You can even play little video games on the phone.Īnd The Blair Witch Project’s found-footage tradition survives in the form of supernatural camcorder puzzles. You can call people (primarily your ex-wife and, weirdly enough, a pizza parlor) on a cellphone, but only at specific points where you have a signal. There are flashlight-based combat sections that work surprisingly well - they’re like twitch-reflex hidden object games, as you try to follow the movement of shadowy creatures and shine a light to ward them off. Bullet is a major gameplay system as well as a very good boy: he’ll seek out important items, follow scent trails, and respond if you pet or reprimand him. In one sense, the game gives players a surprising array of mechanics. Your protagonist Ellis has joined the search party with his dog Bullet, although nobody wants him there - for reasons that are both highly enigmatic and eminently understandable, since as Polygon’s Cass Marshall has noted, Ellis is a real jerk.ĭoes petting the dog matter? I don’t know, but it feels good In Blair Witch, a child has gone missing in the woods.
It’s set in Maryland’s Burkittsville Woods (home to the eponymous Blair Witch) in 1996, shortly after the disappearance of three hapless campers in the original film. I also never want to see it again.īlair Witch was released last week by the Polish studio Bloober Team, best known for cyberpunk detective game Observer and the Layers of Fear series. I want to play Blair Witch over and over. It’s a fitting, fascinating, yet often self-defeating idea. Blair Witch, a game set in the same world as iconic horror film The Blair Witch Project, makes the illusion explicit - then promises you ways to exploit it.
Either way, the mystery of the Blair Witch remains.There are lots of video games based on the illusion of choice, full of spaces designed to invisibly nudge players toward a goal. Or, it could just be a film to scare people from going into the woods. Maybe, the entire message of the film is to say that the monster is usually those we trust the most. I mean, we had no idea, but we didn’t want to betray the rest of the movie.” Would the film be as terrifying to viewers if this was the case? Maybe not.Īlthough we may never know who the actual killer is in The Blair Witch Project, many theories point to Josh. The directors claimed that they were initially going to show the witch when interviewed for Bloody Disgusting in 2014: “so we were thinking maybe we could show somebody levitating or have arms coming out of the walls. Was Mike in on this the whole time? Or was he innocent until entering the woods, getting controlled by the spirit of the witch, told to kill his friends? With Mike standing in the corner, almost dazed, it may suggest that he, too, is now being controlled by the Blair Witch. Mike is in the corner, and only Heather’s screams are heard. Is the killer Josh? He’s the only one who isn’t seen or heard at the end. While at first watch, the first thought that may cross one's mind is it has to be the Blair Witch committing the murders, right? This might not be the case. As the screams get more blaring and deafening, the camera suddenly shuts off. Now Heather’s screams are in the distance, and the camera faces Mike, standing in the corner. At some point, and this is where the mystery lies, the camera changes perspective. As they enter the house, the screams get excruciating, and Heather is screaming Josh’s name.
Who’s house is it? That is never explained, but the children’s handprints on the wall may indicate it is Parr's home. Still holding the camera, Heather and Mike run through the woods in the middle of the night, with the audience and students not seeing anything besides the blinding lights flashing in the camera. One night, Heather and Mike wake up to Josh’s piercing screams from a distance, begging for help. After getting lost in the woods for days, unable to escape, they lose Josh. Throughout the film, Heather is behind the camera, documenting everything. The audience never sees the witch’s face, or who did the killing, so was the witch the monster of the film, or was it somebody else? The whole film is about these students trying to report on the Blair Witch, and at the end, when they are seemingly killed, all points to the witch who did the killing.