In the unceasingly inconsistent career of director Adam Wingard, one sees as clearly as anywhere else in cinema that a good movie is always, unfailingly reliant upon a good concept. The genesis of what eventually will show on our screens, the foundation for what a team of thousands will create - the movie itself is vitally dependent on its strength and quality, regardless of what wizardry that team may concoct to improve the experience. Indeed, Wingard is proof that a bad concept can inspire bad filmmaking, and vice versa. Blair Witch is a bad concept, I'm afraid, and you're correct to infer thus that it inspires bad filmmaking, but it's primarily just a really, horribly bad concept. 17 years on from The Blair Witch Project, it requires analysis as its own entity, yet connections and comparisons are inevitably rife; suffice it to say, briefly, that Wingard takes most of what worked in 1999 and either ditches or desecrates it. But even aside from its direct relation, Blair Witch is quite obviously a massive mistake - whether or not it purports to upend the cliches it employs most generously, there's nothing valuable in watching the same old scares recycled over and over. It's an incessantly familiar film, whether or not you've even seen either of its predecessors, and gains utterly nothing in ramping up both the scare quota and the volume to numbing levels - conversely, it loses a lot of its impact. Yet Wingard is proficient in manufacturing effective horror sequences, as trite as they may be. Blair Witch intends to increase the fear factor as it progresses, and, in spite of its frequent failings, its adjacent success in this regard makes this movie at least a little worthwhile. It also begs the question: with talent like this in his hands, why couldn't Adam Wingard have put it to better uses? A better concept, to start?
The Toronto International Film Festival has unveiled another massive slate of new titles for its 2016 edition, due to take place between the 8th and the 18th of September. Joining some already-announced films in all three sections, Documentaries, Midnight Madness and Vanguard have all filled out their full lineups. Steve James, Errol Morris and Werner Herzog bring new works to the Docs strand, Paul Schrader and Adam Wingard, with his hotly-anticipated Blair Witch film, will show in Midnight Madness, and Vanguard boasts Ana Lily Amirpour - also showing in competition at Venice - and Nacho Vigalondo's Colossal with Anne Hathaway. And the TIFF Cinematheque lineup has also been finished off with a terrific batch of classic films. Take a look at TIFF's first announcement of films for the year right here, and their latest additions below:
Documentaries
The 6th Beatle (Tony Guma and John Rose)
ABACUS: Small Enough to Jail (Steve James)
Amanda Knox (Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn)
The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography (Errol Morris)
Beauties of the Night (Maria Jose Cuevas)
Bezness as Usual (Alex Pitstra)
Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary (John Scheinfeld)
The Cinema Travellers (Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya)
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City (Matt Tyrnauer)
Close Relations (Vitaly Mansky)
Forever Pure (Maya Zinshtein)
Gaza Surf Club (Philip Gnadt and Mickey Yamine)
Gimme Danger (Jim Jarmusch)
Girl Unbound (Erin Heidenreich)
I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck)
I Called Him Morgan (Kasper Collin)
In Exile (Naing Tin Win)
India in a Day (Richie Mehta)
An Insignificant Man (Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla)
Into the Inferno (Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer)
The Ivory Game (Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani)
Karl Marx City (Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker)
Mali Blues (Lutz Gregor)
Politics, Instructions Manual (Fernando Leon de Aranoa)
The Turning Point
The War Show (Andreas Dalsgaard and Obaidah Zytoon)
Water and Sugar: Carlo di Palma, The Colours of Life (Fariborz Kamkari)
Midnight Madness
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (Andre Ovredal)
The Belko Experiment (Greg McLean)
Blair Witch (Adam Wingard)
Dog Eat Dog (Paul Schrader)
Free Fire (Ben Wheatley)
The Girl with All the Gifts (Colm McCarthy)
Headshot (Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto)
Rats (Morgan Spurlock)
Raw (Julia Ducournau)
Sadako vs. Kayako (Shiraishi Koji)
Vanguard
The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour)
Blind Sun (Joyce A. Nashawati)
Buster's Mal Heart (Sarah Adina Smith)
Colossal (Nacho Vigalondo)
GODSPEED (Chung Mong Hong)
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (Osgood Perkins)
Interchange (Dain Iskandar Said)
Message from the King (Fabrice du Welz)
My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (Dash Shaw)
Prevenge (Alice Lowe)
The Untamed (Amat Escalante)
WITHOUT NAME (Lorcan Finnegan)
TIFF Cinematheque
The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo)
Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash)
General Report on Certain Matters of Interest for a Public Screening (Pere Portabella)
The Horse Thief (Tian Zhuang Zhuang)
Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas)
Lumiere
One Sings, the Other Doesn't (Agnes Varda)
One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando)
Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro)
Something Wild (Jonathan Demme)
