While Blair Witch was previously screened for a handful of journalists and critics back at San Diego Comic-Con this past July, it was also shown more recently during the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival ahead of its U.S. Wingard's film, in that sense, is both a sequel to the original Blair Witch Project and a soft reboot of the franchise that ignores everything that happened in the infamous 2000 sequel, Blair Witch: Book of Shadows.
Whereas this year's 10 Cloverfield Lane is neither a direct sequel nor a found-footage movie in the vein of its predecessor, Blair Witch is both of those things.īlair Witch follows James ( James Allen McCune), the brother of Heather Donahue from The Blair Witch Project, as he assembles a group of friends - armed with cameras and sound recording equipment - to undertake an expedition into the forest where his sister vanished years ago, in the hope of finding out what really happened to her. The cult horror filmmaking duo that is director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett spent years developing a project under the working title The Woods, only for the movie's true identity - Blair Witch - to be unveiled at this year's San Diego Comic-Con.
Cloverfield isn't the only found-footage horror/thriller franchise that will have made a surprise return to the big screen this year, by the time 2016 is through.