Book of Shadows - Blair Witch 2
Starring:Anja Baron, Deb Burgoyne, Pete Burris, Peggy K. Chang, Andrea Cox, Kim Director, Jeffrey Donovan, Lanny Flaherty, Briton Green, Erik Jensen (II), Erica Leerhsen, Kurt Loder, Lynda Millard, Sara Phillips, Bruce Reed (III), Chuck Scarborough, Tristine Skyler, Tony Tsang, Stephen Barker Turner
Studio: Live / Artisan
Product Type: DVD
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
This thoroughly second-rate follow-up to the groundbreaking (and highly profitable) horror flick The Blair Witch Project--produced by Blair Witch directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez--plays with the notions of reality and fantasy that surrounded the hype of the original movie, and attempts to throw in some scares along the way. A year after the release of the original film, a group of five Blair Witch aficionados--four out-of-towners led by one seriously unhinged "tour guide"--venture into the woods outside Burkittsville, Maryland, on a tour of the sites made famous by missing documentarians Heather, Mike, and Josh. After a drunken night of camping out in hopes of communing with the spirit of the Blair Witch, the five wake up to find that their seemingly innocent sleep may have been disturbed somehow. But what exactly happened? If you're expecting suspense of the first degree and a horrifying payoff similar to the one that climaxed the first film, you'll be sorely disappointed. After retreating to an old, run-down broom factory (get it? Broom factory? Blair Witch? Oh well...), the five go over their videotapes of the night in question to get some answers, and basically wind up screaming at each other for the remainder of the film, and shedding some blood along the way. Documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger (of the highly acclaimed Paradise Lost and Brother's Keeper) proves that he should definitely stick to nonfiction filmmaking, and the entire cast is grating and unpleasant, aside from a scene-stealing turn by Kim Director as a goth chick with attitude to burn and a no-nonsense approach to this Blair Witch stuff. Strictly for hard-core Blair Witch fans only, and even then this sequel may prove to disappoint. --Mark Englehart
Average customer rating:
- Embrace Some Ambiguity, Baby.
- It's not that bad...well, in a way
- absolute insult to the origional!
- Better than the first, Better than most....
- bottom of the barrel film making
|
Book of Shadows - Blair Witch 2
Starring: Anja Baron , Deb Burgoyne , Pete Burris , Peggy K. Chang , and Andrea Cox
Manufacturer: Lions Gate
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- The Blair Witch Project
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- The Ring (Widescreen Edition)
ASIN: B00005NB8M
Release Date: 2001-09-18 |
Amazon.com
This thoroughly second-rate follow-up to the groundbreaking (and highly profitable) horror flick The Blair Witch Project--produced by Blair Witch directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez--plays with the notions of reality and fantasy that surrounded the hype of the original movie, and attempts to throw in some scares along the way. A year after the release of the original film, a group of five Blair Witch aficionados--four out-of-towners led by one seriously unhinged "tour guide"--venture into the woods outside Burkittsville, Maryland, on a tour of the sites made famous by missing documentarians Heather, Mike, and Josh. After a drunken night of camping out in hopes of communing with the spirit of the Blair Witch, the five wake up to find that their seemingly innocent sleep may have been disturbed somehow. But what exactly happened? If you're expecting suspense of the first degree and a horrifying payoff similar to the one that climaxed the first film, you'll be sorely disappointed. After retreating to an old, run-down broom factory (get it? Broom factory? Blair Witch? Oh well...), the five go over their videotapes of the night in question to get some answers, and basically wind up screaming at each other for the remainder of the film, and shedding some blood along the way. Documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger (of the highly acclaimed Paradise Lost and Brother's Keeper) proves that he should definitely stick to nonfiction filmmaking, and the entire cast is grating and unpleasant, aside from a scene-stealing turn by Kim Director as a goth chick with attitude to burn and a no-nonsense approach to this Blair Witch stuff. Strictly for hard-core Blair Witch fans only, and even then this sequel may prove to disappoint. --Mark Englehart
Customer Reviews:
Embrace Some Ambiguity, Baby........2007-07-01
I love the first thirty minutes of this movie. I like the characters, the feel of things, the way the story is developing and the constant use of the soundtrack. Then, as the movie winds its way into "scare" mode, things start to stall and finally come to a screeching halt. But back to the good points. Kim Director is excellent as "Kim Diamond" the goth empath. I also liked Erika Leerhsen as overbearing "Wiccan Hottie" and Jeffery Donovan as the slightly crazy Jeff Patterson (In an homage to the first Blair Witch, the main characters have the same names as the actors portraying them). Tristan Skyler and Stephen B. Turner have taken a lot of flack on here for their portrayals of a researcher and his fiance, but they do the best with what they are given: the "serious" roles in the group of four people taking the inaugural trip on Jeff's "Blair Witch Hunt" tour of Burkittsville, MD, home of the Blair Witch. Look for product placement galore: Shinerbock beer, Pete's Wicked Ale, Moosehead Beer. The scenes at the convenience store are hilarious: the store only sells the above three beers! Also, the weird little hidden things that the DVD touts as the "Secrets of ESREVER!" are interesting to try to find.
