Posted: 11/07/2000

Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows

(2000)

by Kate Bishop

Filmmaker Joe Berlinger was the man responsible for two of the best documentaries of the 1990s — Brother’s Keeper and Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills — so it initially seemed like a mystery as to why he would choose to make his fictional film debut with somebody else’s sloppy seconds. But, after seeing this follow-up to last year’s cultural phenomenon The Blair Witch Project, I can understand how the new picture’s themes — the examination of the blurred line between fact and fiction, as well as the manner in which film and other media tools alter perception — would appeal to a man whose nonfiction pieces likewise explored similar issues.

Unfortunately, any serious analysis gets hopelessly buried in what ultimately turns out to be a routine horror movie. Blair Witch 2 starts off nicely by taking the unusual tact of stating that the first film really was just a movie and by having the characters in this new version set out to prove that there really isn’t a Blair Witch. But the ingenuity disappears rather quickly, as these five explorers — the edgy tour guide (Jeff Donovan), a clean-cut couple (Tristen Skyler and Stephen Barker Turner) writing a book called “Blair Witch: Hysteria Or History?”, a perky Wiccan (Erica Leerhsen), and a cynical Goth girl (Kim Director) — camp out in the woods and wake up the next morning without any recollection of what went on the previous evening. Fortunately, they left their cameras rolling all night and have the means to unlock the mystery; therefore, they spend the rest of the film holed up inside an old factory, trying to watch the tapes but constantly interrupted by hallucinations, ghostly apparitions, and other things that go bump in the night.

It is commendable that Berlinger and company did not simply try to make a carbon copy of the first film. At the same time, what they did create is merely another horror film in the Scream mode, full of gratuitous gore, self-conscious asides, and bickering kids.

Kate Bishop is a media designer and writer in Atlanta, GA.

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