Scared? you'll laugh!!! (Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows (DVD))

Member Name: gailsmith

Product:	Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows (DVD)
Date:	30/10/00 (104 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: O.k for a laugh

Disadvantages: not in the least scary

The lights flickered. Suddenly it was pitch dark. Only the luminous hands of my watch told me time was moving.
I was in a big room- how big I couldn't tell from where I was sitting, in a low creaking chair. Slowly, surely, I realised a terrible certainty that this was going to be the most awful time of my life. Clutching the arms of my seat I let out a low moan.It was no good, I was trapped in front of "Book of shadows: Blair witch project 2"
A living hell no-one should have to endure.
The real horror of this film is that it was ever made at all.
The movie opens with a helicopter shot to prove that this time around they've got a decent budget. To a deafening rock soundtrack we fly over the tinybackwater of Burkittsville, scene of the murders in the first movie, to discover it overrun with tourists, gift shops, coach parties- all the result of The Blair witch project.
The latest arrivals of the town are clients of Jeff(Jeffrey Donavan), a young local who has just been released from a mental institution and has set up a Blair Witch Hunt business. How he can tell the difference between the local asylum and his neighbours is anybody's guess.
His customers are a motley crew: Erica (Erica Leerhsen), a practising witch, pregnant Tristen (Tristine Skyler) and her boyfriend Stephen (Stephen Barker Turner), a couple who are planning to write a book on the Blair witch phenomenon, and Kim(Kim Director), a diehard goth with psychic tendencies.
Into the woods they go with a plan to spend the night at that most sinister house where the murdered children were found first time round. Now it's just a crumbling ruin.
Suddenly, a rival tour group stumble upon them- providing the movie's one "jump out of your seat" moment.
But the heroes manage to persuade the one German and two Japanese tourists that the really scary site is just up the road.
The next day they wake up to find the tattered remains of Tristen
and Stephen's notes raining down on them, all their camera equipment gone, and Tristen about to miscarry her baby.
All they have left are the recorded tapes which Kim, using her psychic powers, manages to find buried under rocks.
Worse is to come. When they reach town news is just breaking of a murdered group of tourists who turn out to be the bunch they met the previous night.
By now director and creator Joe Berlinger has got himself over-excited with his new equipment and is throwing everything at the screen in a desperate attempt to add some excitement to the proceedings.
Someone really ought to tell him that using a mishmash of digital video, 16mm, 35mm and computer graphics as well as cranking up the soundtrack every time he wants to add some tension simply doesn't work. The five actors have been screaming since the beginning of the movie - There's no suspense whatsoever.
And by the time they hole up to study the tapes of their mysterious night the movie has become almost a comedy.
Tristen has started to look like an escaped extra from Night of the living dead, while Erica has taken to cavorting naked in the trees.
And the moment of revelation as to what the tapes contain ( only uncovered by running the tapes backards of course!!!) comes as no surprise - we've been subjected to flashbacks since the opening titles.
Joe Berlinger has tried to make a blockbuster movie which examines the roots of collective delusion as evidenced by the public response to The Blair Witch project.
The only person around here under any delusion appears to be Berlinger himself.
He wasted all his energy trying to deliver a "message"movie when all we wanted was to be scared out of our wits.
This movie is really bad, don't waste your money, you'll have more fun going to the dentist!!!!

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