The next two thirds of the movie is awful and not in a funny way. I never stop being disappointed in what I see. Much has been made of the movie "operating at a higher level" than a horror movie or suffering from its relationship to the original Blair Witch movie. Nothing could be further from the truth. This movie was promoted as a "real life" documentary that had to be altered slightly to avoid a lawsuit from the families of the victims. There was a made for TV movie called "Shadow of the Bliar Witch" released just before BW2 that played this up to the hilt: in it footage of the "REAL" Jeff Patterson and his "REAL" tour group are spliced in with "REAL" news footage from Burkittsville, etc., all in an attempt to make the viewer believe that BW2, like BW1, was based on real events. So, everything was set up to make a movie IN the "Blair Witch Mythos," but something bad happened along the way. It's my opinion that writer/ director Joe Berlinger really dropped the ball in his work on this movie and he proves it in his comments in the DVD booklet. He goes on and on about his "vision", etc., etc. and finally makes the statement that with BW2 he has "embraced ambiguity." In other words, he doesn't know what it means either. Well, that might be a good thing when one is describing their 12th grade charcoal drawing for art class, but it's not enough when one is attempting to justify screwing up what could have been a great movie.
It's not that bad...well, in a way.......2006-12-25
You know it's strange but I swore I could've remembered watching the entire film once. It's been on TV quite a few times and I remember watching it when I rented it but watching it recently I was surprised by how little I remembered of it. Walking around at the store, I noticed one of those patented gift sets where you can buy a set containing all the movies about a certain subject or filmmaker or franchise and sure enough there was a double-pack containing both Blair Witch films, a CD-Rom and a stick-man necklace. I thought I'd just review 2 since I haven't done that yet and found that while it's not Battlefield Earth or House of the Dead bad, there's a huge chunk of "missed opportunity syndrome" running rampant.
The original was a mock documentary that was advertised as the real deal. The sequel pretends it really did happen so we have 2 researchers (Tristan and Stephen), a goth chick (Kim) an unbelievably sexy Wicca (Erica) and a former mental patient/director (Jeff) who attend Jeff's tour of the famous sites. Only things, naturally, turn creepy and find everything totalled and hours missing. They go to Jeff's house where things get even more twisted and videotapes show lots of things that go bump in the night.
Cheesy story description I know but seriously, how else can I do it? As director Joe Berlinger says in the booklet, it would've been silly to continue the story of Josh, Mike and Heather since they're on and about and doing movies and TV shows so instead they have a story that pretends the movie was real, hence stuff like "man that movie was so cool, we really connected" or the trailer line "cause I thought the movie was cool". The one problem with the film was that it just didn't feel scary or suspenseful. Sure the story was interesting and the premise but nothing seemed to match the tent scene, the ending or even Heather's apology in the original.
The acting is kind of hit-or-miss. We get scene-stealing Kim Director who thankfully isn't that brooding "I love goth stuff, woo goth!" that I sometimes see and we get the unbelievably hot Erica Leerhsen who's also a talent to watch but then we get Lanny Flaherty who's ridiculously over-the-top or Stephen Barker Turner who almost tries too hard. But the film as a horror is only very marginally effective but at least the cast at times acts like it's worth a damn unlike the new wave of horror actors where it's like "please, write her off".
Book of Shadows is almost like those inoffensive films that I sometimes see: it didn't make me outright hate it, but I didn't really love it but I didn't feel I wasted my time.
absolute insult to the origional!.......2006-12-04
anyone who likes this sequal (i don't even consider it a sequal to BWP)is mentally retarded...or just like crappy movies.
