Blair Witch, the film formerly and deceptively known as The Woods, practically owned San Diego Comic-Con this year. The surprise sequel to the 1999 genre-starting Blair Witch Project takes the found footage format to terrifying new heights, as shown in the new trailer and poster premiered by Collider Thursday.
Adam Wingard, the same guy behind the 2011 trapped-inside-a-house thriller You're Next and one of the scariest segments in the 2012 compilation V/H/S, is in the director's chair for Blair Witch. Given Wingard's prowess in the field of intelligently scaring the shit out of people, those worried that a Blair Witch sequel in 2016 might suffer should be able to rest easy.
"The actors just thought they were auditioning for a terrible Blair Witch rip-off," Simon Barrett (The Guest), who wrote the script, said during a post-screening Q&A at this year's Comic-Con. "Even the production manager was given a fake script—because we had a fake script circulating around the whole time—and nobody told him we were shooting a Blair Witch movie. He read the script and it took him a few weeks of filming to realize what we were actually shooting."
Complex had Erik Abriss at the scene for the shocking screening, who summarized the scares:
"This makes the scares—and there are so many—that much more impactful. With the cameras placed in unexpected corners and angles, the physical space of the action is widened, leaving the cast completely vulnerable to the evil that lurks just beyond their line of sight. The audience is forced to train their eye on every inch of the screen as they try to spot the paranormal activity within a panorama."
Blair Witch, which follows a group of college students (including the brother of OG character Heather) as they stupidly venture into the Black Hills Forest in Maryland to get some deets on the infamous legend, hits theaters Sept. 16.
