Blair Witch 2 (Book Of Shadows - Blair Witch 2 (DVD))

Member Name: sharktrager

Product:	Book Of Shadows - Blair Witch 2 (DVD)
Date:	10/01/02 (124 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Not like the original

Disadvantages: Not like the original (!!)

--------
THE FILM
--------

This sequel to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT follows the line that the original movie was just that - a movie - and presents us with a group of fans who travel to Burkittsville to visit the place where it was filmed.

Jeff Patterson (played by Jeff Donovan) is a Burkittsville resident who decides he's going to make money off of the popularity of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT by selling home-made merchandise and running a tour of the area. The group who we see him take (the first group he's ever taken) consist of an 'intellectual' couple wanting to write a book about the phenomenon, a witch (played by the gorgeous Erica Leehrson) and a goth. This tour group get drunk one night and 'lose' five hours of their life, and the rest of the movie takes them through the following few days as they become more and more psychotic and piece together what happened during that time.

Although it's a sequel to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, this is a very different movie. None of the original characters appear, and indeed the first movie is acknowledged as having been a movie and not reality. BOOK OF SHADOWS was derided when it first came out, but I think that this derision was a great shame, because this is a good (although not great) movie. Rather than simply re-hash what had gone before, the director, Joe Berlinger, took a different tack and came up with something original. It's still not as good as THE LAST BROADCAST, which is clearly an unacknowledged influence on both this movie and the first BLAIR WITCH, but it's good nonetheless.

------------------
THE DVD COMMENTARY
------------------

I watched BOOK OF SHADOWS on DVD, and immediately afterwood watched it again, this time listening to the commentary track by director Joe Berlinger. I learned a lot from listening to this, although it is a shame that he repeats himself so much. One of the interesting things he talks about is
the fact that he didn't like the way the original BLAIR WITCH movie was presented to the public. Berlinger is a respected documentary filmmaker (BOOK OF SHADOWS was his first fiction feature film) and has a bee in his bonnet that THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT was publicised as being a documentary when it was first thrust on the world. He doesn't think that an audience should be conned in this way as it demeans both the audience and filmmakers (especially documentary filmmakers). This is a theme which runs throughout the movie, tied in with other comments on the media. Berlinger rants a lot during his commentary, but it is definately nice to hear an intellectual commentary about the media as a whole.

-------------------------
SHADOW OF THE BLAIR WITCH
-------------------------

This 'documentary' is another feature of the DVD. I wouldn't mind knowing Joe Berlinger's thoughts about it, because in my opinion, this kind of thing is more dangerous than the fake-documentary film. When THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT came out, the US Sci Fi Channel aired a programme called CURSE OF THE BLAIR WITCH, which was a fake documentary and was one of the ways in which the public was led to believe that the incidents in the film really happened. But with BOOK OF SHADOWS, what could they do? The movie is put across as a fictional story, so how could they scare the public this time? They made SHADOW OF THE BLAIR WITCH. This is another fake documentary, which posits that the film is based on real events, with a real Jeff Patterson being on trial for the murders which took place. THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN but I can guess that there are a lot of people in the States who believe that it did. The fact that this programme makes references to other cults and murders which are known to be true (such as Heaven's Gate, Son Of Sam, Charles Manson) only adds to this belief. And that is scary.

---------------
ALSO ON THE DVD
---------------
>
THE BURKITTSVILLE 7 - another fake documentary, this time about Rustin Parr, a guy who in the 1940s murdered seven children, who said that he did it because the Blair Witch told him to.

INTERVIEWS - interviews with 2 of the stars and the director of the movie. It's a shame that the interview simply repeats what Berlinger repeated over and over again in his commentary!

MUSIC VIDEO - a live performance by a band. No reference is made to how this ties in with the movie. Does the song get played somewhere in the film? A complete waste of space and time.

TRAILERS - two trailers for the movie. These are always good to watch on a DVD to show how movies are marketed.

BIOGRAPHIES - Written biographies of the major players in the film. I'm sure they are interesting, but does anyone really read these? They'd be much more interesting if they were put together as another documentary.

-------------
OVERALL VIEW
-------------

MOVIE - good.
DVD - okay.

Summary: