Blair Witch Project 2: The Book Of Shadows
Directed by: Joe Berlinger
Written by: Joe Berlinger and Dick Beebe
Starring: Stephen Barker Turner, Tristine Skyler, Erica Leerhsen, Kim Director

Okay, how can I break this to you gently? The Blair Witch Project 2 is not as bad as you think it is. It is probably even worse. It is a total cash in/sell out. There is nothing worthwhile about it, it is just a ploy to grab your money.

I’m sure there will be people who say that at least this one is better than the Blair Witch movie. Oh man, don’t even start. I’m going to avoid a messy rant about why the original Blair Witch Project WAS good, but if you try and tell me that BWP2 was even slightly worthwhile, I will probably kick you.

The backdrop of the story is that all these people living near Burkittsville have decided to capitalize on the popularity of the movie by starting up tours of the woods.

A group of kids go out into the woods on one of these tours, party, get drunk, and then end up having strange hallucinations for the rest of the movie. Once that starts happening, it’s basically game over (for both the characters and the movie itself). It’s really just a jumble of chaos and confusion.

There are a lot of confusing cuts back to interview scenes with police officers questioning them about things, as well as confusing shots of images that the characters were seeing in their minds, or things that we are supposed to assume actually happened. I suppose the movie is trying to make you wonder what is real and what is not, but it very quickly becomes overkill.

Director Joe Berlinger is a well known documentary director, and I guess they hoped that his documentary experience would help recreate the feel of the first Blair Witch Project. Strangely enough, it did not help accomplish this at all. I don’t think it’s really his fault though. I don’t think he was even sure what kind of movie they were trying to make in the first place.

At times it seems like they try to maintain the gritty realism of the original movie, but then they go and ruin it by making cheesy pop culture references and by reminding us that the first Blair Witch Project was only a movie, and didn’t actually happen. In fact, from the very start of the movie, BWP2 takes a very odd comedic tone, as if it is mocking the first movie. This totally ruins the original. They should never have gone with an approach like this. They should have been adding to the mythology of the Blair Witch rather than debunking it.

All the characters in BWP2 use names that are almost identical to the actors’ real names. This is a perfect example of a completely trivial tidbit that they borrowed from Blair Witch 1. They must have thought this would help with the authenticity, but unlike in the first movie, the actors are not improvising, and unlike the first movie, the actors are horrible.

In this movie, the actors are so non-authentic and deliver such bad dialogue that you actually want to see them get killed. The earlier they get killed, the better. I have to admit, the redneck cops in the movie were pretty amusing, however, there were way too many stereotypical characters for my liking. Take the “goth” chick for example, who happens to have this unexplained psychic ability. They even stooped to a cheesy Nine Inch Nails reference if I remember correctly. What is this, Dawson’s Creek or something? They also try to make this movie seem all modern and hip with frequent references to the internet, e-mail and E-bay. It was pretty painful to watch.

They made an attempt to repeat the cliffhanger ending of the first movie, but it totally fell flat on its face, mainly because there was nothing to leave hanging this time around. The entire movie is confusing, so you’re not wondering what happened to the characters at the end, you’re wondering what the hell happened, period.

I really just have one question: what the hell is the Book of Shadows? There is no Book of Shadows mentioned anywhere in the movie. You know that the movie is a total sham when the title was just some randomly chosen phrase that the producers figured “sounded cool”. Hell, the title of the movie was probably the first thing they chose.

I would have preferred a complete reworking of the first movie more than I enjoyed this piece of garbage. Obviously the original creators were not involved in this movie, and now they must be totally crying over what Hollywood did to their film. Crying all the way to the bank anyways. Yuck, this movie just disgusted me. — Sean