REVIEW DATE: 11:1:0:0
Not to loose your respect (yeah, right, what respect?), but I liked The Blair Witch Project. Was it the "scariest film ever made"? Pfeh! Hell no. Was it a revolutionary new way to make a motion picture? You bet your candy apple ass it was.
So, of course, the sequel. Because, "Let's face it: These days, ya gotta have a sequel." Why, out of all the lines in Scream do people listen to that one so much?
Alright, I'll give the movie this: it tries. It tries to capture the same creepiness and paranoia of its predecessor. It tries to build on the lexicon Blair Witch 1 created. It tries to add a new chapter to the proceedings. It just . . . sucks.
Think of it this way: You're making a sequel, right? You want to recreate the mass media frenzy and public clamor that the first movie induced, right? So what do you do? If your answer was, "Fire everyone responsible for everything that made the original creative, special, revolutionary and, well, original," then congratulations. You must work for Hollywood. What the hell are you doing reading this site?
One opening montage (and there are many), showing the media fallout from Blair Witch 1's release set's the stage fairly well. Soon we meet Jeff (Jeff Donovan), a Blair Witch fan if there ever was one. He's even gone so far as to set up a little tour of the woods, The Blair Witch Hunt. We open with him taking his first customers into the woods.
The customers go like this: There's Steven (Stephen Barker Turner); his pregnant wife Tristen (Tristine Skyler); hot Wicca chick, Erica (Erica Leerhsen); and Elvira look-alike, Kim (Kim Director). The newly weds are writing a book about the Witch and her effect on our cultural psyche. Erica just wants to prove the ancient "witch" stereotype wrong. Kim's just a psychic friend along for the ride.
Reaching what's left of Rustin Parr's (the Freddy Kruguer of the 1940s who claimed a woman's voice drove him to kill 7 children) cabin, the Scooby gang set up thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment and do what all good movie teenagers do: get stinking piss drunk.
Not surprisingly, the 5 wake up the next day with no memory of the previous night. For some reason, this causes distress, though not as much distress as the rain of paper falling from the sky, or Tristen's sudden miscarriage.
Retiring to Jeff's conveniently secluded abode (a big, dusty factory with cameras set up everywhere) the 5 review their footage to try and figure out what happened that night. Things get worse when 5 bodies are discovered in the woods, copy-cating a famous murder attributed to the witch. Could our intrepid band be responsible?
Duh, stupid.
I was skeptical about this from the beginning. Maybe I was in the wrong mindset going in. Maybe
I should've lightened up and kept or more open mind.Or maybe this movie just plain sucks.
Yeah, I'm going for number 2.
Like almost every other movie released this fall (did you see Hollow Man? God, what a waste) Book of Shadows falls short on almost every level. For the briefest of moments, the movie manages to rise above itself and almost capture the creepiness of the original. Then director Joe Berlinger comes and screws it up.
Shows what happens when you hire a director/writer who thought the first Witch "fucking sucked." Berlinger apparently thinks nauseating camera work is the key to a successful, suspenseful movie. Hey, asshole, when you move the camera ever 5 seconds it does not contribute to a suspenseful atmosphere. Some directors (re: good ones) only use jump cuts and trippy sequences for emphasis. Granted, when Berlinger decides to do the latter, he succeeds fairly well. Those must have been during his few moments of rational thought.
As a writer, Berlinger (and his accomplice, Dick Beebe) falls even farther. God, where to start . . . Okay, how about the story itself? I mean, so what? Seven more poor assholes die thanks to the Witch. Big deal. Unlike last time, we aren't given enough time to sympathize with these people, or even find out just who the hell they are.**
But once they start saying the things Berlinger sticks in their mouth I loose what little empathy I have with these people. And no matter how annoying the original characters were, at least the annoying aspects of their personalities reminded me of real people. These characters remind me of stereotypes.
To say nothing of the fact that every subplot introduced in this little piece of crap is thrown away. That's not an exaggeration, it's the truth.
The hell of it is, though, the movie isn't even bad enough to be funny. Though they'll be dismissed because they're young and fresh, I can see the actors trying desperately to do something with their roles. They fail, but that's not all their fault. And, despite himself, Berlinger actually manages to wring some tension out of the movie.
So if you go see Blair Witch 2 (God, could your life really be that dull?) my suggestion is to try and catch Shadow of the Blair Witch on the Sci-fi channel first. At least the fake documentary will give you a road map through this mess. Be careful, though, the road is very rocky.
Gs (out of a possible five)
MOCK O' METER
Incidentally, Shadow of the Blair Witch, the Sci-fi channel's second fake documentary about the Projects, provides more character background and exposition then the movie itself. Shadow also wet my appetite to see the movie, gave me a foothold on the movie's universe, and (not surprisingly) was a hell of a lot more fun to watch. Oh, and it only stole 45 minuets of my life. The movie took 90. Great, now that I'm depressed again. Get your ass back up there.