Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows (2000)

You hated the book? Now hate the movie!

Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows (2000)
Directed by Joe Berlinger
Written by Dick Beebe, Joe Berlinger, based on characters by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez

1999’s The Blair Witch Project was proof that people will pay to see anything if you hype it enough, even a movie filmed in shaky “Lose-Your-Lunch-O-Vision” and made for less money than what the average moviegoer spends on popcorn and Pepsi. BWP was a big hit, so little time was lost coming up with a sequel about another group of stupid, annoying young people who go into the woods with video cameras, get scared, and swear a lot.

Titles declare that it’s Summer 1999 (right after BWP came out).

Then it’s one year earlier, and a guy in a mental institution is getting force-fed lemonade.

Now it’s November 1999, and the mental patient is undergoing police interrogation about a murdered tour group.

Then it’s long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, and our mental patient is the tour guide for the “Blair Witch Hunt,” a venture designed to exploit fans of the first movie. Everybody with us so far?

Besides Mental Patient/Tour Guide, the Witchmobile contains Preppy, a pompous jerk; Girlfriend, his sweet, mousy helpmate; Wiccan Chick, who came along to nag us about picking on witches; and Goth Girl, who claims to be clairvoyant and who thought The Blair Witch Project was “cool.” (So, while she may possess eerie mental powers, she is clearly lacking some of the regular ones.)

Tour Guide passes out video cameras so the group can record the upcoming paranormal events, and so he can give us the moral of the movie: “Video never lies; film does.” Well, maybe it’s not a moral so much as a Sony slogan, but remember it—it’ll be on the test.

The group is camping by the haunted house from the first movie when a rival tour group shows up. There is an angry confrontation, but our group gets rid of the interlopers by sending them to hunt snipe at Coffin Rock, the location of a notorious made-up historical massacre from the first movie. Then our dedicated team of truth seekers proceeds to smoke joints and guzzle several cases of cheap beer. Maybe the tour should have been called the “The Share Schlitz Project.”

The Teen Gang wakes up the next morning to a gentle snowfall of shredded paper. Yes, the director has torn up the script in frustration. Well, actually Preppie’s witch research has been shredded—and nobody can remember what they did last night! The group watches the tapes to discover what occurred during those missing hours (presumably, they’re looking for more than the giggling, puking, and inane remarks like “I really, really love you, man” that one would expect to see on such a tape.) And then the weird stuff starts to happen. Girlfriend has a scary dream about the Little Rascals looking up her skirt. Everybody else gets heat rash in the form of ancient pagan symbols. The owl from Twin Peaks makes a cameo appearance. Every few minutes we see flash cuts of somebody’s appendectomy. It’s enough to keep you from ever going into the woods, lest you encounter the teddy bears having a picnic.

Careful review of the videotapes shows a woman doing the Hokey Pokey in the nude. Digital enhancement reveals her to be Wiccan Chick. She denies it, claiming her contract provides for a body double. After watching this footage ten or twenty times we are chilled to realize that Wiccan’s breasts are big, yet also perky; this is probably the most unexplainable thing we’ve seen yet.

The next day Wiccan Chick has vanished, leaving her clothes and jewelry lying neatly on the floor. Having seen Left Behind, we suspect that she was raptured. The group blames the absent Wiccan for the eerie visions of Alfalfa and Buckwheat they’ve been experiencing, and for all the calligraphic eczema.

Just then the sheriff, a Southern redneck who can only aspire to a performance as understated and nuanced as Jackie Gleason’s in Smokey and the Bandit, announces that the other tour group was murdered and disemboweled, their entrails arranged in a festive holiday pattern.

Tour Guide opens a closet to change his shirt, and it now contains the body of Wiccan Chick, clad only in her panties. (Amazingly, even in death her breasts are perky.)

The remaining witchbusters are certain that the answer will be found on the videotape of their night in the woods. Eventually they play it backward and learn that Paul is dead, miss him, miss him. It also shows our Scooby Gang having an orgy, flogging each other, and then engaging in a community sing-a-thon. We also see Girlfriend give each of them a knife, which they use to kill the rival sightseers. Preppie tries to make Girlfriend confess to being a witch, but she just laughs and calls him a “pathetic, no-balls bitch.” He then pushes her off a balcony completely by accident.

Back at Redneck HQ, we next see videotape evidence of Tour Guide killing Wiccan Chick. Although we were with him the whole time and swear he is innocent, the sheriff refuses to believe us, because if we’re so smart, why are we still watching this movie? He has a good point, and we agree to turn State’s Evidence.

So, which are we to believe: the 32mm portions of the movie, or the videotape sequences? Well, Tour Guide told us that while film lies, video never does. But then, he’s a mental patient, so why are we listening to him? Having been forced to watch many, many hours of videotaped birthday parties, summer vacations, and dance recitals, it seems to me that while video may tell the truth, it is not the kind of truth that sets one free, but rather the kind that offers no time off for good behavior.

So, there you go.

Were we entertained?

No.

Did we learn anything?

No.

Can we pretend we learned something so it shouldn’t be a total loss?

Yes! I’m gonna pretend we learned physics!

Let’s call it Newton’s Second Law of Sequels: namely, that every movie premise will get bigger and stupider with each succeeding entry in a franchise. Take for example, First Blood, a modest revenge fantasy wherein Vietnam Vet Sylvester Stallone is hassled by the law, so he flips out and kills everyone in town, teaching them a little lesson about the perils of picking on the psychotic. Okay, a bit unlikely, but it could happen, if only in a world where Sylvester Stallone wouldn’t have been declared 4-F due to severe speech impediments. But in the sequel Rambo, Sylvester goes to Vietnam to rescue some MIAs and in the process kills everyone in the country. So now Stallone isn’t just a crazed, if beefy loner, he’s an invulnerable one-man army who retroactively wins the Vietnam War. Finally, in Rambo 3, Sylvester invades Afghanistan to rescue Richard Crenna, and ends up single-handedly killing everybody on the Asian continent. This time he not only won the Cold War, he also took revenge for the Korean War, Pearl Harbor, and the Pokemon phenomena. But it wasn’t without cost. No, it cost $58 million, making each life worth about 63¢. I haven’t seen Rambo: Last Blood, but I like to imagine it involves Stallone ripping the heads off every inhabitant of Earth, probably because he received a summons for jury duty, or his neighbor’s sprinkler got his newspaper wet or something.