Blair Witch Ending Explained: There's Something In The Woods

Years removed from its original release, it can be hard to really grasp how huge "The Blair Witch Project" really was. The film was a major financial success and it popularized the found footage sub-genre. It also changed horror and cinema marketing forever. It employed a viral internet marketing campaign that made many people think the events of the film were real and the stars were actually dead — something the real (and alive) cast was not paid nearly enough for.

The film, a low-budget horror about kids trapped in the woods, was a nightmare to shoot. Though the titular witch is never seen, she is felt throughout the runtime, with a fascinating and complex mythology that remains as mysterious as it was 20 years ago. And that mythology, with all the supplementary material from the time — fake TV documentaries, an epistolary novel, and much more — forms the basis of 2016's surprise sequel "Blair Witch."

Originally titled "The Woods," Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett's "Blair Witch" ignores "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2" and picks up 20 years after the events of the original. What starts out as a straightforward sequel becomes something stranger, pulling from the vast yet nebulous mythology of the titular witch. 

"Blair Witch" follows James Donahue, who in 2014 finds a YouTube video that seems to show the house from the end of "The Blair Witch Project" and his sister, Heather, alive. He decides to travel to the woods Heather and her friends disappeared in years ago to find out the truth. Along for the ride are James' friends Peter, his girlfriend Ashley, and film student Lisa. They also recruit two locals, Talia and Lane, who found the video and will guide them through the woods.

Almost immediately, things go to hell. Though the stick figures the group finds their first night out turn out to be faked (from Talia and Lane), the strange noises they hear that night are very real. An argument over the stick figures leads to Talia and Lane leaving the group, but they come back a few hours later and reveal they've been wandering for five days — all without a sunrise. 

Then, there are the stick figures, which return in force. In the supplemental material released at the time of the first film, there's a passage that suggests the witch could speak to the forest and command the trees. In "Blair Witch," Ashley seems to be slowly turning into one of the stick figures after an injury early in the film. We don't see this happen, because Ashley is dragged away and killed before she fully turns — but not before she kills Talia by snapping a stick figure in half, which Talia's body mimicks as she is snapped in half. As for Peter, he leaves camp to look for firewood but is dragged away after a tree falls on him.

The film ends with the two remaining survivors, James and Lisa, stumbling across the house from the end of the original "The Blair Witch Project," the Rustin Parr house. Inside, Lisa comes across Lane, who is visibly older than earlier in the film. Having gone mad, he tries to attack Lisa on behalf of the witch, but she stabs and kills him. As Lisa walks through the house, filming it all, she comes across a mirror. As it turns out, that is the tape Lane found. The tape that lured James here. It was all Lisa. It was all one big time loop.

Meanwhile, both Lisa and James have brief encounters with what they think is the Blair Witch — a tall, humanoid monster with long limbs. That refers back to the stories Lane said about the Blair Witch being hung from trees with weights in her arms and legs as a torture rack. When they reach the attic, knowing there is no escape, Lisa and James decide to face the corner to try and survive the witch's attack.

Unfortunately, James isn't strong enough to resist the urge to turn around upon hearing his sister's voice, and he is taken away by the witch. Lisa tries to use her camera to look behind without turning around, walking backward toward the exit. But just like James, she is eventually tricked by James' voice and turns around. The film ends with her camera falling to the ground as Lisa falls victim to the Blair Witch, just like Heather in the original.

"Blair Witch" is more direct than its predecessor. The original movie gave us a taste of time travel, but it wasn't blatantly spelled out and therefore easy to miss. The house from the end of both films is supposed to be the house of the killer Rustin Parr, which was burned down after he was hanged decades before Heather and her friends arrived in the woods. By the end of the first film, even before the characters walked into the house, it was clear they were never getting out. They were trapped out of time.

This is how "Blair Witch" takes from the entire mythology of the franchise and combines it with another relatively simple yet equally scary story of being trapped in the woods. We learn more about Elly Kedward, the woman who may or may not be the titular Blair Witch. We learn about Rustin Parr and the spell he was supposedly under. The film uses the time loop element and the stick figures and expands the lore of the witch, who we get a rather good look at in this film, without fully unveiling every mystery. The one thing we know for sure is that the moment James and his friends stayed the first night in the woods, they were already under the witch's spell, trapped in a forest out of time that only the witch can fully control.

Do we actually see the witch? At the end of the film we see a tree-like monster running in the house. And yet, writer Simon Barrett says it is not the supernatural "Blair Witch" but instead Elly Kedward, who has now turned into branches like Ashley was slowly turning into.

As for director Adam Wingard, he refuses to explain what happened at the end. Speaking with Dread Central, Wingard said "If I was going to reveal what happened I would have revealed it in the movie." As the director tells it, part of the fun with this franchise is having different interpretations of a mystery that is never answered. "I think it's always important that the filmmakers have an answer, that we're not just like J.J [Abrams]," Wingard continues. "I think he's a very talented director, don't get me wrong, but you always feel like he does this thing where he tees up all these mysteries and he doesn't really have an idea what the mysteries are. He just kind of comes up with really cool ideas and they never quite pay off, and it's always a little disappointing ... I do have an idea what was going on in 'Blair Witch;' there are definitely definitive concepts there, but I think unless they were explored in another movie it will just always have to be a mystery."