Esrever - Plot

Plot

In November 1999, a group of young tourists arrive in Burkittsville, Maryland after seeing The Blair Witch Project and are inspired to film their own documentary in the exact woods where the movie was filmed. The group includes Stephen and his pregnant girlfriend, Tristen, who are researching the Blair Witch for a book they are writing; Erica, a wiccan; Kim, a goth psychic; and Jeff, their local tour guide.

Their first stop, where they camp for the night, is the ruins of Rustin Parr's house. Jeff places cameras to catch any sightings that may occur. That evening another tour group approaches their camp and claims to have jurisdiction over the ruins. Jeff and his tourists lie and convince the other group that they saw something horrifying at Coffin Rock earlier. The other group leaves to investigate.

Jeff and the others wake the next morning with no memory of the previous night. Tristen and Stephen's research documents are shredded and strewn about, and Jeff's cameras are destroyed. Their tapes are found unharmed in the same spot the Blair Witch Project footage was discovered. As they debate why the tapes were spared, Tristen notices that she is bleeding and has miscarried.

Later, at the hospital, Tristen sees a ghostly young girl walking away backwards. After she is discharged, Jeff takes the group to his home, an abandoned broom factory in the woods. It has an elaborate security system, including a deep trench and bridge to the entrance, many surveillance cameras, and a front door that plays the sound of barking guard dogs whenever it is opened. They review their tapes and find hours of footage are missing. At one point, they see a naked woman swinging around a tree backwards. Jeff enlarges the video, revealing her to be Erica. Erica remembers no such event and runs to a nearby room to pray.

Kim drives to a store to buy beer and has several unpleasant encounters with the locals, ending in a heated argument with the cashier and Kim being ordered to leave the store. Back at Jeff's, she reaches into her shopping bag and pricks herself on a nail file the cashier was using. She doesn't recall grabbing it and it has blood on it.

Erica goes missing the next morning. She isn't indoors but nobody heard the front door. Kim discovers Erica's clothes surrounded by a circle of lit candles. Shortly after, the sheriff calls to say that the other tour group was found gutted and laid out in the shape of a pentagram on Coffin Rock, and that he believes Jeff is responsible.

That night Stephen sees Erica through a window, naked and swinging backwards around a tree just as in their tapes. He runs outside, where she tells him he knows what he must do. She runs off and the bridge collapses under him. He avoids falling by grabbing a ledge, and while climbing he sees the same girl Tristen did in the hospital. She repeats Erica's statement before vanishing. The sheriff calls again and tells Jeff he's outside and has some questions. Jeff doesn't understand since the bridge is out, but a security monitor shows it is now intact. He opens the front door, but the bridge is once again broken and the sheriff isn't there. Instead, across the chasm there is a pack of barking dogs. He grabs a rifle but the dogs are gone. When he returns the gun to the closet, he finds Erica's corpse inside.

The group sits in the loft trying to make sense of the situation. Tristen suggests everything is backwards. They are confused, but Kim tells Jeff to play the tapes in reverse to view the lost footage. This works, and the new footage shows Tristen leading them in an orgy and the ritualistic murder of the other tour group. Once the video ends, Jeff begins taping Tristen and demands a confession. She asks Stephen for help, but he turns on her and claims that she deliberately killed their baby. Tristen ties a rope around her own neck while deriding the others for letting fear drive them to a witch hunt. She focuses especially on Stephen, who pushes her over a railing in a moment of rage, causing her to hang by her neck and die.

The group is arrested and interrogated separately. In Kim's room, they play security footage from the store of her stabbing the cashier in the neck with the nail file. In Jeff's video, he arranges Erica's clothes and stows her body in the closet. In Stephen's video, they show him lynching Tristen and cursing her as a witch. All three claim they never did those things.