Why does the public so freely accept the authenticity of everything captured on video? What are the dangers of fanaticism driven by Hollywood and 24-hour news channels? A motley crew of Blair Witch-obsessed dark tourists led by a pre- Burn Notice Jeffrey Donovan were supposed to provide the answers. Unfortunately, some obtrusive studio execs took things too far the other way.īerlinger had intended for his dramatic directorial debut to pose the type of thought-provoking questions associated with his acclaimed non-fiction work. The Blair Witch's second big-screen outing would have to be a different kind of beast. With audiences inevitably far more web-savvy nearly 18 months on, director Joe Berlinger couldn't rely on the same shock tactics - a tie-in dossier compiled of faux-police reports was fooling no-one this time around.
Not since The Exorcist 26 years earlier had a horror movie traumatized so many cinemagoers. Its shaky-cam found footage technique, then a relatively new concept, only added to the confusion, leaving some viewers stumbling out of early screenings in the belief they'd just witnessed a real-life snuff film. The Blair Witch Project had tapped into the dot com boom like no other movie before, establishing mythology with an official website that ingeniously blurred the lines between fact and fiction. Even its director later tried to distance himself from a follow-up that no one really asked for.īook of Shadows was always going to struggle to connect as viscerally as the original. The Razzies, always primed to hit the most obvious targets, nominated "any two actors" from the film for Worst Screen Couple. "A little indie masterpiece has been falsified and trashed in this spectacularly bad sequel," read one of the more favorable reviews. The pitchforks and burning torches sure were out in full force when Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was rush-released into cinemas just in time for Halloween 2000.
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