Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (Film Review)

2000 Artisan Entertainment
Directed by: Joe Berlinger; Written by: Dick Beebe and Joe Berlinger
Starring: Kim Director, Jeffrey Donovan, Erica Leerhsen, Tristine Skyler, and Stephen Barker Turner
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 90 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 3/10

The Blair Witch Project has taken the world by storm. For some, it's not just movie, it's a lifestyle...or rather, a way to make a life. Jeffrey Patterson has decided to give tours of the woods around Burkittsville, Maryland, where the trio of filmmakers from The Blair Witch Project purportedly went missing. He takes a ragtag group of tourists, including a filmmaking couple, a goth girl, and a Wiccan deep into the forest, but sure enough, things go haywire. The one night the group spends in the woods, they lose time and can't remember a thing that happened. Then they start seeing things. What they find on the recordings they made during their lost time will shock them to their core.
"It's very hard to get lost in America these days" says a character in 1999's smash hit indie horror film, The Blair Witch Project, before the rest of the movie proceeds to tell her just how wrong she is. Part of the magic of that film is the way it explores that very topic, that in an increasingly modern world, there are still mysterious, dangerous forces that cannot be explained. The movie hit at the perfect time, right before the Internet became ubiquitous, and a decade before Smartphones began to tear the world into tiny little pieces. Crowds rushed to the theater to see the purportedly real film about the kids who go missing in the woods. All of these factors add to its charm. There should have never been a sequel. If there had to be, Artisan Entertainment should have waited more than a year after the original to release it, giving the original creators time to come up with something suitable. 

And above all, a sequel should not have been handed to someone whose artistic goals were to show that the evil attributed to the Blair Witch may "be human in origin as opposed to supernatural" and be  "inspired by the "lazy consumption of media that led many to accept The Blair Witch Project as a true documentary; specifically, how readily [the public is] willing to accept that something shot on video is real." The last thing I'd want to do when making a sequel to a hit, beloved film is to crap on that hit, beloved film--especially thematically. It's no wonder the studio hacked up Joe Berlinger's work for 2000's Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. There might be calls to release the "Berlinger Cut," that it's a "lost masterpiece," but I can't see that this is possible when the entire idea for the film itself doesn't work.
So the original framework of some kids getting obsessed with The Blair Witch Project doesn't work as a satisfying follow-up. But...splicing in a bunch of other studio-mandated stuff that rams directly into Berlinger's themes doesn't work either. All it does is create a disjointed and unsatisfying film. Outside of a young Jeffrey Donovan as the enterprising tour guide, the performances here aren't great. The abandonment of the found-footage filmmaking for run-of-the-mill filmmaking takes away magic as well, and the few moments that insert found footage are silly, as it's supposed to be live footage the characters are watching, and it is edited. The only things that worked at all for me in this film are subjective--I dig the film's grimy, yet colorful nu-metal aesthetic and soundtrack. Somehow, one of my favorite underground bands from this time, Project 86, found their way into the soundtrack for this AND that same year's Ginger Snaps that I reviewed earlier today. I also enjoyed my own ideas for the sequel, which I entertained during several of this film's many lulls. If you want a good supplement to the first Blair Witch film, read the comic book.