TORONTO — The first rule of the latest “Blair Witch” project: Don’t talk about the Blair Witch.

Director Adam Wingard laid down the law as he made preparations for the new addition to the horror franchise, which is screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and hits theatres Friday.

It started with a script dyed blood-red to prevent outside snoops from photocopying the pages, which is par for the course with any secretive film shoot. But he also urged everyone on the Vancouver set to keep from muttering the words “Blair Witch” unless it was totally necessary.

That caused a bit of confusion with the film crew at times.

“There were three people on the very last shots of the movie that were like, ‘What is this?'” recalls James Allen McCune, who shares his first name with his main character.

“One of them guessed: ‘Is this a ‘Blair Witch’ movie?'”

Everyone else didn’t suspect a thing — particularly rabid horror fans who thought Wingard was making a film based on his own original found-footage concept entitled “The Woods.” It wasn’t until a surprise screening of “Blair Witch” at San Diego’s Comic-Con in July that the truth was finally revealed.

Screenwriter Simon Barrett, who regularly collaborates with Wingard, said part of the credit for keeping the title under wraps goes to Lionsgate, the studio that financed the movie.

“It’s one thing for us to keep a secret, but ultimately a studio kept a secret,” he said.

“You’ve got interns, you’ve got people listening in on phone calls.”

None of them leaked details on the “Blair Witch” storyline, which begins with James planning a search for his missing sister in the woods of Black Hills in Maryland.

Heather, the teary-eyed and sniffling protagonist synonymous with the franchise, has been missing for 22 years and her college-aged brother believes she might still be alive in the forest. Convincing his friends to tag along, the group drags their tents into the middle of nowhere, and it isn’t long before strange happenings begin to unravel.

While an ill-fated sequel rushed out a year after the original 1999 “Blair Witch Project” disappointed at the box office and effectively killed any prospects of another film, Wingard and Barrett still expressed interest in reviving the franchise with a new spin.

“I wanted the first half of the film to feel very much like an original return to the source material,” Wingard said.

The new “Blair Witch” culminates inside the same ramshackle house from the original film where the hikers met their doom. But this time it’s not just a creepy dilapidated building, it’s a claustrophobic funhouse of terror.

“We wanted it to be ‘Blair Witch: The Ride’ to a certain degree,” Wingard said.

“Sometimes subtlety isn’t the only way.”

Wingard and Barrett believe there’s room for future instalments in the series. They hope the years they’ve spent working on various genre deconstructions — like the home invasion yarn “You’re Next” and ’80s-flavoured war vet chiller “The Guest” — give them a certain degree of cachet with the audience that will make or break “Blair Witch.”

If given the opportunity, they’re ready to go back into the forest.

“We have our idea of what’s going on (out) there. And sonically and visually we tried to give some clues … but ultimately we want it to be a communal experience of discussion,” Wingard said.

“There’s a lot of places to take this.”

 

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David Friend, The Canadian Press