SOME MINOR SPOILERS MAY BE AHEAD!
Father Geek here, I saw BW2 today myself and can say that I agree with Ozy totally on this... its a Damn fine motion picture, not a rehash, not a spoof, but a stand on its own gritty thriller. Harry and I went in today not knowing what to expect, fearful, a little edgey. Hoping to be entertained, thrilled. We came out true believers. The approach is totally different than in the 1st flick, more like a modern retelling of elements of OLD DARK HOUSE (Whale's), AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, TEN LITTLE INDIANS, and/or THE HAUNTING (Wise's) than BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, but still very much tied to, relating to that 1st effort. Very tight, even uptight film making. It pulled me into the events on screen and made me think, but not too much. Harry will be going into it at great length a little later tonight so I'll just turn you over to our Irish editor in Dublin for now...
Seeing Blair Witch Project 2... Now that was a day.. Thanks first to the AICN spy that got me into the first UK screening of a completed print of Blair Witch 2 this week in London - you know who you are and you'll be rewarded with a star on the Euro AICN walk of fame on the Champs Elysses in Paris! Also got to interview the very nice Jeff Donovan and the "If she were President she'd be Baberaham Lincoln" Erica Leehrsen. Nothing earth shattering from that but they both said that Berlinger made them watch Jacob's Ladder before filming and it was a kind of stylistic touchstone for them. Can see where that's coming from and you will too when you go see it (and oh yes my friends that is a when and not an if - BW2 is going to become a no miss event just as the first one was.)
Made for a fascinating day before the screening too - I was there soaking up some culture in that great British repository of looted treasure from the great empires of the ancient world; The British Museum. I found some fascinating signs marked "Ash Factory" that pointed off in one direction. Being the nosey bastard that I am I followed them to another sign marked "This way to the set". Aha I thought! Now we're getting somewhere. Unfortunately that was as far as I got despite the help of a nice security guard who told me that the set was actually that of the new Gwyneth Paltrow movie "Obsession" based on the novel by AS Byatt, and that Gwyn herself was on set that day but no I couldn't get any further without risking him smacking me over the head with a big stick. So near and yet so far...
Anyhew. BW2 - shit or shit hot?
OZY'S REVIEW
Blair Witch Project 2: Book Of Shadows
Seeing Blair Witch Project 2... Now that was a day.. Thanks first to the AICN spy that got me into the first UK screening of a completed print of Blair Witch 2 this week in London - you know who you are and you'll be rewarded with a star on the Euro AICN walk of fame on the Champs Elysses in Paris! Also got to interview the very nice Jeff Donovan and the "If she were President she'd be Baberaham Lincoln" Erica Leehrsen. Nothing earth shattering from that but they both said that Berlinger made them watch Jacob's Ladder before filming and it was a kind of stylistic touchstone for them. Can see where that's coming from and you will too when you go see it (and oh yes my friends that is a when and not an if - BW2 is going to become a no miss event just as the first one was.)
Made for a fascinating day before the screening too - I was there soaking up some culture in that great British repository of looted treasure from the great empires of the ancient world; The British Museum. I found some fascinating signs marked "Ash Factory" that pointed off in one direction. Being the nosey bastard that I am I followed them to another sign marked "This way to the set". Aha I thought! Now we're getting somewhere. Unfortunately that was as far as I got despite the help of a nice security guard who told me that the set was actually that of the new Gwyneth Paltrow movie "Obsession" based on the novel by AS Byatt, and that Gwyn herself was on set that day but no I couldn't get any further without risking him smacking me over the head with a big stick. So near and yet so far...
Anyhew. BW2 - shit or shit hot?
OZY'S REVIEW
Blair Witch Project 2: Book Of Shadows
Anyhew. BW2 - shit or shit hot?
OZY'S REVIEW
Blair Witch Project 2: Book Of Shadows
Blair Witch Project 2: Book Of Shadows
Chances are if you saw the original Blair Witch Project, as a fairly large chunk of the world's moviegoers did, you had already made up your mind about the idea of a sequel before you'd even heard one was heading for your local multiplex. The level of interest from everyone I've spoken to since I attended the screening has been huge and all anyone wants to know is "Is it any good?" And I'll give you the same answer I've given all of them. It's fascinating.
Its first steps off the conventional path of sequeldom lie in the way it sets itself up in the first few minutes. Yes, it does have all of its actors using their real names and it tries to claim it's a representation of real events just as the first one did (it tells you that what you're watching is a fictionalised version of actual happenings) but this sequel isn't set in the world of the first film. Rather the five characters we're given to observe have all seen the original movie and are in Burkittsville for varying reasons from profiteering Jeff to white witch Erica, Blair Witch fanatic Kim and Tristen and Stephen who are writing a book about the Blair Witch phenomenon.
They head off into the woods on a "Blair Witch Hunt", get suitably boozed and doped up and then wake up the next morning with five hours missing from their lives for which no one is able to account. Thankfully they have videotapes of the whole night and fall back to Jeff's creepy warehouse to find out just what happened. And its then that things start to go whacko.
BW2 is a post-modern meditation on art, its influences on its audience, its relationship to the media, how it blurs the line between fantasy and reality and the nature of mass delusions masquerading as a conventional teen slasher flick - for that it deserves my sincere admiration. However its fatal flaw is that in the midst of all this subtext the actual text of the screenplay feels a bit flabby. If you're reading it just as a scary movie (which, lets face it, 90% of the audience will) you might feel a bit bored by its fairly standard haunted house/scary witch routine. But if you're willing to scratch just below the surface it opens up a whole can of cockroaches that so few horror movies ever do.
The cast are good (Kim Director, Erica Leerhsen and Jeff Donovan in particular will not be relative unknowns for long), the soundtrack is pumping (I adored the Marilyn Manson over the opening helicopter shot of the Black Hills) and Joe Berlinger (the award winning documentarian in his first fictional feature) has set himself up as a director of ambition and intelligence.
Just as with BW1 the movie's ending may leave many of its audience's less inquiring minds scratching their heads looking for a conventional denouement it's unwilling to give. The last ten minutes of the movie give it its purpose, its meaning and ultimately leave you re-evaluating everything you've seen and heard since the group entered the woods.
Joe Berlinger has made a brave, bold and intelligent stab (if you'll pardon the pun) at following the most talked about movie of the last few years and in the process has given us a cranked up Crucible for the Millennium generation. Fascinating.
