Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 – Film Review

A group of college friends embark on the ‘Blair Witch Hunt’ tour after the immense success of The Blair Witch Project and land up at Rustin Parr’s (Raynor Scheine) house. When they wake up the next morning, they remember no details of the previous night.

Because I’m sure most of you guys already know the story behind The Blair Witch Project and how it became to be such an influential piece of cinema, I won’t go into a big, long-winded story about the film and how millions of people all around the world were convinced that the events in the film actually happened, but long story short, that film is still to this day, a massively influential piece of media.

In 2016, a direct sequel to the 1999 hit film was released, simply titled Blair Witch, in which a group of young adults travel to the woods in Burkittsville, Maryland, in order to see if Heather Donahue is actually alive. The film was a relative success (although some critics hated it, not me personally), but what lots of people don’t know is that a Blair Witch Project sequel already came out in the year 2000. Why is it not talked about that much? Well, to put it simply… it sucks.

I will give screenwriters Dick Beebe and Joe Berlinger the benefit of the doubt and say that making a sequel to such a highly acclaimed and nearly universally beloved film would be an extremely tricky task for anybody to do. The first scene is actually quite strong as it shows Burkittsville residents discussing how big the first film was and how it caused an entire town to panic.

Essentially, it’s a film in which The Blair Witch Project is fictional, so kind of like a film within a film. Pretty genius, right? Well, the rest of the film does not follow suit. After the opening scene, the rest of the film divulges into standard and woefully uninspired slasher territory which strikes me as so odd considering how the Blair Witch series is kind of known for being innovative and game-changing.

Why on Earth a group of people thought it would be a great idea to make a tried-and-true slasher set inside the Burkittsville forest is anybody’s guess, but it was a big mistake. This movie should’ve delved deep into the impact that Blair Witch Project had on people and it could’ve even shown a town going into mass hysteria, with hundreds of people talking about it, rendering the town of Burkittsville in chaos.

But, no, the film we get follows a group of annoying characters who wander around the woods and, of course, bad things slowly start to happen. It doesn’t have any of the suspense that Project had and it doesn’t feel like it could possibly be real footage. As mentioned earlier, the 1999 film caused many people to believe that the events depicted in the film were non-fictional. Nobody is going to watch Book of Shadows with the ability to believe it could be even a little bit real.

Plus, the dialogue this time around is straight-up terrible, with so many people saying so many different cringe-worthy things. The characters are extremely dumb and make decisions that nobody in real life would make. Not to mention the fact that the acting here is seriously weak as well. Heather Donahue from the first movie felt like she wasn’t acting at all. It’s a masterful, game-changing performance. None of the actors in this sequel show game-changingly good levels of acting.

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is a majorly disappointing follow-up to one of the most influential horror films of all-time with weak direction, sloppy writing, and bad acting.