Released in 2000 distributed by Artisan Entertainment, Book Of Shadows Blair Witch 2 written by Joe Berlinger and Dick Beebe, directed by Joe Berlinger.
There’s two types of people in this world that I have discovered. The type that loves the original Blair witch project and the types that do not. For myself, the original Blair witch is one of my favorite films of all time so that goes to show you what side of the aisle I stand on. As for its follow up entitled Book of Shadows Blair Witch 2 ever since its release, the undeniable overall consensus from the horror community is that Blair witch 2 was a train wreck and a horrible film. I remember seeing Book of Shadows in theaters opening weekend all those years ago and I can tell you for a fact that I walked out of the theater not happy, damn near angry. See I was expecting something that I didn’t get, I was expecting a cookie cutter remake of the first Blair witch. Subscribing to the more of the same method to what so many franchises from my upbringing always did. This reality rubbed fans of the first film off in such a scarring way a lot of fans just wrote it off deeming it not apart of the Blair witch mythos moving forward, including myself. With that, I never watched it again.
Enter the year 2020. The 20 year anniversary of the release of Book of Shadows. A year in which included a world wide pandemic that involved extreme lockdowns and quarantines that kept people in their houses watching and rewatching movies and television shows. As the weeks and months went by I started getting desperate on what I could watch on tv as movie theaters were shut down and most of the content on streaming services don’t do anything for me. I did do a lot of first watches on classics that I never seen and rewatched many of my favorites in the genre that I have not seen in years. Now I don’t recall where I initially saw or heard about the 20 year anniversary of Book of Shadows but as soon as I did I immediately had a burning hunger to rewatch it with the thought of it just can’t be as bad as I remember, it just can’t be, right? Well 2020 came and went and this urge to rewatch Blair Witch 2 never came to fruition. Fast forward to the second week of February of the following year, as I sit on an airplane listening to an episode of The Boo Crew podcast that welcomed their special guest of none other than the director of Netflix’s upcoming true crime documentary about the vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, Joe Berlinger, the co-writer and director of the Book of Shadows. The host of the Boo Crew, Trevor Shand at one point during the interview brought up his love and affection for Berlingers work on the Book of Shadows and how great it holds up. After hearing this quick little back and forth I came to realization that this rewatch that I considered for half of 2020 will be going down later on after this flight goes wheels down. That night I went back into the black hills of Burkittsville, Maryland.
Sun down, quiet house, popcorn fresh out of the microwave it was time to view Blair Witch 2. I streamed it on HBO Max which before even pushing play I was impressed that the film was on the streaming service. I decided I was going to write this blog post whether I hated it or loved it. I just wanted to document the experience in some way. Plus I was excited considering it’s been twenty years since my last viewing with only recalling certain imagery and even that was fuzzy. The film starts off with a disclaimer stating that the following is a fictionalized re-enactment of events that occurred after the release of the Blair Witch Project and that it is based on public records, local MD tv and hundreds of hours of taped interviews. So literally right off the bat we as a viewer are placed in a world which is our own. A world that the Blair witch project was just a fake documentary based on a local small town legend. In comes MTV news and Kurt Loder and I am immediately teleported back to my teenage years, the nostalgia pulled me by the T-shirt and said we got you already, get comfortable and shut up. After a series of clips from multiple late night shows and news outlets discussing the success and how scary the Blair witch project is, it quickly shifts to a documentary style interviews of local towns folk from Burkittsville discussing what the popularity of the film has done to their small little community. From harassing locals with persistent video recordings, willing to pay for rocks from the citizens backyards, to even vandalizing property. This cold open hooked me right away, much like the original Blair witch started off with interviews of the townsfolk about the witch and the legends, where as this one started with interviews about the movie which I thought was very creative.
