'Blair Witch' sequel struggles 

MOVIE REVIEW

By Alex Roman
Daily Forty-Niner

Furthering the awful trend of horror movie sequels appealing to the burgeoning teen market, "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2," not only disgraces the original, but lacks the respect a director should have for paying audiences.

Straying from the things that made the original "Blair Witch" successful, this sequel seems to forget its original film-buff audience by dummying down the script and aiming instead for the "Scream" market.

Gone are the shaky camera movements, the black and white film and the assumed gore of the original. These characteristics are replaced by steady camera angles, $10 million worth of color film stock and snippets of graphic violence.

The film's director and co-writer, Joe Berlinger, has a credible story idea to work with but ruins this credibility by opening with a montage of news snippets about the original.

In fact, this entire film seems like a personal struggle for Berlinger, between sticking to the main focus of the film and making a movie with valid and relevant social commentary.

The film focuses on an ex-psychiatric patient named Jeff (Jeffrey Donovan) who starts a lucrative business capitalizing on the pandemonium caused by the legend of the Blair Witch.

Taking the maiden voyage of his "Blair Witch" tour is a self-proclaimed Wiccan witch Erica (Erica Leerhsen), a couple (Tristen Skyler and Stephen Barker Turner) writing a book about the whole phenomena called "Blair Witch: Hysteria or History," and a gothic girl (Kim Director) who has an uncanny and unexplained ability to see things.

This group takes Jeff's tour armed with cameras and find themselves in the Black Hills of Burkitsville, spending the night in the woods drinking, smoking pot and talking about how ridiculous the characters in the "Blair Witch Project," were.

After waking up and finding their cameras and notes destroyed, the rest of the film is dedicated to the group finding out what happened after they passed or blacked out. This is all done in Jeff's house, a renovated broom factory, where it seems that the group brought something back from the woods with them. Perhaps as a result of Erica's Wiccan spells to summon the spirit of an 18th century witch, Elly Kedward.

In the film's final insult, the events of that night in the woods are summed up in one neat little music video package, proving that all the irrelevant events leading to the climax of the film were not worth sitting through.

By catering to the "Scream" crowd and simplifying things to an unintelligent state, "Blair Witch 2" is mind-numbingly useless and completely unentertaining.

Artisan

The sequel to the hugely successful "Blair Witch Project" stars five unknown actors including Kim Director.