Better than the first, Better than most...........2006-10-17
Okay, if I get one person to see this movie and like it as much as I did, I feel like I accomplished something. From the opening credits w/Marilyn Manson's 'Disposable Teens' set to a flurry of autumn colors and blood spatter to the whole 'nothing was what it seems' ending, this movie is classic in almost every way. Forget the fact it's a sequel. Forget anything that annoyed you about the first movie. Think of this as just 'Book of Shadows', not a sequel...Joe B. is a smart filmmaker, and at least this movie offers us something than the usual slasher fare; There are some truly unsettling developments in this movie; The production, art design, and acting are much better than most. I was most impressed with the reactions of the characters during the final 15 minutes of the movie, when things really start to fall apart; One of the last scenes involves a certain character(this is NOT a spolier....)screaming that what he had just saw on tape was not what he had seen himself in person; His reaction was just like mine would have been, and it was pretty intense to say the least. This movie got a raw deal. I'm sure someone out there agrees...
bottom of the barrel film making.......2006-06-29
this in name only sequel to the hit blair witch movies is the pits. the only good thing about it is they did try to make a different kind of film from the first.but having said that,that is the only good thing. the plot is a mess and the cast really gets on your nerves. the story about a group of kids taking a tour of the sites of the first movie and finding themselves in over their heads after a night where they can't remember what they did or how their campsite got torn up is very thin(i spoted the "twist" 5 mins. after it started)and it never gets you to belive in the story! SKIP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Average customer rating:
- Embrace Some Ambiguity, Baby.
- It's not that bad...well, in a way
- absolute insult to the origional!
- Better than the first, Better than most....
- bottom of the barrel film making
|
Book of Shadows - Blair Witch 2
Starring: Anja Baron , Deb Burgoyne , Pete Burris , Peggy K. Chang , and Andrea Cox
Manufacturer: Live / Artisan
ProductGroup: DVD
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- The Blair Witch Project
- House on Haunted Hill
- Jeepers Creepers
- Thirteen Ghosts
- The Ring (Widescreen Edition)
ASIN: B000056T5E
Release Date: 2001-03-13 |
Amazon.com
This thoroughly second-rate follow-up to the groundbreaking (and highly profitable) horror flick The Blair Witch Project--produced by Blair Witch directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez--plays with the notions of reality and fantasy that surrounded the hype of the original movie, and attempts to throw in some scares along the way. A year after the release of the original film, a group of five Blair Witch aficionados--four out-of-towners led by one seriously unhinged "tour guide"--venture into the woods outside Burkittsville, Maryland, on a tour of the sites made famous by missing documentarians Heather, Mike, and Josh. After a drunken night of camping out in hopes of communing with the spirit of the Blair Witch, the five wake up to find that their seemingly innocent sleep may have been disturbed somehow. But what exactly happened? If you're expecting suspense of the first degree and a horrifying payoff similar to the one that climaxed the first film, you'll be sorely disappointed. After retreating to an old, run-down broom factory (get it? Broom factory? Blair Witch? Oh well...), the five go over their videotapes of the night in question to get some answers, and basically wind up screaming at each other for the remainder of the film, and shedding some blood along the way. Documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger (of the highly acclaimed Paradise Lost and Brother's Keeper) proves that he should definitely stick to nonfiction filmmaking, and the entire cast is grating and unpleasant, aside from a scene-stealing turn by Kim Director as a goth chick with attitude to burn and a no-nonsense approach to this Blair Witch stuff. Strictly for hard-core Blair Witch fans only, and even then this sequel may prove to disappoint. --Mark Englehart
Customer Reviews:
Embrace Some Ambiguity, Baby........2007-07-01
I love the first thirty minutes of this movie. I like the characters, the feel of things, the way the story is developing and the constant use of the soundtrack. Then, as the movie winds its way into "scare" mode, things start to stall and finally come to a screeching halt. But back to the good points. Kim Director is excellent as "Kim Diamond" the goth empath. I also liked Erika Leerhsen as overbearing "Wiccan Hottie" and Jeffery Donovan as the slightly crazy Jeff Patterson (In an homage to the first Blair Witch, the main characters have the same names as the actors portraying them). Tristan Skyler and Stephen B. Turner have taken a lot of flack on here for their portrayals of a researcher and his fiance, but they do the best with what they are given: the "serious" roles in the group of four people taking the inaugural trip on Jeff's "Blair Witch Hunt" tour of Burkittsville, MD, home of the Blair Witch. Look for product placement galore: Shinerbock beer, Pete's Wicked Ale, Moosehead Beer. The scenes at the convenience store are hilarious: the store only sells the above three beers! Also, the weird little hidden things that the DVD touts as the "Secrets of ESREVER!" are interesting to try to find.
