Director Adam Wingard isn’t someone that likes to rest easy, directing 6 movies in the last 7 years, prime among them the cult genre hits “The Guest” and “You’re Next.” His latest, a sequel to 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project” entitled “Blair Witch,” had its debut a week ago at the Toronto International Film Festival and opened in cinemas this past weekend. Not to be outdone, Wingard has wrapped “Death Note,” a film adaptation of the popular Japanese manga series. “I don’t know how I do it,” said a playful Wingard on the phone not too long after “Blair Witch” was rapturously received by the Midnight Madness crowd at TIFF.
I shared with Wingard an incident I observed which took place at Toronto’s Ryerson Theater after the screening of “Blair Witch,” when I heard a girl who was heavily breathing, and so horrified by the experience, tell her friend, “Fuck the Q&A, let’s get out of here.” Wingard laughs at the story saying, “That’s the exact reaction we wanted to give the audience. A horror movie is really a communal thing and watching it with a sold out audience that is ready to get scared, that’s priceless.”
The roots of “Blair Witch” took shape when Wingard expressed interest to his agent in making a more conventional frightfest after bending genre conventions with his previous three endeavors. “I kept saying for some time that I wanted to do a more straight-up horror movie and then Lionsgate approached us and said they were interested in doing a sequel to ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and asked if we were interested. Of course I was. I have fond memories of my younger self watching the original movie in theaters. It still spooks me.”
READ MORE: ‘Blair Witch’ Can’t Capture The Mystique Of The Original
Although rooted in a style that recalls the original film, and not its misbegotten sequel 2000’s “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2,” Wingard’s film does try to pay tribute to the 17 year-old classic, but also tries to pave the way for a more modern take. “We had just done ‘The Guest’ and on that film we had used a drone camera. That experience really opened us up creatively for our next project and we knew it could be used for whatever we did next,” he explained.
It wasn’t just the use of drones, but something as simple as a bluetooth device which added to the stylistic blueprint for what they wanted to do with the film. “One of the issues people had with the original was how the characters kept filming even while running and in danger. That’s not very realistic. So [writer] Simon [Barrett] and I invented the idea of these bluetooth cameras that can fit in your ear. It also solved the restless camera shaking, which seemed to have been another issue people had with the original. The camera still shakes here, because realistically it should be shaking, but in a more controlled manner.”
The influences in “Blair Witch” are not just limited to “The Blair Witch Project.” Wingard was inspired by other horror movies, but especially one highly unusual film. “‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2‘ was a big influence,” Wingard said. “More the relentlessness of that movie than anything else. It was also a sequel to a classic horror film, which I could completely relate to as well while making this film.”
Relentlessness is a good way to describe the film’s climatic piece de resistance when the main characters stumble upon the infamous witch’s house, upping the ante of the original’s shorter sequence. I mention to Wingard the fluidity of that sequence which has the characters running in every direction and how the camera is never confusing, following our characters in a fully comprehensive manner. “That scene was again successful because of the Bluetooth cameras. I wanted it to feel like a claustrophobic maze. They are lost, keep looking at every corner, every door, but there never is an exit. It really has all the dangers that you could go through physically and mentally in that situation. I wanted it to feel organic and real,” he shared.
Of course, one cannot escape some of the more frightening moments of the original especially the iconic moment when the characters go down the basement, which spells the tragic end of their journey. “The basement is just this recognizable moment in the original, so when we filmed it here we really wanted it to be as memorable as the first one and playfully extend whatever was created in the original movie.” At the Ryerson screening you could hear the audience murmur once the basement is glimpsed at for the first time. “I noticed that, I found it amusing. They knew it from the original and that it was a terrible idea to go down there, but at the same time it is such an iconic moment in that film that we knew we had to nail it.”
No matter how it was received, Wingard feels like it was a job accomplished. “We wanted to run the gamut with this one. We thought of all the different ways to scare an audience from claustrophobia to jump scares to being chased and everything in between. But we primarily wanted it to feel like we were taking you on a rollercoaster ride. That feeling of being transported to another place filled with unexpected danger every which way,” he said.
With the already mentioned “Death Note” set for a 2017 release, the hard-working Wingard, of course, has another film set for a possible 2018 release date, a remake of the brilliant South Korean film “I Saw The Devil.” “I’m very excited about that one. It’s the kind of story that can really take place just about anywhere in the world, it has this universal feel and Simon’s got a fantastic script for that one, just a really sharp take on the original. We should be starting the shoot in Vancouver very soon,” he said.
“Blair Witch” is now playing.