory. Marketed as simply ‘The Woods,’ the film had an early screening at San Diego Comic Con, at which the real title and connection to the original film was announced. When the audience exited the theater after it was over, they saw that during the screening the big poster advertising ‘The Woods’ had been swapped for a ‘Blair Witch’ poster.

2016 has been the year of pop culture surprise releases — some, like Lemonade and 10 Cloverfield Lane, have been pretty great, which makes us even more hopeful for Blair Witch. Originally marketed as The Woods, the sneaky sequel to the found footage horror classic is set to hit theaters next month, taking audiences back to where it all began…but judging by these new TV spots, heading back into the woods of Burkittsville seems like a pretty terrible idea (in a good, spooky way, of course).

We may be in the midst of the worst summer for movies in years, but the coming fall festival season is looking to make up for it.

There’s almost no such thing as a surprise anymore. We’ve become saturated by a surplus of information, a culture obsessed with being in the know, constantly living in anticipation of an arrival. Not a day goes by when you don’t see a new movie trailer online, pass a TV show poster on your morning commute, or see a musician promote their upcoming album in a viral late night clip. We’re always informed of what’s up next, an awareness of the impending future that has driven the element of surprise to near extinction. But in 2016 something different happened in the entertainment world.

When is a movie not a movie? When it’s actually a secret sequel (a legacyquel, really) to another movie.