Saturday Night Live UK has found a new reason to fear the woods, and it has nothing to do with the Blair Witch. The show’s Halloween trailer sketch, “The Cher Witch Project,” puts a very different kind of pop-culture icon at the center of a The Blair Witch Project parody, with a missing film crew discovering that something Cher-related is lurking among the trees.
The pre-taped sketch aired during the October 24 episode of SNL UK, hosted by Cynthia Erivo. Like the 1999 horror classic, the trailer is set in 1994 and follows a group of filmmakers who venture into the woods, only to find increasingly unsettling evidence that they are not alone. Instead of the Blair Witch’s familiar twig stick figures, however, the crew discovers Cher CDs hanging from the trees. They also come across the singer’s Grammy Awards and wigs, suggesting that the legendary performer has left quite a collection behind.
SNL Not Ready for US Prime Time Player Emma Sidi plays the menacing version of Cher, whose presence becomes harder to ignore as the filmmakers continue their search. The trailer even gives the singer a supernatural musical calling card, with Cher belting out a variation on “Do You Believe in Life After Love?” The joke gets another layer when one of the filmmakers, clearly unnerved by the prospect of encountering the star, declares, “Scared of Cher in the woods. She’s a triple threat.”
The fake Saturday Night Live promotional material also borrows the breathless praise of a movie trailer, including a quote attributed to Time magazine calling it “The Cher-iest movie of the year.” The parody runs through Cher’s many eras, including a nod to her 1990 film Mermaids, before the filmmakers begin to understand what the mysterious presence actually wants. Cher isn’t simply haunting them. She wants them to sing along.
That doesn’t mean the crew is getting out of the woods safely. The filmmakers eventually join Cher in song, but the reunion takes a gruesome turn when she eats one of them and chases the others through the forest. It’s a suitably ridiculous finish for a sketch that takes the found-footage structure of The Blair Witch Project and replaces its supernatural menace with an exaggerated celebration of Cher’s career.
The original The Blair Witch Project followed three student filmmakers, Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams, who disappeared while investigating a local legend in the woods. Their recovered footage became the basis for the 1999 film, which helped turn found-footage horror into a major box-office phenomenon. Its distinctive twig figures became one of the movie’s most recognizable images, making them an easy target for the SNL UK crew to replace with Cher memorabilia.
Cynthia Erivo hosted the October 24 episode, making an appearance as one of the Cher Witches at the end of the bit. With Emma Sidi taking on the Cher role alongside SNL UK cast members Ayoade Bamgboye, Celeste Dring, Annabel Marlow, Freddie Meredith, and Jack Shep. “The Cher Witch Project” is a Halloween-specific pre-taped sketch, and the full trailer is available to watch on the show’s YouTube channel.