The next two thirds of the movie is awful and not in a funny way. I never stop being disappointed in what I see. Much has been made of the movie "operating at a higher level" than a horror movie or suffering from its relationship to the original Blair Witch movie. Nothing could be further from the truth. This movie was promoted as a "real life" documentary that had to be altered slightly to avoid a lawsuit from the families of the victims. There was a made for TV movie called "Shadow of the Bliar Witch" released just before BW2 that played this up to the hilt: in it footage of the "REAL" Jeff Patterson and his "REAL" tour group are spliced in with "REAL" news footage from Burkittsville, etc., all in an attempt to make the viewer believe that BW2, like BW1, was based on real events. So, everything was set up to make a movie IN the "Blair Witch Mythos," but something bad happened along the way. It's my opinion that writer/ director Joe Berlinger really dropped the ball in his work on this movie and he proves it in his comments in the DVD booklet. He goes on and on about his "vision", etc., etc. and finally makes the statement that with BW2 he has "embraced ambiguity." In other words, he doesn't know what it means either. Well, that might be a good thing when one is describing their 12th grade charcoal drawing for art class, but it's not enough when one is attempting to justify screwing up what could have been a great movie.
It's not that bad...well, in a way.......2006-12-25
You know it's strange but I swore I could've remembered watching the entire film once. It's been on TV quite a few times and I remember watching it when I rented it but watching it recently I was surprised by how little I remembered of it. Walking around at the store, I noticed one of those patented gift sets where you can buy a set containing all the movies about a certain subject or filmmaker or franchise and sure enough there was a double-pack containing both Blair Witch films, a CD-Rom and a stick-man necklace. I thought I'd just review 2 since I haven't done that yet and found that while it's not Battlefield Earth or House of the Dead bad, there's a huge chunk of "missed opportunity syndrome" running rampant.
The original was a mock documentary that was advertised as the real deal. The sequel pretends it really did happen so we have 2 researchers (Tristan and Stephen), a goth chick (Kim) an unbelievably sexy Wicca (Erica) and a former mental patient/director (Jeff) who attend Jeff's tour of the famous sites. Only things, naturally, turn creepy and find everything totalled and hours missing. They go to Jeff's house where things get even more twisted and videotapes show lots of things that go bump in the night.
Cheesy story description I know but seriously, how else can I do it? As director Joe Berlinger says in the booklet, it would've been silly to continue the story of Josh, Mike and Heather since they're on and about and doing movies and TV shows so instead they have a story that pretends the movie was real, hence stuff like "man that movie was so cool, we really connected" or the trailer line "cause I thought the movie was cool". The one problem with the film was that it just didn't feel scary or suspenseful. Sure the story was interesting and the premise but nothing seemed to match the tent scene, the ending or even Heather's apology in the original.
The acting is kind of hit-or-miss. We get scene-stealing Kim Director who thankfully isn't that brooding "I love goth stuff, woo goth!" that I sometimes see and we get the unbelievably hot Erica Leerhsen who's also a talent to watch but then we get Lanny Flaherty who's ridiculously over-the-top or Stephen Barker Turner who almost tries too hard. But the film as a horror is only very marginally effective but at least the cast at times acts like it's worth a damn unlike the new wave of horror actors where it's like "please, write her off".
Book of Shadows is almost like those inoffensive films that I sometimes see: it didn't make me outright hate it, but I didn't really love it but I didn't feel I wasted my time.
absolute insult to the origional!.......2006-12-04
anyone who likes this sequal (i don't even consider it a sequal to BWP)is mentally retarded...or just like crappy movies.
Better than the first, Better than most...........2006-10-17
Okay, if I get one person to see this movie and like it as much as I did, I feel like I accomplished something. From the opening credits w/Marilyn Manson's 'Disposable Teens' set to a flurry of autumn colors and blood spatter to the whole 'nothing was what it seems' ending, this movie is classic in almost every way. Forget the fact it's a sequel. Forget anything that annoyed you about the first movie. Think of this as just 'Book of Shadows', not a sequel...Joe B. is a smart filmmaker, and at least this movie offers us something than the usual slasher fare; There are some truly unsettling developments in this movie; The production, art design, and acting are much better than most. I was most impressed with the reactions of the characters during the final 15 minutes of the movie, when things really start to fall apart; One of the last scenes involves a certain character(this is NOT a spolier....)screaming that what he had just saw on tape was not what he had seen himself in person; His reaction was just like mine would have been, and it was pretty intense to say the least. This movie got a raw deal. I'm sure someone out there agrees...
bottom of the barrel film making.......2006-06-29
this in name only sequel to the hit blair witch movies is the pits. the only good thing about it is they did try to make a different kind of film from the first.but having said that,that is the only good thing. the plot is a mess and the cast really gets on your nerves. the story about a group of kids taking a tour of the sites of the first movie and finding themselves in over their heads after a night where they can't remember what they did or how their campsite got torn up is very thin(i spoted the "twist" 5 mins. after it started)and it never gets you to belive in the story! SKIP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Average customer rating:
- This movie spelled the end for the blair witch franchise
- A mixed bag.
