With a success like The Blair Witch Project, a sequel was inevitable. The film cost a mere $60,000 to make and made $248 million worldwide. No matter the polarizing audience response, the film was a hit and with hits come the dreams of more dollar signs. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 came a year after The Blair Witch Project and the rush job is clear and almost immediately. This is a sequel made for financial gain and not because there was more story to tell. The film starts with a slither of promise and then it’s all downhill from there. The idea is already flimsy but it’s also clear that this film is a victim of studio interference that gives an end result that is vastly incoherent and inferior to the already flawed original film.
This is a sequel made for financial gain and not because there was more story to tell. The film starts with a slither of promise and then it’s all downhill from there. The idea is already flimsy but it’s also clear that this film is a victim of studio interference that gives an end result that is vastly incoherent and inferior to the already flawed original film.
The sequel takes a different approach than the one presented in the first film. Instead of a found footage approach, the sequel plays things as a straight motion picture. The proceedings start out pretty promising. The opening illustrates how post-Blair Witch mania has affected the town of Burkittsville, Maryland, where the film was set. The mockumentary footage does a clever job of showing how small town residents are trying to turn the legend into a marketing frenzy to make a profit. This would’ve been an interesting direction to take the story but after five minutes that all ends and we are treated to the main part of the story where things fall apart very quickly.
The main plot has Jeffrey Donovan as an entrepreneur who has decided to capitalize on the Blair Witch phenomenon by operating “The Blair Witch Hunt”, a walking tour of the woods around Burkittsville. Four clients have joined him for his inaugural trek: Stephen Turner and Tristen Skylar, a couple who are writing a book about the Blair Witch; Erica Leerhsen, a Wiccan who thinks the Blair Witch is a good witch; and Kim Director, a psychic goth who thought the movie was cool. Of course, once these five get into the woods, strange things happen, and, upon their return to the more civilized world, they realize they may have brought something back with them.
Director Joe Berlinger is fighting a losing game here. The best thing about The Blair Witch Project was its “this is real” approach to the story and that is pretty much abandoned here. He utilizes more traditional filmmaking techniques that fall flat. There is no sense of style or tension throughout the film whatsoever. There are some MTV-styled quick cuts that they probably thought would be visually cool but it’s a very lazy technique. The eerie silence of The Blair Witch Project‘s soundtrack has been replaced with a succession of heavy metal songs that are more distracting than creepy.
Even if you put stylistic issues aside, the plot is or lack thereof the main bone of contention. The film doesn’t do much to advance The Blair Witch legend and becomes as the original was, just a film (in the world of this sequel) we don’t get to learn what happened to the three missing students because they were merely actors in a worldwide phenomenon. It loses a connection to the original film by driving home the fact that the film wasn’t real at all. So what are we left with? The purpose of the sequel is to blur fact and fiction surrounding The Blair Witch but not much is done with this element of the story. In all honesty, the film is just about a group of people sitting around until they gradually go crazy in a series of convoluted and incoherent scenes that amount to nothing.
I had my issues with the three characters in The Blair Witch Project but at least they felt real. The five new characters represent various stereotypes and nothing more. You never really connect with any of them and their acting leaves a lot to be desired. With the exception of Jeffrey Donovan and, to a lesser extent, Erica Leerhsen, I haven’t seen them in much of anything after this so that should tell you something.
It took 16 years to get the Blair Witch sequel that fans truly deserved. The 2000 film used the name to get butts in the seats but it was merely a red herring to tell a horror story that is riddled with cliches. It’s crazy that in 1999 The Blair Witch Project changed the face of horror and it took a year to get things back to routine basics that make audiences frequently criticize the horror genre. What a difference a year makes.
Reel Talk gives Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 1 Reel.