The next sequence we meet our main character of the film Jeff played by Jeff Donovan, from a year ago in a mental institution getting a crazy procedure done to him which immediately lets us know this guy has some baggage and maybe we shouldn’t even believe a word he says. Behind this uncomfortable situation we have composers Carter Burwell’s extremely unnerving score which I learned afterwards doing more research that before filming he went out in the woods for two weeks and collection boat loads of different sounds of twigs breaking and rock clangs and incorporated the sounds into the music and sound effects of the film and believe me, it works and made me feel very uneasy. We then have the title sequence and the helicopter fly over of the black hills woods. The music choice that the studio made for this was Marylin Manson’s “Disposal Teens” originally the song for the sequence was supposed to be Frank Sinatra’s “Witchcraft.” This may be a running theme of this post considering when Berlinger brought the finished movie to the studio they made him and his team change and add ( I’ll get to that next) to the film to apparently connect to a younger demographic and you get the sense right away if the studio heads just stayed out of the way this film may have been received in a total different light. Intertwined in the opening credits are these quick shots of brutal killings and gratuitous gore that should open the eyes of any fan of the original as the use of gore was virtually non existent. These scenes were apart of a huge plot point that yes, the studio had the film creators add before being released saying that there was not enough blood in the film, which I feel led to pointless killings of the tourist later on that we could have gone without and it wouldn’t have changed anything as far as the story Berlinger and Beebe were trying to tell. Fun fact about these scenes of the murdering of the 3 tourists and 2 Blair witch walk tour guides, they were filmed only 5 weeks before the film was released in theaters in Berlingers back yard. Crazy right?
We then are in a investigation room where our main character is being held for questioning on November 15th as one of the detectives says “we found blood in the van” followed by a cut to the actual van that is November 12th. So I can see the confusion of some to be placed in three separate time frames in essentially the first 5 minutes of the film. The van, that has The Blair Witch Hunt plastered on this side of it is Jeff’s and inside of it he is transporting three more characters Stephen and his girlfriend Tristen who are with Jeff to do research for a book project that will focus on the history or hysteria of the Blair witch. This theory is the most important thread throughout the movie. Everything involves history or reality versus hysteria. We are also introduced to the beautiful Erica, who is a Wiccan who is on the tour mainly because she is attracted to anything witch related but is incensed to making it known that she is a witch of nature and good and that the Blair witch project portrayed witches as evil which they are not. One last tour mate is picked up in Burkittsville cemetery, Kim who believes she’s psychic and with the black hair and the all black clothing we immediately know why she’s interested in this tour, she’s goth as it gets! Plus, she “thought the movie was cool.” Now that we have our crew it’s time for the tour. One last thing about the scenes shot at actually Burkittsville and it’s cemetery, the film crew got a lot of push back from the locals for filming there and were banded from returning. The remainder of the film was shot in woods outside the city limits of Baltimore.
After a quick stop at the local gas station / convenient store (the man working on the beer cooler that our characters walk over is supposed to be Rustin Parr’s ghost ) it’s off to the first stop of the tour Rustin Parr. At this point of the movie I am really enjoying all phases of it and start to develop this feeling in my gut of this movie is not going to be even remotely close to being as I remember it being or what the experts said about it. At the wreckage of what’s left at the parr house the characters begin taking photos, setting up camp for the night and we learn that Erica plans on communicating with the Blair witch even stating that she is her mentor. That night the crew sits around a fireplace under the moon and begins the spiral into intoxication. I noted down that the acting up until this point is by no means great but I am overlooking it focusing in on the plot and where things are headed. A sequence that I found very interesting is the gangs drunken discussion about societies obsession with things they can’t explain. Whether it be the Bermuda Triangle or the possibility of their being a Blair witch. It’s the reason that they are all on the tour in the first place. Tristan then says if people believe something enough isn’t it real? Perception is reality. At this point for me watching this I knew I was in for something a lot deeper than I was expecting and sure as hell for something better than I remember. Maybe it is because I am 20 years older but this is not a horror movie per say, this is a psychological thriller and it has layers. Stuff we have come accustomed to here in 2021 but back then you can imagine the studio thinking this is too deep, we need a few gory kills. At this stage I knew my year 2000 self was dead wrong and I was excited to see where this thing goes.
Then the entrance of the Blair witch walk, a different tour group rolls in on our group and I felt this was extremely out of place, not funny and actually said I wish they weren’t involved. After a ton a quick edits of more drug abuse and fire accompanied by a Queens of the Stone Age song about drugs, it is the next morning and one of my favorite sequences in the whole film occurs.
Tristan is walking toward the river holding a rolled up blanket and the music playing in the background is so creepy it reminded me of something we would hear now as a score in a years best A24 film. We see her walk into the water fully clothed and puts the towel under the water drowning it symbolizing it to be her unborn baby. After a pool of blood arises and a glimpse of a babies little hand along with a babies cry Tristan awakes next to Stephen. This took me a back, as I was not ready or expecting anything that effecting to come out of this movie. Loved it. Fun fact I learned later if you look to Tristans right in the water you can clearly see the shadow of a stick figure floating in the water beside her.
