RECENT WATCHES: Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

When “The Blair Witch Project” became the sleeper hit of 1999, a sequel probably became inevitable. Despite being adsorbed widely through pop culture via parodies and rip-offs, sequelizing “The Blair Witch Project” was a tricky proposition. Found footage sequels are common today but the style was still rare at the turn of the millennium. More importantly, the original film was self-contained and didn’t leave much opportunity for a follow-up. Commerce would not be denied. Ignoring all of these problems, “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2” was quickly thrown together and released a year after the original.

The film starts with an interesting hook. Instead of directly following the original’s conclusive ending, “Blair Witch 2” takes the meta approach. The film is set in “our” world, were “The Blair Witch Project” wasn’t a true story but only a wildly successful movie. Thus the film dismisses the found footage angle entirely, progressing as a typical, third-person movie. The story at first focuses on how the real town of Burkittsville was affected by the sudden rush of attention following the movie. During this time, a number of businesses pop, taking curious tourists on tours through the Burkittsville woods. Among these groups is Jeff Patterson, who makes decent money selling stick-men and genuine Burkittsville dirt over the internet to Blair Witch devotees. His freshman tour group, composed of himself, goth girl Kim, would-be wiccan Erica, and married couple Stephen and Tristen, quickly begin to experience strange things in the woods and in the broom factory Jeff calls home.

Though the premise isn’t without promise, “Book of Shadows” squanders any interest the set-up could deliver. First off, this movie stinks of the year 2000. From the obnoxious nu-metal soundtrack, to the fashion and style, this movie reeks of the turn-of-the-century. Compared to the striped-down, stark style of the original, “Book of Shadows” is a glossy studio product, as crass a cash-in that has ever existed.

The movie is also exceptionally stupid. The film indulges in so many late-nineties horror clichés that it almost feels like a parody. The story is inconsistently told in flashback, cutting haphazardly between the past and the future. All this does is drain away any suspense, since it tells us which characters survive. Upon entering the woods and coming to the ruins of an old building, the tour group immediately indulges in drugs. They drink, smoke pot, and even whip a crack pipe out. Despite one of them being a pregnant woman. As divergent as the characters’ backgrounds are, they all get wasted. They wake up in the morning, hung over, their camp set wrecked. Most of the rest of the film is devoted to them snipping at each other in the broom factory, nightmare sequences that may or may not be real, and occasionally the characters trying to solve a mystery. Not the mystery of whether real black magic is happening here. The mystery of what happened to their video cameras.

There’s a lot wrong with “Blair Witch 2” but the biggest problem is its shotgun editing. Throughout the film, scenes will cut away to incoherent footage of people being stabbed and killed. The characters are haunted by incoherent visions. Stephen and Tristen dream about having sex, which turns into them slashing each other with their nails. Everyone sees visions of a backwards walking ghost girl. At one point, Kim sees Jeff in an electric chair, his body sparking and twitching. There are visions of ghost kids, barking dogs, bloody murder. These fantasy scenes are cut into the film in a spastic manner. So much so that they are frequently funny, like when one of the characters starts chewing on a dead owl. What level of realty this takes place on isn’t elaborated on. Which is confusing, especially once a falling bridge comes into the picture. 

The movie’s terrible construction isn’t helped but it’s awful characters. Jeffrey Donovan would, years later, find fame on TV series “Burn Notice.” I bet he doesn’t put this movie on his resume. His character is obnoxious and the performance is pitched at an embarrassingly ham-fisted level. Erica Leerhsen is far too earnest as the wiccan. She’s the kind of girl you’d meet in college who wouldn’t stop harping on one or two topics, even if no one else is interested. You hate people like that. Stephen Barker Turner is hassled with a deeply unlikable character while Tristine Skyler, as his wife, spends most of the movie lying sick in bed. Kim Director comes the closest to likable as the goth girl but even she is forced to do incredibly stupid things by the senseless screenplay. An exchange in a local grocery store is especially embarrassing.

The direction is awful, the characters are annoying, but the script is probably the film’s biggest problem. The supernatural events that happen are never connected in any meaningful way. A bunch of weird stuff goes on for seemingly no reason. Plot points are raised and dropped. Jeff’s time in a mental hospital, Kim’s supposed psychic powers, or Tristen’s miscarriage come up a lot but have no meaningful affect on the story. An especially ridiculous plot turn involves playing a tape backwards. The film reaches for a level of ambiguity it in no way earns. Few answers are provided for the sake of “preserving the mystery.” Is the Blair Witch real? Is she responsible for what happens? How does this connect to the in-universe fictional first film? All this really means is that, upon any scrutiny, the film stops making sense completely. For a clue of the film’s intense inanity, looking no further then its meaningless sub-title. No books containing shadows are seen during the thankfully short 87 minute runtime.

The movie was so bad that even a public with Blair Witch fever roundly rejected it. It more then doubled its tiny 15 million budget but the response was so negative that no further sequels were attempted at the time. “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2” was rightfully dismissed as the crass commercial cash-in it was. [3/10]