06. Blair Witch 2 (2000, Berlinger)
By Eivind Langdal
16th September 2009

The problem with Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is that it simply has no idea what made the original such a surprising hit. Sure, taking the story into another direction than the original is a wise idea when one considers how hard it would be to be revolutionary twice, but it’s not like anyone was forced to do this movie. Or maybe I’m wrong about that. I mean, watching this makes you wonder if director Joe Berlinger had something pressed against his skull while making it. It might not have been gun. It could have been a… uh… oh, look, in a strange meta moment, I showed exactly as much imagination as this film.

Let’s be honest: the first film didn’t have a particularly original story. Three people get lost in the woods and then they stumble upon a cabin, and then it all goes dark and no one knows what actually happened. But it was the way the story was delivered that was so exciting. Sure, we all know it wasn’t real (okay, so maybe everyone doesn’t know), but the filmmakers put so much effort into making us believe that it was that it felt like it could be real. So a sequel would build upon that, no? Well, in theory, yes, but in practice, it turns out that what we got was a film that not only abandoned the original’s gritty realism for a more typical approach, but also makes it abruptly clear in the beginning of the film that the original was a fake. Now, as I said, we already know that, so that shouldn’t be a problem, should it? Well, I think it is. After all, if you tell a story and then follow it up with one that opens up by stating that the first one was not real, you’re not showing a lot of storyteller skills, are you? You do show an uncanny ability to prove you may be stupid, though. I guess that deserves some kind of applause. A sarcastic one, maybe, but an applause nonetheless.

The film’s biggest problem is that labeling it a sequel to The Blair Witch Project gives it one hell of a burden to carry. Had it simply been sold as an independent story, it might have worked. Indeed, that seems to be what the screenwriters decided too in the middle of writing the film, as it opens with a montage that shows how big a phenomenon the film caused, only to abandon that for something completely unrelated altogether in the middle of the film. If you cut away the first 30 minutes of this film you will not think you’d be watching a sequel to The Blair Witch Project at all. Instead, you’d be watching a film about five people who visits the location of that film and then get in some really odd situations that may have some connection with witchcraft, though that could be any witch, not necessarily one from Blair.

They have come there for a tour that was advertised online by a guy named Jeffrey. The “tourist” crew consists of Kim, who dresses in black, Erica, who claims to be a real witch, and Stephen and Tristen, who are expecting a baby and are writing a book about the phenomenon of the first film. In the forest, they stumble upon a rival tour guide and his tourists, which they manage to lure to another location. They spend the night in the woods, where they somewhat conveniently set up video cameras to keep shooting while they stay up during the night and party (they eventually fall asleep). Why conveniently, you would say? Well, because when they wake up, their camp has been thrashed and turned into a mess and, hey, it so happens that one of the movie’s plot points occurred while they were asleep. Boy, wouldn’t a camera be useful then?

Okay, I’m making fun of the film when this is actually its most intriguing part. When they eventually rediscover the tapes (which went missing but eventually found again in half a minute for no particular reason), they view them and find out that some strange things happened while they were asleep. They see Erica dancing naked in the camp, something she don’t recall. But then the others ask a very pertinent question: can the camera really be lying? Later, Erica disappears, and then turns up dead in a closet, and in the film’s supposed climax, Tristen hangs herself. Between that, there’s some ghost children and some other confusing stuff. I can’t write about it because I’m not really sure what actually happened in much of the film.

At the end of the film, the three remaining characters are apprehended by the police and interrogated about the death of their friends, but all of them point to the same thing: Jeffrey filmed the entire thing, so it’s possible for them to prove their own innocence. But when they view the tapes again, it turns out that it was they who killed not only Erica and Tristen, but also the other tourist group. Now, I find this to be an interesting twist. Sure, it doesn’t really come as much of a surprise in the movie, as pretty much anything can happen when there’s established that there is something supernatural at work, but the idea of it works on paper. Of course, the cleverest of you may recognize that is pretty much exactly the premise on which The Usual Suspects built its genius on, which, unlike Blair Witch 2, was not a horror film. Also unlike Blair Witch 2, it was not a piece of rubbish.

Oh, and if this review didn’t convince you that this film isn’t worth checking out, allow me to present another two pieces of evidence: the first one is Roger Ebert, who wrote a negative review of the film despite the fact that he appears as himself reviewing the first film in the start (it’s just a clip from his show, not a scripted performance). Sure, that may not be enough to sway him, but would you say something negative in a film you were involved in? The second evidence is a lot less elaborate: there is no frickin’ “book of shadows” in Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. Could you imagine a film named Batman not including Batman?