BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2 (Artisan) Starring: Kim Director, Jeffrey Donovan, Erica Leersehn, Stephen Barker Turner, Tristen Skyler, Lanny Flaherty. Screenplay: Dick Beebe and Joe Berlinger. Producer: Bill Carraro. Director: Joe Berlinger. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, violence, adult themes, nudity, sexual situations, drug use) Running Time: 89 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
In coming up with a concept for a sequel to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT -- as apparently sequel-proof a film as ever was made -- the producers actually had a brilliant idea. In the summer of 1999, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT wasn't so much an innovative, polarizing suspense film as it was a cultural phenomenon. Somehow, a microscopic budget and an ingenious web site had combined to create a box office smash, intensive media coverage and fan fascination. So instead of devising a sequel to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, Haxan Films devised a sequel to the cultural phenomenon. BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2 would be set in the world where the first film was a hit, inspiring people to tour the places where the Blair Witch mythology had been born.
For about five minutes, that concept is executed to perfection. Director Joe Berlinger (the gifted documentarian behind PARADISE LOST and BROTHER'S KEEPER with his partner Bruce Sinofsky, making his fiction feature debut) opens with news footage and faux interviews with residents of Burkittsville, Maryland commenting on how the influx of Blair Witch devotees and curiosity-seekers has turned the town upside-down. It's clever stuff, but it's soon discarded for a "dramatization" of a story about one particular group of tourists. Jeff (Jeffrey Donovan) is the opportunistic tour guide; Erica (Erica Leersehn) is a Wiccan trying to commune with the spirit of the original Blair Witch; Stephen (Stephen Barker Turner) and Tristen (Tristen Skyler) are co-authoring a book on the Blair Witch mythology; and Kim (Kim Director) is a psychic Goth girl. All is well until they wake up after their first night camping to discover their campsite trashed, and no one able to recall five hours of their experience the previous night.
There was no way that BLAIR WITCH 2 could capture the intensity of the original, though it tries to cling to some of the details (like naming all the characters after the actors playing them). It's ultimately a pretty conventional horror film, but the reason it fails is not that it's conventional. It's simply wretchedly executed even as a conventional horror film. Berlinger and company never rustle up a single decent scare during the film's hour and a half running time, opting instead for lurid quick-cuts to brutal murders. Even the basic structure of the film undercuts any chance for suspense. At various points in the main story, Berlinger splices in police interviews with characters in the film, interviews clearly intended as flash-forwards to a point after the main story has ended. How stupid is it to telegraph exactly who will live and who will die in a conventional horror film?
The truly depressing thing about BLAIR WITCH 2 is that it discards such a potentially intriguing framework for its story. There's an amusing moment early in the film where a competing tour group crosses paths with our protagonists, suggesting that the film will continue to draw on the original film's appeal as a central element to the story. But ultimately the idea of a constructed mythology and its effect on psychology gives way to obvious apparitions and overly literal supernatural phenomenon. Then the film can't even manage to render those obvious apparitions in a creepy way, devoting most of the film to tedious scenes of characters watching videotape or shrieking accusations at one another. Plenty of BLAIR WITCH PROJECT detractors counted the incessant arguing and shouting among their gripes. Now imagine all that arguing and shouting by actors reading awful dialogue instead of improvising their anxiety, and you get a sense for how irritating BLAIR WITCH 2 turns out to be.
If nothing else made the majority of BLAIR WITCH 2 a painful experience, there would be the inexplicably bizarre performance by Lanny Flaherty as a surly sheriff. Flaherty acts as though his only frame of reference for cinematic lawmen was Jackie Gleason in the SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT films, inspiring fits of unintentional laughter every time he appears or utters a thickly-drawled threat. It's hard to build an atmosphere of impending doom when one of the actors appears convinced that the film is a broad comedy. There are welcome elements of self-parody in BLAIR WITCH 2, but Berlinger doesn't know when to turn off the gags and make a real scary movie. The makers of BLAIR WITCH 2 were smart enough to realize that they couldn't catch the same lighting in a bottle again. They just weren't talented enough to catch a different kind of lightning. BLAIR WITCH 2 proves to be nothing but a big empty bottle.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 un-Blair-able experiences: 3.
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