It's about nature."Įach character offers a caricature of various Blair Witch fans, all of whom you likely encountered following the rabid reaction to the original film - perhaps one of them is representative of your own reaction. And Erica, a self-professed Wiccan who acts like a 13-year-old who just saw The Craft and decided she was a witch, spouting all-too familiar phrases like "Wicca isn't evil. Stephen and Tristen, a white bread couple working on a book about the history of the Blair Witch and the hysteria provoked by the film. Kim, a frequent Hot Topic shopper and stereotypical goth who claims to be psychic and likes to chill in cemeteries. The sequel follows a variety pack of Blair Witch devotees: Jeff, a former psych ward patient and opportunist who's directed his obsessive energies toward the legend of the Blair Witch (though he's only seen the film 17 times, which seems tame). The film itself is almost Godardian in the way it taunts its audience, though its approach is far more joyful and lacks that specific aggressive and cynical tone.
It's exceedingly rare for sequels to improve upon their originals - more often than not, additional entries offer diminishing returns.īook of Shadows reacts to that demand by satirizing The Blair Witch Project fan base. That a film can inspire such rabid devotion and desire to know more is proof of its triumph, but often our inclination to extend the life of a property is selfish and unreasonable. As fans, we desperately want the story to continue in a sequel because we love that world so, so much, and at the same time, our high-brow selves would prefer that the filmmakers left well enough alone because these films are great as a singular entity. There's a duality in our response to immensely successful properties. Book of Shadows disappointed audiences who just wanted more of the same, and although the commercial and critical response would indicate otherwise, this sequel is not a failure.īerlinger's film is a metatextual reactionary piece - a reaction to the reaction. In 2000, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 hit theaters, offering a different approach to deepening the mythology - instead of repeating the found footage format, director Joe Berlinger presented the sequel as a fictionalized retelling of real events that took place after the release of The Blair Witch Project. Even now, as found footage and POV horror films have remained prolific in the wake of the 1999 film, only Paranormal Activity has managed to replicate that success.Īnd, as with all highly successful pop culture entities, building a franchise to exploit the fan base was inevitable. As with most major pop culture entries, it was satirized, spoofed, often mimicked but never successfully replicated. Understandably, thanks to its forward-thinking viral campaign, unique (at the time) format, and legitimately scary storytelling, The Blair Witch Project was a massive success. Rizkallah, this special could easily prove more entertaining than the film it promotes.The Blair Witch Project is not only single-handedly responsible for popularizing the found footage horror sub-genre (and later, its sibling, the baffling POV footage sub-genre), but for revitalizing the horror genre in the pre-millennium days of Scream and I Know What You Did wannabes. His script weaves in bogus history and legends, but deftly adds nuances of infighting between the FBI and the local sheriff’s department as well as the town residents themselves.Ĭarefully crafted and slickly edited by George P. Writer and director Ben Rock cleverly re-creates the real media hoopla surrounding “Blair Witch” as well as an ensuing backlash by the besieged residents of Burkittsville. His odyssey and those of his four group members makes for the spooky events depicted in “Book 2.” The most fanatical among them is Jeffrey Patterson, who created an elaborate Web site in homage to “Blair Witch Project” and recruited a group of fans to retrace the steps of the three missing filmmakers in the Black Hills.
#Shadow of the blair witch movie
Premise displayed here is that in the wake of all the movie publicity, Goths, Wiccans and folklore fanatics besiege the town of Burkittsville, Md. In the mold of an extremely polished episode of “America’s Most Wanted,” “Shadow” briefly recounts the story of “The Blair Witch Project” and then feeds off into the buzz it created at theaters and on the Internet.
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