Blair Witch Review

Bloober does it again.

Bloober Team has proven time and time again that it’s capable of scaring the pants off of us with its previous ventures into the psychological horror genre, but Blair Witch represents the first time that the Polish indie studio has grappled with a major intellectual property.

The year is 1996 and instead of following a group of filmmaker teens you step into the shoes of Ellis, a former police officer, who bears some serious emotional scars. Ellis and his canine buddy, Bullet, venture into the woods and join the search for a missing boy, helping to check whether the police had overlooked anything in their initial investigation. As Ellis explores deeper into the Black Hills Forest, his troubled past begins to unravel and we are offered an insight into just what has plagued him over the past couple of years. Finding this missing boy could be Ellis’ one big shot at redemption and it’s this that motivates him to push onwards despite being warned by his wife and law enforcement higher-ups.

Ellis’ struggle to grapple with his past demons intensifies over the course of his search. You’re shown vivid flashbacks to the traumatic events that defined his time as a police officer and as a soldier in the Gulf War. His PTSD appears inescapable here and you’re met with voices calling you a ‘loser’ and a ‘murderer,’ as well as encountering objects such as dog tags that have no business being in the forest. These memories have clearly weighed on Ellis’ mind for years and after seeing the full extent of his trauma it’s clear to see why he’s so desperate for redemption and has no problems with entering the mysterious Black Hills Forest alone.

A staple in the scare department for both Layers of Fears titles was how Bloober Team twisted and reshaped the player’s surroundings to evoke feelings of uncertainty and unease. “Wait, that door wasn’t here before, right?” you’d ask yourself. This has been extended to Blair Witch. As you walk around the woods the sky flickers between night and day, pathways dissolving into endless loops, and locales previously passed change shape drastically, suggesting many years have slipped past.

It is not as if your surroundings weren’t spooky enough without the devs pulling the strings behind the scenes. It’s easy to feel helpless and small within the vast expanse of the forest, with the trees representing many potential hiding spots for those taking watch of your journey.

It was the camcorder flashed prominently within the E3 reveal trailer that made us rather foolishly think that another Outlast sequel would be on the way, but the device here acts more than just a mere battery-hungry light source, with many puzzles are hinged around it. You’ll find red tapes scattered across the woods and these can be replayed on the camcorder to make objects curiously appear and to remove obstructions if they are played within the corresponding area shown on the film. Perhaps the most chilling use of the camera, though, comes during the latter stretch of the game where you have to use it to illuminate otherwise invisible tracks during total darkness or through patches of thick fog.

Your canine buddy Bullet is a vital ally here and you’ll use him to follow the scent of found objects. He will valiantly protect you, snapping his jaws at the ominous creatures lurking behind the trees in the occasional ‘fight sequences.’ There’s a wheel of commands here dedicated just to Bullet and you can use it to ask him to stick close, to seek close by objects, or to pet or scald him depending on his behaviour.

I found Bullet especially helpful, but there were times where his AI was a little, well, rough. During one sequence, for example, I tried to call him over but instead he just dashed continuously around in circles (perhaps chasing his tail) and I was forced to load an earlier save file.

As you can probably tell by now, my thoughts on Blair Witch are generally pretty positive, but that’s not to say that I didn’t encounter a few moments of frustration. Firstly, with areas of the woods all blurring together I often found ourselves helplessly trudging around in a loop until I reached my destination in a huff. This may have been an intentional design choice to simulate feelings of helplessness but I found it broke the experience every time that I was forced to seek the time-saving expertise of an external guide.

I also deeply despised the forced stealth sequences that made a surprise appearance within the latter half. Here I had to follow a trail on the ground and couldn’t gaze at the monster that surrounded me, otherwise it would spring out and shake us to death. This repeated jump scare grew tired fast and I saw it a lot as the margin for error here was so slim.

Landing just a handful of months after its E3 reveal, Blair Witch stands proudly as one of my favourite indie surprises of 2019. Its ever-morphing and vastly expansive setting of the Black Hills Forrest always evokes chills and I like how the ‘found footage’ trope that defined the 1999 movie was used here in inventive ways during puzzle sequences. I did, however, find myself getting lost far too frequently and the forced moments of stealth were really a test of my patience during the final elongated chapter. That said, Blair Witch is not one that should be missed horror fans, even for those unfamiliar with the movie or Bloober Team’s previous work.

[Reviewed on PC]