# Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

### reviewed by
Jerry Saravia

Perhaps I am overindulgent in my praise but I still think "The Blair Witch Project" is one of the best horror films of the last twenty years. It was good enough for me to dedicate a webpage to the film considering how many people had misunderstood it and its intentions. Although the film may not have been completely original, its approach certainly was. Primarily shot on video and 16mm black-and-white film, it had the look and feel of an extremely low-budget feature that could have been made by anyone with a camcorder and a computer. The difference with "Blair" as opposed to other independent horror flicks, such as "The Evil Dead" and "Halloween," is that it did not feel like a movie - it sort of transpired before our eyes in practically documentary fashion. Now we have a sequel, "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2," that commits the error of most other shopworn sequels - it has gore, sex, loud heavy metal music, and a host of ghostly manifestations right out of 1999's "The Haunting." The original suggested the menace of evil. This "Blair" leaves precious little to the imagination, though we can be thankful that there is still no visible witch.

"Blair Witch 2" begins promisingly enough. There is a nifty prologue set in the town of Burkittsville where the "Blair Witch" mania has spun out of control, and the local citizens speak out on how they have dealt with it. The local sheriff reassures the "Blair" fans that there is no witch in the town or in the woods. But then things go wrong. A mental asylum is shown as a flashback of where Jeffrey Donovan, a former patient, was abused by the doctors and guards. Once Jeffrey is released, he organizes a Blair Witch Hunt, which is a tour of the Black Hills woods where the original movie took place. Jeffrey finds four other willing participants for his tour through the magic of the Internet. They include: Kim Director, a telekinetic goth chick (resembling a pale Heather Donahue) who found the movie to be cool; Erica Leerhsen, a sensitive Wiccan obsessed with spreading the good word about witches; and a couple (Stephen Barker Turner and Tristen Skyler) involved in writing a book on the Blair Witch. Together they camp out in the woods where they find misplaced trees and another wandering tour group. After a wild night of drugs and heavy Jack Daniels boozing, they find out the next day that the cameras are all gone, except for the tapes, and all the research from the Blair authors is shredded. What happened during that night? And what is it with all the bloody witch markings on their bodies? And who killed that rival tour group at Coffin Rock?

At this point, the film begins to get a little more intriguing in the investigation of the tapes that were set up in the cameras to record their nighttime activities. The group's intent is to discover what happened to them, and what they find is quite grisly and decadent to say the least. Unfortunately, director Joe Berlinger (acclaimed documentarian of films such as "Paradise Lost" and "Brother's Keeper") throws in everything to the mix except the witch. We get milisecond shock cuts in the form of flashforwards, relentlessly repeated montages of stabbings and dripping blood, ghostly manifestations of the Burkittsville children killed long ago by the witch, naked bodies dancing and cavorting in the woods, some sexual byplay between Erica and Stephen, and so on. Although it is not as overdone as your basic slasher cum horror flick sequel, it feels like a bastardization of everything the original "Blair Witch" did so well.

Another problem are the characters who feel like they had been recycled from the "Scream" mix (Marilyn Manson's song "Disposable Teens" gives a hint of what's to come). With the sole exception of the goth chick, all the characters are unmemorable and bland to say the least - they scream, shout and argue but they hardly have much in the way of personality. Heather, Mike and Josh were annoying too but they had gobs of humanity, wit and sympathy - everything this cast lacks. The pregnant Tristen Skyler, who should be the most sympathetic of the bunch, comes across as the most unlikable - she even dreams of killing her newborn! If we cannot care about the characters, then we care less if there is a witch inducing a group hypnosis on this bunch.

The concept of this film is fascinating - it assumes the original was just a film and that this group is out to perhaps debunk the myth. Although the ending is gripping, it lacks the emotional subtext of the original. There are some good Heather Donahue jokes, a nod to Frederick Wiseman's excellent documentary, "Titicut Follies," and some occasionally tense scenes but mostly, this is a lifeless, perfunctory affair. It's obvious that nobody could have made a decent sequel to a phenomenon like "The Blair Witch Project," a horror film that only comes around once in a blue moon. There is sound advice from Randy in "Scream 2" that the filmmakers should listen to - 'Sequels suck. They are inferior films. The horror genre was destroyed by them'. Sounds just about right.

Please check out my BLAIR WITCH PROJECT analysis at http://moviething.com/members/movies/faust/index3.shtml

For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at http://buffs.moviething.com/buffs/faust/

E-mail me with any questions, comments or general complaints at jerry@movieluver.com or at Faust667@aol.com

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