They all wake up and the shit really begins to hit the fan as overnight someone or something destroyed all the cameras and documents of research. At this moment our group begins to accuse everyone. From the tour group of last night to each other of doing the damage. What occurs next sets up the rest of the film. Tristan has a miss carriage and to recover the whole group goes to Jeff’s residence which is an old copper mills that’s only a mile or two from where the tour began. This sets off a laundry list of fucked up moments that gradually get crazier as they go. Like I said earlier the acting up until this point is not going to win any awards but the vibe, and the actually directing is top notch so far and I am still very much into this nightmare of these 5 characters.
The days and nights at Jeff’s property get aggressively more intense. They discover weird things in a time gap of the footage from the first night. Characters are seeing ghostly imagery of a little girl outside, Pagan alphabet starts to appear on everyone’s body in rash form, Erica dancing outside around a tree in the nude and many more. One thing about the little girl ghost, it gave me big time pet semetary vibes which I enjoyed. I found the creators of the film did an amazing job at making you as a viewer question every single incident that is happening on screen is really happening, is it the Blair witch just fucking with them or is it just some form of group delusion and they are all suffering from the same hysteria of it all. This is what I took out of this revisit the most and it’s why I ultimately am now a huge fan of Book of Shadows. Withought ruining all the scares and the spots to you the reader, just in case you haven’t seen it yet or in awhile, I’ll save them for you to experience. I will say that all the scares work. After viewing it I was genuinely a little freaked out walking around my house. The witch sub genre really gets to me because I feel there is a lot of truth to it.
The bottom line is this. This movie is worth a re-watch because you, like me are now much older than we were when we originally watched Blair Witch 2. In today’s world especially with a shit ton of conspiracies and different off the wall theories out there on the internet it is not a leap to think that these 5 people on a Blair witch tour were not in their right state of mind and by getting together secluded, experienced a situation where a group delusion took place which lead to all the incidents that occurred in the video footage that the police eventually showed to our characters after they were incarcerated. With examples throughout the film suggesting that these were all just indeed visions of other horror films that our group have seen such as the tapes themselves needing to be played in reverse. That’s not only a reference to the Exorcist but was a wildly known craze of playing music backwards as you will find hidden satanic messaging in the most famous artists albums at the time. More instances were when Jeff saw the barking dogs on the bridge was a reference to the omen, Erica dancing around the tree was a nod to the evil dead and finally when Kim is eating the owl ( great shot ) was a call back to the original Night of the living dead. What is real? But what makes all of us horror geeks out there crack a tiny smile is that Beebe and Berlinger still managed to keep the overall theory of what if it was the Blair witch that orchestrated this entire trip into hell. I love that in the movies and books I read. Leave the ending open to the mind of its viewer or reader. It invites more viewings to see if you can spot certain nods to teeter in a certain direction.
By the time the credits were rolling I just felt wrong. Wrong in the sense that not only was it a suitable follow up to one of my all time favorite movies, but it was also a damn good psychological thriller that spun its web into your psychosis the longer it went. I also felt bad because I spent so much time shitting on it to myself and to friends of mine throughout the years. Could the acting have been better in sections? Sure. Could certain plot points and sequences have been left on the studios desk? Most definitely. But what the team created here is something that should be respected and not shit on. The scares actually got me at times, an absolutely kick ass soundtrack, spectacular ghost, witch and psychological horror sequences. And with a third act where you truly will be debating with yourself hours after viewing what was real, what was fake, and what role did Elly Kedward, the Blair Witch herself have to play in it all? Not saying that it’s the greatest horror movie of the 2000’s but it deserves a hell of a lot more credit than it got back then and it deserves your rewatch and I feel you will enjoy it and thank me in the end.
More Fun Facts from IMDB:
Book of Shadows Blair Witch 2 was Joe Beringer’s feature film debut. Joe also appeared as “Joe” one of the Burkittsville residents during the films documentary styled opening sequence.
When the tour group picks up Kim in the cemetery she is lying on a tomb marked “Treacle.” According to the mockumentary Curse of the Blair witch, Eileen Treacle was one of the Blair witch’s alleged victims who was drowned in the local creek in 1825.
The term Book of Shadows was indeed added later by the studio even though no such book existed in the movie nor was even mentioned.
By Hugh Patrick (Terrified State)
Terrified State 