Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows
Grade: D+
Director: Joe Berlinger
Rated R for language, nudity, and violence

A craze swept movie theaters across the nation last year. It was an internet phenom, a critical success, a box office goblin, and the audiences liked it (until the inevitable backlash). After garnering critical hosannah's at various film festivals, the film was bought up. A contract was made that if it was successful in theaters, that they would have to make a sequel. Well, the fact that a sequel to "The Blair Witch Project" was made is encouraging. However, the results of the ill-conceived film are anything but.

The film picks up where the last one left off...sort of. Jeff is just a guy. A guy obsessed with "Blair Witch" and everything surrounding it. He even runs an internet merchandise company out of his warehouse in the woods that he calls home. He also takes tour groups out in the woods to the supposed sites in the original film. But, he happened to have been in a mental hospital for some time. Why? We never find out. The opening ten minutes or so are quite promising and entertaining. However, once we meet all of the film's characters, things start to go downhill quite a bit.

Let's see...there's a couple engaged with a child on the way, Stephen and Tristan. There's a goth girl named Kim. And for good measure, there's a the daughter of a minister who happens to consider herself a witch, Erika. Their first night together ends up in a drunken mishmash of booze, drugs, and maybe sex. They don't know because they all blacked out for about five hours of their lives, and have to learn what happened through videotape.

It may sound like a good premise, but execution-wise, it's not. Director Joe Berlinger (who usually directs documentaries such as "Paradise Lost" and it's sequel) totally loses the original authentic feeling of imposing fear and dread, and turns "Blair Witch 2" into a more generic slasher film along the line of "Urban Legends 2."

Until the group heads back to the warehouse (after a couple of mysterious murders, paper floating through the air, and some hidden/smashed video equipment), the actually-decent movie turns sour. Perhaps Berlinger was going for that feeling of suffocation by having his cast trapped indoors (the entrance "bridge" to the door of the warehouse conveniently breaks, and the van is wrecked), but instead, they try to infuse some sexual tension and use this as a means to show unnecessary nudity. The climax of the film is lifeless, and there is little-to-no tension at all. Not once did I go rigid in my seat due to fright, or my own connection and worries about what would happen to the characters. They didn't seem real enough, which was part of the success of the original. I didn't care what happened to these people, whereas, no matter what evil or dubious thing they had done in the first, I didn't want to see their inevitable fate become reality.

So, all of this leads up to ending ripe with inanity. The structure of the film doesn't help this at all. It's told in a non-linear fashion (which is sort of unusual for a horror film), but instead of this adding something to the film (like it does in such films as "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction," and "Out of Sight"), it just is there for no reason, other than to show that the director could pull it off. However, looking at the film, I don't think he really reached that goal. After this film, I wanted my money back, even though I had seen it for free. I know it's an hour and a half of my life I'll never get back, AND I missed the last 10 minutes of "Boston Public!" I'm bitter. Just like the taste this film left after it was over.


-Brian Jones, July 2002