Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2

No one is going to expect much from "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2." You expect a sequel to be worse than the original. There's nothing like the fresh shock of the new, after all, and no sequel can be totally fresh, especially if the first film was innovative and daring. You're prepared to make allowances. But there ain't a movie viewer in the whole wide world who'll be prepared to make enough allowances to actually enjoy this sequel to last year's surprise horror smash "The Blair Witch Project."

While "Project" was executed with economy, grace, and a certain honesty that compelled attention even if you didn't end up liking it all that much, "Book of Shadows" is a loud, boorish, shallow, poorly acted, indifferently directed, and (worst of all) completely and utterly conventional horror film. There's no worse sin for a film to commit than being completely uninteresting, especially if the film it follows was one of the most interesting films of the past five years. And on that scale, "Book of Shadows" is one horrifically awful film.

The first few minutes almost promise something good, as we begin with a little mini-documentary on "Blair Witch" hysteria in the wake of the first film. But soon enough, we're going on a camping trip to Burkittsville with five attractive twentysomethings. (Are there far fewer attractive twentysomethings than there were five or so years ago, since they keep getting offed in bad horror films, or what? Someone should check.) The A.T.'s are not characters, they are stereotypes: Jeff the former mental patient, Erica the hot Wicca chick, Kim the supposedly psychic Goth chick, and Stephen and Tristen, the codependent collegiate mythology researchers. (The actors use their real first names in this film, as in "Project," but change their last names, which will make it harder to destroy their careers after this film is released.)

In familiar horror movie fashion, they get superdrunk and higher than Cheech and Chong on payday during their campout, thus showing that they are horrible people who deserve the fates that are coming to them. They videotape the gathering, too, just so they'll have documentary evidence of how drunk they were (or something; it's never explained). But when they wake up from their revels, their cameras are gone...

What follows could be predicted by small children or astute chimpanzees, as the five infight and have revelations and engage in gratuitous sexual fantasies. Or are those fantasies real? Hmmm. While "Project" engaged serious issues with regard to filming and cameras, like the nature of our perceptions through the camera and the ways in which being filmed influences our actions, "Book of Shadows" engages inane issues with regard to filming and cameras, like how many cool cameras Jeff owns or the fact that some videos look different if you play them backwards. "Project" exercised restraint, getting the maximum mileage out of just a few slightly menacing noises in the night and the paranoia that ensued; "Book of Shadows" pulls out every dumb trick in the horror-cliché book, from goofy apparitions to pointless disemboweling footage to completely useless music.

"Project" showed terror's psychological effects on actual human beings, played as real people by real people; Heather Donahue may have screamed a lot and bossed around too much, but she sounded authentic doing it. "Book of Shadows" shows terror's psychological effects on stereotypes which are unenlivened by terrible actors who wouldn't know characterization if they saw an apparition of it (or had a sexual fantasy about it). Finally, while "Project"'s form was perfectly suited to its content - its form was its content, actually - writer/director Joe Berlinger foists a flashback structure on the present film that is as toweringly useless as it is staggeringly incomprehensible. And there's not even a book of shadows anywhere in the film!

No, there's not much to enjoy in "Book of Shadows." We don't even get the ancillary pleasures of the first film, like shout-outs for us Marylanders (Montgomery Blair High School! Utz potato chips!). One can only conclude that someone pushed a big pile of money at Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, who wrote and directed the first film, to get their names and the words "Blair Witch" on it, and then decided that what the public really wanted was not innovation, which they had spent $140 million on in 1999, but rank predictability and poor craftsmanship. It's just not true, and we should tell 'em so by staying away in droves. Then maybe "Blair Witch 3" will tell a story we can all get behind: Elly Kedward and Rustin Parr teaming up to wreak terrible revenge on all those misguided souls who made "Book of Shadows."

DIES IRAE CINEMATICA

You'll notice that, when I really dislike a film, I tend to threaten someone with destruction: the filmmakers, the Earth, the Church of Scientology, Mike Figgis, etc. Just a note for those who are on my stylistic jock. Of note to local people will be the fact that I sat next to Arch Campbell (WRC-4 movie reviewer; dean among local TV cinema critics here) at this preview. This was good, because he and I agreed on the topic of "things in this movie that suck so bad they're actually funny," and we were often the only people laughing in the Motion Picture Association of America screening room. I should have introduced myself, but I felt dirty after watching this film. If any of you view it — and I'm not suggesting you should, but you may have truculent significant others whom it is in your best interest to appease, or an unquenchable appetite for cinematic Goth chicks, or some other weird reason to see this film after reading this review — you'll feel dirty too.

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