Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is a sobering comedy about one group of cinematic clichés' craaaazy antics after a night in the woods smoking enough dope and drinking enough beer to make an MIT student blush. Wait a minute... you're telling me it wasn't intended to be a comedy? Oh, then in that case, Book Of Shadows is an incoherent money-grabbing piece of dim-witted crap that only the incredibly moronic will savour (or someone who took massive amounts of acid before entering the theatre).

This film takes place one year after the "found" documentary footage that became The Blair Witch Project turned into a worldwide phenomenon. People curious to see the spot where those three annoying twits, um, documentary filmmakers, disappeared, have overrun the sleepy little town of Burkittsville, Maryland. Even though everyone in the town swears up and down that it was just a movie and that there is no Blair Witch, it hasn't stopped people from combing the woods inch by inch.

It also hasn't stopped the locals from cashing in on the whole deal, as we find out when we meet local tour guide/former mental patient Jeffrey (Jeffrey Donovan). He's taking four clichés, um, people on a stroll through the infamous Black Hills where the first film took place: a goth chick named Kim (Kim Director), a Wiccan cutie named Erica (Erica Leerhsen) who is out to clear the bad rap the Blair Witch has received, and Tristen (Tristen Skyler) and Stephen (Stephen Baker Turner), who are writing a book on the whole "legacy" of the witch. They head to the house where the disappearances occurred in the first film, run into a rival tour group and then proceed to smoke an acre of marijuana and drink boatloads of booze. They awake the next morning and find that all is not well. No, they're not hung over (oddly enough), but Jeffrey's video equipment is destroyed and the book the couple have been working on is torn to bits. Did the witch do it? No one is sure, as everyone seems to have blacked out. But somehow, Jeff's tapes survived and bit-by-bit, the group begins to unravel the mystery of the night before. They also begin to have scary things happen to them - that is, I think they are supposed to be scary.

To be fair, Book Of Shadows does start off well, with a humourous five-minute pseudo-documentary recap of how the first film pretty much captured the media eye of the world and turned the little town of Burkittsville upside down. Here, the film shows a bit of promise, a bit of potential. But, once that little section is over and the film's, ahem, "story" kicks into place, things go downhill faster than a car in San Francisco without any brakes. We are introduced to elements and situations that are forgotten about almost immediately thereafter. (Example: when the group arrives at the infamous house out in the woods, there is a very large tree growing in the middle of it. The next morning, it's gone. It is never referred to again for the rest of the film; a result of severe editing - you can drive an eighteen wheeler through these plot holes - or incompetent screenwriting.) Even worse, the film jumps all over the place with no rhyme or reason. One minute, Jeffrey is in a mental hospital, the next minute, he's in his house. The next minute, he's in custody of a local law official. Apparently, the people responsible for this insult have never heard of title cards.

Another thing: can someone explain what the hell the Book Of Shadows is? There is never a mention of it anywhere in the film.

One of those people is a director I, and many others, thought had talent: Joe Berlinger. Berlinger has cut his teeth as a documentary filmmaker, first with the superb Brother's Keeper, which was smart, funny, keenly observant and effective. In 1996, he made Paradise Lost, a true-life horror film about juvenile murders in the woods by Satan-worshipping teenagers. Both of these films showed Berlinger would have been the ideal director to tackle a Blair Witch sequel: he knows how to wryly observe the media and he also knew how to give his viewer the creeps without going overboard.

Apparently, he also only knew how to make this work in the non-fiction genre. For his first fiction film, he has made a horror film that is about as scary as tying your shoelace. His directorial style here is one that would make even Ed Wood cringe. Berlinger believes that funky camerawork and editing worthy of a Michael Bay film are going to work their spooky spell on the audience. All it does is show how much he doesn't know about making a genre film.

His screenplay, co-written with Dick Beebee, is equally poor. It's filled with such laughable lines as "We brought something back with us. Something evil!" and "I am the law here, I am the one with the POWER!" among thousands of others. As with the first film, the only thing that I cared about in terms of the characters was when that witch was going to do us a favour and kill these irritating twits (oh yeah, and when Erica was going to do some cool, nude Wiccan dancing).

The screenplay is only partially to blame for unsympathetic characters. A terrible cast takes the remainder of the blame, bringing us Amateur Hour at its worst. Tristen Skyler and Stephen Baker Turner are the worst offenders of The Ryan Phillipe Non-Acting Award. They can't act, period. Their line deliveries make those found in adult movies seem like Shakespeare. Erica Leerhsen, Kim Director and Jeffrey Donovan acquit themselves only slightly better. To be honest folks, you could have taken the cast of 'L.A. Confidential' and put them in this film (hey, now that would have actually been fun to watch) and I doubt that even they could have done anything with this sorry mess.

I wasn't a fan of The Blair Witch Project. I found it to be an over-hyped, pretentious piece of art house crud that had five minutes of intensity (the ending), one hell of a marketing campaign and nothing else to it. I wish I could say that after sitting through Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 - I had more respect for the first one. This is one of the worst sequels I have ever seen, a completely unnecessary excursion that is a waste of the time, brain cells and ninety minutes of life for every person who has the misfortune of sitting through it.

share:  Facebook | Digg | del.icio.us | more

from the archive Star Trek Meryl Streep INTERVIEW Slumdog Millionaire