BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2 -------------------------------
It's 1999 and fans of a movie called "The Blair Witch Project" are flocking to the annoyed town of Burkittsville, Maryland. Local resident (and former mental patient) Jeffrey Patterson is cashing in with Blair Witch merchandise and is taking four tourists on his inaugural 'Blair Witch Hunt' armed with multiple video cameras. Once at the ruins of Rustin Parr's house, however, the group blacks out (after a fair share of partying) to discover ruined equipment, shredded book drafts, and several hours unaccounted for on their video in "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2."
LAURA:
Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, the original Blair Witch creators, step back to executive producer credits for the sequel (they are supposedly writing Blair Witch 3, which will be a prequel) to their smash hit "The Blair Witch Project" and let documentarian Joe Berlinger ("Paradise Lost," "Brother's Keeper") pick up the reins as director and cowriter (with Dick Beebe, 1999's "House on Haunted Hill").
Firstly, this film bears no resemblance to its predecessor except for its adherence to the Blair Witch lore, so artfully created and expanded upon on the www.blairwitch.com website. While I've heard preview audiences complain that this film is incomprehensible, given thought, it very neatly ties into the legend, while also acknowledging the film as a media event with a wink and an intriguing look at the cause and effect of violence in popular artforms. It helps to have kept up with all the Sci-Fi channel specials (this one recalls the video/DVD special airing of "The Burkittsville Seven").
The film's establishing act humorously begins with MTV's Kurt Loder speaking about the phenomenom followed by Roger Ebert's television review before showing hordes of teenagers raiding Burkittsville's cemetary and Black Hills ('Get out of the woods! There's no damn Blair Witch! screams the town sheriff over a megaphone.) One woman recounts how she so successfully sold Blair Witch twig figures on her front lawn that she eventually was persuaded to sell the stones from her rock garden for $10. This is as funny and hip and the original film's premise, although we begin to see MTV style edits of disturbing images of torture and mutilation around the time the opening credits begin to roll over Marilyn Manson's "Disposable Teens."
Second act rounds up the new group. Tellingly, young couple Tristen Skyler and Stephen Turner are working on a book about "The Blair Witch Project" that asks 'hysteria or history?' (As in "The Blair Witch Project," the characters' names are the same as the actors who play them.) Erica Leerhsen is a Wiccan who wants to commune with the Blair Witch, who she believes was a child of nature, like herself, treated in her time like some unfortunate women of Salem. Goth chick Kim Director professes to be psychic, immediately sensing Tristen's unwanted pregnancy.
The group set up camp at the ruins of the house where the movie trio met their demise and are immediately overrun by a walking tour group comprised of two young entrepeneurs and their customers, a Chinese couple and a German woman. After a brief spat, Stephen's group coyly suggest they saw something sinister at Coffin Rock, which sends the second group scurrying.
Alcohol and pot are consumed in abundance before the five awaken to find the 'Hysteria or History' text fluttering down upon them like snow. With Kim's help, they find their videotapes in the same place Heather's were discovered. Then Tristen has a miscarriage. Do they flee sensibly after all this (and a visit to the ER)? No, they retreat to Jeff's home - an abandoned nineteenth century warehouse in the Black Hills. (Disturbingly, the sheriff tries to contact Jeff when the other tour group is found massacred on Coffin Rock.)
Joe Berlinger has fashioned a nice puzzle box where his film can be viewed from two different perspectives. The film, as we see it, is really the recollection of the Hunt's survivors, as we see them interrogated by the police - flashback in two layers. However, as in the first film, there is video document, which can be construed as either reality or as something to condemn the survivors as 'enhanced' by the Blair Witch. The film acknowledges "Project" as a movie, while allowing that where so many people, including this film's protagonists, believed it to be true, that perception can become reality.
There are no shaky camera effects here - in fact we get special effects in ghostly images seen by the quintet. Once again, sound is used to jarring effect. Unfortunately, the midsection of this film sags a bit. Where the first film was so believable because of its amateur quality, this one suffers when a line is delivered too dramatically in front of a steady camera. A reference back to the first film's 'standing in a corner' doesn't make sense. Horror movie conventions, such as having the group split up when they should be huddled together, call attention to themselves in this otherwise clever script.
"Book of Shadows: the Blair Witch 2" couldn't hope to equal its predecessor, yet it's a surprisingly intelligent and welcome addition to a genre that's usually a dumping ground for low budget efforts.
B-
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