Blair Witch 2’ Is a Fascinating Failure

“The next is a fictionalized reenactment of occasions that occurred after the discharge of The Blair Witch Mission,” reads the intro to E book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. “It’s based mostly on public information, native Maryland TV broadcasts, and lots of of hours of taped interviews. To guard the privateness of sure people, some names have been modified.”

The movie then jumps proper into actual information and talk-show clips (MTV’s Kurt Loder, Jay Leno, Roger Ebert) discussing The Blair Witch Project across the time of its sensational summer season 1999 launch. Because of the movie’s intelligent advertising, some viewers members believed its documentary-style footage was real, following a trio of filmmakers who get misplaced within the woods exterior Burkittsville, Maryland, whereas investigating a witchy local legend.

As followers quickly realized, The Blair Witch Mission was a whole work of fiction that nonetheless felt eerily uncooked and actual—a high quality that the numerous found-footage horror films that launched in its wake tried to recapture, with different outcomes. Although the Blair Witch characters are famously “by no means seen once more” as soon as their cameras cease rolling, it was inevitable that the unique would get a sequel.

E book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 takes place in a world the place The Blair Witch Mission was a smash hit and has subsequently lured curiosity-seekers to Burkittsville, the place the locals are divided on whether or not all the eye is tiresome or a strategy to make a fast buck. It additionally places forth the concept that whereas The Blair Witch Mission wasn’t an actual documentary, the legend of the Blair Witch may need some fact to it.

A few of this displays actual life to a sure extent, however regardless of that “fictionalized reenactment of occasions that occurred” scene-setting, E book of Shadows is kind of clearly fictional, full cease. It follows a Blair Witch-themed tour group that has a wierd expertise whereas tenting (and partying) within the infamous forest; they then should piece collectively their foggy recollections utilizing the videotapes that seemingly captured all their in a single day actions.

We additionally get flashbacks to the brutal psychiatric hospital keep endured by Jeff (Jeffrey Donovan), the tour’s chief, in addition to flash-forwards to Jeff and others being interrogated by the native cops. Since we’ve additionally gotten glimpses of individuals being tied up and stabbed alongside a campfire, we’re primed for gory mayhem.

What we get as a substitute is extra of a disjointed supernatural homicide thriller. Whereas it’s refreshing that E book of Shadows doesn’t merely try a Blair Witch Mission rip-off—it could have been very simple to do “movie crew goes in quest of movie crew,” which is strictly what 2016’s Blair Witch did, albeit with some welcome respiration room from the unique—it additionally doesn’t succeed as a puzzled-together try at increasing the primary movie’s mythology.

Hollywood legend has it that nervous studio heads insisted that director and co-writer Joe Berlinger shoehorn extra typical horror components into E book of Shadows, hoping it could make the much-anticipated sequel extra business—seemingly forgetting that the unique took unbelievable stylistic dangers and nonetheless discovered an enormous viewers. There are lingering remnants of the themes Berlinger supposed to discover extra prominently, together with digging into the concept of group hysteria in addition to what it means to be an unreliable narrator when the narrator is being recorded always.

E book of Shadows is fascinated with contradictory depictions of occasions—key moments change relying on who the storyteller is, in addition to what method of digicam was rolling on the time—however sadly, these intriguing concepts are inclined to get buried underneath the film’s flaws. Whereas its assemblage of characters is an amusing (if totally white) cross-section of stereotypes (together with a crunchy Wiccan and a surly goth woman), its circa-2000 particular results and alt-rock soundtrack make it really feel immediately dated in all of the improper methods.

You may look again at E book of Shadows and see why Berlinger, whose solely different narrative movie is the Ted Bundy story Extraordinarily Depraved, Shockingly Evil and Vile, has steered his profession towards precise documentaries. Whereas variations of the reality in documentaries will also be subjective, the style has far much less tolerance for “make it extra popcorn-friendly” meddling. When E book of Shadows got here out in 2000, Berlinger was halfway via his Paradise Misplaced trilogy centered on the West Memphis Three—a trio of Arkansas teenagers wrongfully convicted of homicide in a case based mostly extra on Satanic Panic-spawned rumors than precise proof. He’s since develop into one in every of Netflix’s go-to true crime creators, turning out sequence on John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Son of Sam, and JonBenét Ramsey, amongst others.

The stress positioned upon E book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 to succeed again in 2000 should have been big. Surpassing the primary movie’s box-office haul was unlikely, however you may think about that somebody excessive up the meals chain felt assured about it. Too unhealthy for Berlinger and his extra psychological method; this film was going to have bare chicks, glitchy ghost children, flashy gore, Marilyn Manson groaning over the opening credit, and a title that is unnecessary, referencing a “E book of Shadows” that certain sounds thrilling however by no means truly seems within the movie.

E book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is newly streaming on Shudder, together with The Blair Witch Mission (1999) and Blair Witch (2016).

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