- Everything is so clear now...
- What might have been...
- A modern FUTURE day anti-media fairy tale warning?,
|
The Blair Witch Project / Book of Shadows - Blair Witch 2 (Special Edition)
Starring: M Williams , and J Donovan
Manufacturer: Live / Artisan
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Similar Items:
- The Blair Witch Project
- Saw II - Unrated (Two-Disc Special Edition)
- The Shining
- The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Unrated Special Edition) [HD DVD]
ASIN: B00005NX14
Release Date: 2001-10-23 |
Customer Reviews:
This movie spelled the end for the blair witch franchise.......2006-02-09
As I sat through this movie, I wondered: WHAT were they thinking? The first movie was so original and so creepy, yet the second movie resorted to using tired old stereotypical characters - the goth chick, the crazy guy, the misunderstood wiccan - and none of those characters came across in a realistic way. The characters in this movie were so one-dimensional that it was painful to watch. It was almost as if they wanted to release SOMETHING, as fast as they could, in order to capitalize on the success of the first movie, that they didn't care about the quality of their work.
A mixed bag........2004-10-05
"The Blair Witch Project" is not a beautiful or profound movie; it is a really scary and entertaining one.
I like horror movies and I've seen dozens of them, by great directors (Murnau, Dreyer, Mamoulian, Browning, Tourneur, Murakami, Polanski, Kubrick etc.), uneven directors (Carpenter, Corman, Craven, Hooper, Raimi, Romero etc.), and bad directors (the vast majority - including of course Stephen King the film maker). Often those which we lazily categorize as "great horror movies" are not meant to be simply horror-genre movies: they often are psychological, even psychoanalytical, thrillers (think of Jacques Tourneur and Stanley Kubrick), social satires (Roman Polanski), fantasies (Haruki Murakami), allegories etc. However horror-genre movies are primarily (and often exclusively) meant to be scary entertainments; as such, I think "BW1" is a pretty good movie (as such, worthy of 4 stars). Quite the opposite is true of "BW2", which is an awful mess, a boring, ridiculous, poorly written, shot and acted trash-movie (0 stars - I abhor it). Avoid it.
Everything is so clear now..........2004-04-14
What type of moron decided, "Hey! Let's make a 'sequel" to the BWP," is probably the question on everyone's mind. I have the answer. STUPIDITY. I bet every person who went and saw the first movie went and saw the second one just out of morbid curiosity to see if it explained ANYTHING. I am guilty of this. My figuring was, "Hell, it can't get much worse than the first one..." Oh, was I wrong. The whole premise of the movie was this guy has this "tour" of the woods where the Blair Witch kids "died." The main characters are, The tour guy, the documentary couple, the wiccan, and of course there had to be a goth chick. What did you expect? Anyway. These people go shopping for booze and food and tromp into the woods and nothing really happens...or so they thought. This should have been my first clue to up and leave. Then out of nowhere the girl in the "couple" has a miscarriage and they rush to the hospital and she starts seeing this little girl. Oh. Yeah. They also got their equipment damaged and then found the tapes where the other tapes were in the ground. Sorry. After that, they go back to the tour guys house and that's where it gets "scary." Weird stuff starts happening, the girl in the couple starts going insane and they just happen to find that on the tapes they find some missing hours where they killed the people on the other tour and, I dunno, had some orgy-ish magic ritual? So. The wiccan goes missing and blah blah blah. In the end they thought the girl in the couple was the Blair Witch or something and kill her and then they get taken to jail and then come to find that they killed her when she was "sane" and that they also killed the Wiccan. The goth chick ends up killing the manager of the store, "Peggy." They all go to jail. The End. Moral? Kiddies, this is what happens when you sucker into stupid movies like The Blair Witch Project. Beware.
What might have been..........2003-10-05
I found this set in the bargain bin. It was inexpensive enough, so I bought it, being a fan of the original Blair Witch Project (and also coming from Orlando, like the film-makers), and having no idea what the sequel was like -- other than most people said it stank up the joint.
The set is a mixed bag. Despite some genuine hackle-raising moments (when the video camera is hunting in the dark and we hear, for God's sake LAUGHING CHILDREN in the woods), the original Blair Witch is uneven, with the improvised dialog occasionally backfiring. There are moments when the spell breaks and we can tell that the actors are self-consciously going for moments, rather than remaining immersed in their characters. But these are quibbles. The Blair Witch Project remains a stunning acheivement if for no other reason than its sheer audacity. The nerve of these guys, Myreck and Sanchez. The chutzpah. I admire it.
Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows is almost a good movie, and probably would have been, were it not for idiot studio bean-counters A) rushing the production (soup to nuts in ONE year), and B) interfering with the creative process. Listen to director Joe Berlinger's somewhat pained commentary track and you'll understand what I mean. His intent (which probably would have worked), was to go for a subversive, darkly satiric take on the so-called "Blair Witch phenomenon" and its subsequent backlash, while at the same time making a genuine psychological thriller on the nature of evil (human? occult? a mixture of both? he wanted it ambiguous).
Alas, while creative people and thoughtful film-goers like philosophical ambiguity, studio bosses don't. So they made him dumb it down. Berlinger is a gifted documentarian who should have been allowed, for his first feature film, to exercise his creative muscles in the realm of a fictional narrative. As it stands, a lot of carefully modulated effects are placed out of their original sequence. Only a viewing of his original cut would tell us if they would have worked better as originally conceived, but as it stands, Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, is a noble ruin -- a film with some very good ideas that are not allowed to get very far. It's a shame.
The DVDs are chock-full of extras, including some nifty puzzles and creepy, hidden images. Overall, it's worth the purchase, if only as a cautionary tale to other would-be film-makers -- be they from Orlando, Florida, or anywhere else.
A modern FUTURE day anti-media fairy tale warning?, .......2003-08-16
I found Blair Witch 2 Book Of Shadows to be a vastly entertaining and insightfull commentary into media and popular culture, a modern FUTURE day anti-media fairy tale warning? Sinply this movies has a great story, very different and unique and definitely better than the Blair Witch 1. The knockout punch is it puts an original spin on the late 90's teen squeal series of Scream, Urban Legends, I Know What You Did Last Summer film genres and conversly puts them to shame. Extending on it's modern/future day society insights, one of the characters said he made money from ebay. I can relate to him as it's such a techno savvy and new age word to use. It extended on the original Blair Witch dvd commentary where the directors sold there camera on ebay...Though that's where the similarities end as 'Book Of Shadows' is not your standard home video camera farce. All in all it uses more sophisticated plot devices, well constructed dialogue and usual plethora of expensive camera angles. On top of that the DVD features comprehensive and value for money special features. Turn the DVD over and you have a CD album soundtrack which is not your standard low volume, classical score type: it's more a sonice band composition. Well worth using the DVD ROM for it has a full size script during the movie. So whilst it dosen't have complete special features you can utilise the script as replacement for subtitles.
![Book of Shadows: Blair Witch Project 2 [Region 2]](http://www.germanelectronics88.com/noimage.gif)
Average customer rating:
- Trial and Error Doesn't Work In This One.
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Book of Shadows: Blair Witch Project 2 [Region 2]
ProductGroup: DVD
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ASIN: B00005QC3M |
Customer Reviews:
Trial and Error Doesn't Work In This One........2006-10-02
In Burkitsville, Maryland, haunted in the past by Ellie, the Blair witch, the old Civil War era broom factory was comandeered by a local mental patient, Jeffrey Donovan. Since the first movie, groups of supernatural devotees make nocturnal visits the the Union Cemetery and the surrounding woods hunting for the victims who'd disappeared while recording the Blair Witch Project. The mental patient makes a good living off stealing the property from these unsuspecting hikers; the factory is full of stuff he sells on EBay. He accumulates the merchandise he offers by stashing most of it in his living quarters at the run down factory. He claims he was locked up in the padded room of the mental hospital at the time the first group vanished, leaving behind the video tapes which he hid under a rock wall.
The first account was wo swird it had to be a hoax. No one just disapperars (except Jimmy Hoffa) never to be found. The bodies of the group killed in the followup were discovered. The actors including Tristan Schyler moved in with this psycho and two of the girls were his victims in a ritualistic, drug-induced sex orgy. The Elvira character, Kim Diamond, dressed all in black with black makeup like the devil worshippers who vamp East Town Mall and use the public computers to look at human sacrifices on the Internet. She was responsible for the deaths of both girls, as she was involved in witchcraft and claimed to be possessed by Ellie. The tapes tell the whole story of hysteria and false illusions, as the murders were brutal and the victims tortured in a Satanic manner -- all on tape.
