Why make a sequel to The Blair Witch Project in the first place?
The gimmick behind the first film was the mystery of whether it was real -- whether three young people actually died while shooting a documentary in the woods about the legendary Blair Witch, and whether we were watching their raw footage.
That's what drew curious people to the theatres, and that's why last summer's low-budget Blair Witch Project grossed $250 million US worldwide.
Well, now the secret is out. The story was fiction. There is no Blair Witch, and the three young filmmakers -- actors Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams -- made it out of the woods near Burkittsville, Md., unscathed.
But, in the name of greed, why not make another Blair Witch movie? Hence we have the much-hyped Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, a thoroughly unsatisfying mess.
First of all, why the film is called Book of Shadows is baffling. There is no book anywhere in the movie. Maybe the filmmakers just thought the title sounded scary.
The sequel acknowledges there was a first film, and that it sparked a booming tourism industry in tiny Burkittsville.
The first few minutes are pretty funny. Shot as a Waiting for Guffman-style mock documentary, the movie shows locals talking about the enormous impact The Blair Witch Project has had on their peaceful hamlet. One woman says she's so accustomed to being on camera that she doesn't even go to the mailbox without wearing full makeup.
Entrepreneur (Jeffrey Donovan) sells replicas of the spooky twig men that, according to legend, the Blair Witch left after killing her victims. He peddles T-shirts, hats and coffee mugs emblazoned with The Blair Witch Project logo on the street.
Jeff (all the characters' names are the same as the unknown actors who play them, just like the first film) also leads The Blair Witch Hunt, a tour through the Black Hills woods that follows the path Heather, Josh and Mike supposedly took.
On his first outing, he brings along an earthy Wiccan (Erica Leerhsen), a black-clad goth girl (Kim Director), and a young couple researching a book on the witch legend (Tristen Skyler and Stephen Barker Turner).
Here, the film's tone shifts awkwardly from a comedy to a horror flick -- a B-movie, at best.
They camp in the woods overnight, get entirely too drunk and stoned and pass out. When they wake up in the morning, they find all their video equipment destroyed and their research papers shredded.
At first they think another group of tourists sabotaged them. But when they go back to Jeff's house -- a preposterously dark and dreary converted warehouse -- they watch the video footage left behind and piece together the events of the previous night.
Then they start hearing strange noises, seeing images of dead children and finding red marks on their bodies. They all get increasingly more paranoid and turn on each other.
Everybody overacts, shrilly screeching at each other, and the laughable dialogue doesn't help their cause. Early on, Erica writhes on the ground in a pile of fallen leaves, saying she wants "to shed my mortal coil and commune" with the Blair Witch.
As things turn ugly, Kim screams, "You don't understand, something happened to us in the woods -- something evil."
Director Joe Berlinger relies on hackneyed horror movie scare tactics -- loud, sudden noises and floating apparitions. These are the very techniques the first Blair Witch lacked, which made that a more innovative picture.
Berlinger moves back and forth in time too quickly, and alternates too often between humorous and serious tones, undermining any tension he has built.
It's too bad this movie is such a disappointment, because Berlinger's 1996 documentary, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills, was a fascinating study.
By the way, the two guys who wrote and directed the original Blair Witch, Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, didn't have much to do with this movie, although they are credited as executive producers. They didn't want to make a Blair Witch 2. They only wanted to make a prequel to The Blair Witch Project.
Get ready now for the next round of hype.
(This film is rated R)
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