Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2

Starring: Jeffrey Donovan, Kim Director, Erica Leerhsen, Tristine Skyler, Stephen Baker Turner
Directed by: Joe Berlinger
Rating: R
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
2000

Times Seen:
Tim: 2

Summary: A group of individuals interested in the popular movie, The Blair Witch Project, take a tour of the woods in search of the supernatural.

Review:

Tim: I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the original Blair Witch movie. It was completely different and revolutionary in many ways. It was a massive success for such a low-budget project, and it was incredibly influential because of the dozens and dozens of "found footage" movies that would come after. With Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, expectations were pretty high. While this film subverts our expectations and gives us an unexpected film, it still manages to fail on almost every level. This is a sequel that tarnishes any goodwill the original film had. It's a horrible movie.

What is most surprising about this film is how it changed up the formula of the original. Most movies, if they are successful and spawn a sequel, will play it very close to the original- if the audience liked it once, they'll love the same thing twice! I appreciate that this film broke out of those constraints and tried to be different. While there's still a lot of first-person footage, quite a bit of the film is shot like a typical movie. It's an interesting idea, but it does not work. It gives the film a very disjointed feel that completely disrupts the flow. We jump around from regular movie footage to the "found footage" concept, and a few weird points of view in between. It just doesn't work, and it takes the audience completely out of the film. It's a valiant attempt to be different, but it hurts the movie.

The biggest letdown here is that this movie feels like your typical, unimaginative horror movie. We have five people thrown together. They're all young, fairly attractive, and start to die one-by-one. It feels like a movie we've seen dozens and dozens of times before. There's just nothing here that stands out as memorable. It's a silly, redundant movie. Whatever made the first film so special is completely absent here. We're left with a lowest common denominator horror movie.

This was director Joe Berlinger's first non-documentary feature film, and his inexperience in this format shows. He does have a pathetic script, but the movie is just hard to watch. It doesn't always make sense, there's huge plot holes, and everything about the film feels weak and ineffective. We don't really care about any of the characters, we don't really understand what is going on, and when the answers are revealed, they are incredibly underwhelming. This movie is simply disappointing on every level.

Jeffrey Donovan is decent in the film, simply because of how much energy he brings to the role. His performance is fine, but there's nothing special about it. What's sad is that he is easily the best actor in the film. The rest of the cast is made up of your typical horror film cast- people who can barely act. The characters were just forgettable, one-dimensional, and silly. I did not care about a single one, and so I wasn't interested in what happened to them.

This film tried to further dive into the Blair Witch mystery, but it did it fairly ineffectively. It wasn't clear enough about what was happening or shedding light on more of the mystery. It wasn't much fun to watch. Horror movies are typically created as franchises- they aren't expensive to make, and if they are successful, it's easy to churn out 7-8 films before audiences tire of them. What is fascinating is that after the success of The Blair Witch Project, you would expect to see a franchise established. However, this movie came next, and completely obliterated any attempt at establishing a successful franchise. This film was so poorly made and poorly received that it killed the franchise before it could begin. That's shocking to me.

There is truly no reason to watch Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (and trust me, I've seen it twice). This is a completely disappointing, worthless horror sequel. It would have taken a "special" film to ruin this franchise, and that's exactly what we got with this failure.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 4



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Blair Witch Project