Finally, the police raid the factory and charge the mental patient and surviving video students from Montgomery College. This is all wrong. It was out-of-this-world (other-worldly) horrid in context and amateurish in the acting. I did not look for the hidden images. I could not wait to turn the awful thing off, as it was so bad.
Average customer rating:
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Book of Shadows: Blair Witch Project 2 [Region 2]
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ASIN: B00006JY2S |
![Book of Shadows: Blair Witch Project 2 [Region 2]](http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/21WTJM3JSNL.jpg)
Average customer rating:
- Embrace Some Ambiguity, Baby.
- It's not that bad...well, in a way
- absolute insult to the origional!
- Better than the first, Better than most....
- bottom of the barrel film making
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Book of Shadows: Blair Witch Project 2 [Region 2]
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Similar Items:
- The Blair Witch Project
- House on Haunted Hill
- Jeepers Creepers
- Thirteen Ghosts
- The Ring (Widescreen Edition)
ASIN: B00005EAZS |
Amazon.com
This thoroughly second-rate follow-up to the groundbreaking (and highly profitable) horror flick The Blair Witch Project--produced by Blair Witch directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez--plays with the notions of reality and fantasy that surrounded the hype of the original movie, and attempts to throw in some scares along the way. A year after the release of the original film, a group of five Blair Witch aficionados--four out-of-towners led by one seriously unhinged "tour guide"--venture into the woods outside Burkittsville, Maryland, on a tour of the sites made famous by missing documentarians Heather, Mike, and Josh. After a drunken night of camping out in hopes of communing with the spirit of the Blair Witch, the five wake up to find that their seemingly innocent sleep may have been disturbed somehow. But what exactly happened? If you're expecting suspense of the first degree and a horrifying payoff similar to the one that climaxed the first film, you'll be sorely disappointed. After retreating to an old, run-down broom factory (get it? Broom factory? Blair Witch? Oh well...), the five go over their videotapes of the night in question to get some answers, and basically wind up screaming at each other for the remainder of the film, and shedding some blood along the way. Documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger (of the highly acclaimed Paradise Lost and Brother's Keeper) proves that he should definitely stick to nonfiction filmmaking, and the entire cast is grating and unpleasant, aside from a scene-stealing turn by Kim Director as a goth chick with attitude to burn and a no-nonsense approach to this Blair Witch stuff. Strictly for hard-core Blair Witch fans only, and even then this sequel may prove to disappoint. --Mark Englehart
Customer Reviews:
Embrace Some Ambiguity, Baby........2007-07-01
I love the first thirty minutes of this movie. I like the characters, the feel of things, the way the story is developing and the constant use of the soundtrack. Then, as the movie winds its way into "scare" mode, things start to stall and finally come to a screeching halt. But back to the good points. Kim Director is excellent as "Kim Diamond" the goth empath. I also liked Erika Leerhsen as overbearing "Wiccan Hottie" and Jeffery Donovan as the slightly crazy Jeff Patterson (In an homage to the first Blair Witch, the main characters have the same names as the actors portraying them). Tristan Skyler and Stephen B. Turner have taken a lot of flack on here for their portrayals of a researcher and his fiance, but they do the best with what they are given: the "serious" roles in the group of four people taking the inaugural trip on Jeff's "Blair Witch Hunt" tour of Burkittsville, MD, home of the Blair Witch. Look for product placement galore: Shinerbock beer, Pete's Wicked Ale, Moosehead Beer. The scenes at the convenience store are hilarious: the store only sells the above three beers! Also, the weird little hidden things that the DVD touts as the "Secrets of ESREVER!" are interesting to try to find.
The next two thirds of the movie is awful and not in a funny way. I never stop being disappointed in what I see. Much has been made of the movie "operating at a higher level" than a horror movie or suffering from its relationship to the original Blair Witch movie. Nothing could be further from the truth. This movie was promoted as a "real life" documentary that had to be altered slightly to avoid a lawsuit from the families of the victims. There was a made for TV movie called "Shadow of the Bliar Witch" released just before BW2 that played this up to the hilt: in it footage of the "REAL" Jeff Patterson and his "REAL" tour group are spliced in with "REAL" news footage from Burkittsville, etc., all in an attempt to make the viewer believe that BW2, like BW1, was based on real events. So, everything was set up to make a movie IN the "Blair Witch Mythos," but something bad happened along the way. It's my opinion that writer/ director Joe Berlinger really dropped the ball in his work on this movie and he proves it in his comments in the DVD booklet. He goes on and on about his "vision", etc., etc. and finally makes the statement that with BW2 he has "embraced ambiguity." In other words, he doesn't know what it means either. Well, that might be a good thing when one is describing their 12th grade charcoal drawing for art class, but it's not enough when one is attempting to justify screwing up what could have been a great movie.
