Why did the Blair Witch need James and Lisa to look at it?

At the end of Blair Witch, James tells Lisa that if they don't look at the Blair Witch, then it can't kill them. James, who was facing the corner, ended up being tricked by the Blair Witch, who used Heather's voice to make him turn around. At that point he presumably saw the Blair Witch and met his demise. Then Lisa attempted to walk backwards through the house while keeping her camera in front of her face so she could use the reflection in the camera's screen to see behind her. The Blair Witch tricked her by using James' voice to get her to turn around, at which point she presumably saw the Blair Witch and was killed.

Why would the Blair Witch need James and Lisa to see it in order to kill them? Earlier in the movie, Peter, Talia, and Ashley were all killed by the Blair Witch without them seeing it.

plot-explanation blair-witch-2016

Best Answer

It is explained in the movie that part of the legend of the Blair Witch is that she can't hurt you if you don't make eye contact with her. The supporting evidence for this is from the first film where you see Mike facing the corner at the end right before Heather dies.

There are some issues with this story element, although I'll refrain from getting into that right away.

There aren't any clear rules specifically on what it means that the witch "can't hurt you". Obviously she still had plenty of power and magic in order to keep them trapped and one could argue that if they sat with their eyes closed forever then they would still die of starvation at some point so they are not totally immune from being hurt by the effects of the witch's spells and magic. With that in mind...

Talia

Talia's death was caused by Ashley and not the Blair Witch, at least not directly. After she returns to the camp and they find more stick figures, Talia sees clumps of her hair tied to one of the figures. Ashley accuses her of making them and breaks it in half, at which point Talia's body is snapped in half as well. This is a case of her death being caused indirectly by the witch.

Ashley and Peter

Honestly there really isn't enough information about how they died to be able to say they didn't make eye contact with the witch.

Inconsistent story elements

While this movie claims that the legend states that the witch can't hurt you unless you make eye contact with her and that is why Mike was facing the corner in the original movie, this is inconsistent with the legend set forth in the original film.

Man from town: One day, old Mr. Parr came into the market and said "l'm finally finished".

Heather: And what did he mean by that?

Man from town: Nobody knew at first, but the police finally went up the mountain and found the bodies of seven kids in his house.

He would take the kids down to the basement in twos and he'd make one face the corner and he'd kill the other one then he'd kill the one in the corner too.

It seems to me like some pretty poor script writing that would ignore this fact from the first film and instead come up with the whole eye contact thing. But I digress.