Susan Granger’s review of “BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2” (Artisan)
It’s marketing vs. movie-making. Last weekend, the newest installment in this media phenomenon saturated 3000 screens in the U.S. and about 1000 screens overseas, almost double the normal amount for a wide-release movie. That generates a huge box-office tally but doesn’t truly tell the tale. The original used the Internet to spread the fake-but-funky horror story about aspiring film students who vanished in Maryland’s Black Hills. This time, it’s saturation booking. Documentary film-maker Joe Berlinger begins with what’s happened to Burkittsville, where a local entrepreneur and former mental patient (Jeffrey Donovan) guides hiking tours through the supposedly haunted woods to the utter frustration of the Sheriff (Lanny Flaherty), who bellows, “There is no goddamn Blair Witch!” Nevertheless, four intrepid campers take off: a preacher’s daughter who fancies herself a white magic Wiccan (Erica Leershen), a Goth psychic (Kim Director), a cocky writer (Stephen Turner) who is determined to expose the Blair Witch as mass hysteria and his troubled, pregnant girl-friend (Tristen Skyler). The body count mounts as a competing tour crosses their path, along with sex, lies and endless videotaping, culminating in a Civil War-era factory. To evoke fear, Berlinger relies on standard slasher shocks, gore, nudity, and a guitar-metal soundtrack, all quite reminiscent of the “Scream” franchise. As a result, the characters are stock stereotypes, the dialogue’s banal and there’s no tension. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2” is a thudding 2. Perhaps there really is a Blair Witch curse to wreak havoc on the third installment, a “prequel,” being made by the co-directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick from the original, Orlando-based Haxan Films.