It's not that bad...well, in a way.......2006-12-25
You know it's strange but I swore I could've remembered watching the entire film once. It's been on TV quite a few times and I remember watching it when I rented it but watching it recently I was surprised by how little I remembered of it. Walking around at the store, I noticed one of those patented gift sets where you can buy a set containing all the movies about a certain subject or filmmaker or franchise and sure enough there was a double-pack containing both Blair Witch films, a CD-Rom and a stick-man necklace. I thought I'd just review 2 since I haven't done that yet and found that while it's not Battlefield Earth or House of the Dead bad, there's a huge chunk of "missed opportunity syndrome" running rampant.
The original was a mock documentary that was advertised as the real deal. The sequel pretends it really did happen so we have 2 researchers (Tristan and Stephen), a goth chick (Kim) an unbelievably sexy Wicca (Erica) and a former mental patient/director (Jeff) who attend Jeff's tour of the famous sites. Only things, naturally, turn creepy and find everything totalled and hours missing. They go to Jeff's house where things get even more twisted and videotapes show lots of things that go bump in the night.
Cheesy story description I know but seriously, how else can I do it? As director Joe Berlinger says in the booklet, it would've been silly to continue the story of Josh, Mike and Heather since they're on and about and doing movies and TV shows so instead they have a story that pretends the movie was real, hence stuff like "man that movie was so cool, we really connected" or the trailer line "cause I thought the movie was cool". The one problem with the film was that it just didn't feel scary or suspenseful. Sure the story was interesting and the premise but nothing seemed to match the tent scene, the ending or even Heather's apology in the original.
The acting is kind of hit-or-miss. We get scene-stealing Kim Director who thankfully isn't that brooding "I love goth stuff, woo goth!" that I sometimes see and we get the unbelievably hot Erica Leerhsen who's also a talent to watch but then we get Lanny Flaherty who's ridiculously over-the-top or Stephen Barker Turner who almost tries too hard. But the film as a horror is only very marginally effective but at least the cast at times acts like it's worth a damn unlike the new wave of horror actors where it's like "please, write her off".
Book of Shadows is almost like those inoffensive films that I sometimes see: it didn't make me outright hate it, but I didn't really love it but I didn't feel I wasted my time.
absolute insult to the origional!.......2006-12-04
anyone who likes this sequal (i don't even consider it a sequal to BWP)is mentally retarded...or just like crappy movies.
Better than the first, Better than most...........2006-10-17
Okay, if I get one person to see this movie and like it as much as I did, I feel like I accomplished something. From the opening credits w/Marilyn Manson's 'Disposable Teens' set to a flurry of autumn colors and blood spatter to the whole 'nothing was what it seems' ending, this movie is classic in almost every way. Forget the fact it's a sequel. Forget anything that annoyed you about the first movie. Think of this as just 'Book of Shadows', not a sequel...Joe B. is a smart filmmaker, and at least this movie offers us something than the usual slasher fare; There are some truly unsettling developments in this movie; The production, art design, and acting are much better than most. I was most impressed with the reactions of the characters during the final 15 minutes of the movie, when things really start to fall apart; One of the last scenes involves a certain character(this is NOT a spolier....)screaming that what he had just saw on tape was not what he had seen himself in person; His reaction was just like mine would have been, and it was pretty intense to say the least. This movie got a raw deal. I'm sure someone out there agrees...
bottom of the barrel film making.......2006-06-29
this in name only sequel to the hit blair witch movies is the pits. the only good thing about it is they did try to make a different kind of film from the first.but having said that,that is the only good thing. the plot is a mess and the cast really gets on your nerves. the story about a group of kids taking a tour of the sites of the first movie and finding themselves in over their heads after a night where they can't remember what they did or how their campsite got torn up is very thin(i spoted the "twist" 5 mins. after it started)and it never gets you to belive in the story! SKIP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
![Book of Shadows: Blair Witch Project 2 [Region 2]](http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/21D3JW2AMGL.jpg)
Average customer rating:
- Thank god this is out of print hopfully it stays that way
|
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch Project 2 [Region 2]
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
Thrillers
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ASIN: B00005LO7R |
Customer Reviews:
Thank god this is out of print hopfully it stays that way.......2006-01-06
The first BWP was an amazing piece of filmmaking, naturally frightening....this pt,2 is unnessary and and horribly crappy movie....avoid like the plague if you buy a copy somewhere in a bargin bin or someone beg you to take their copy jsut burn it and pray it stays dead...
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