Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some rumblings from the Lab.
Well, Lazarus from Darksites.com has piped up with another look at the 20 minutes of footage from BLAIR WITCH 2: BOOK OF SHADOWS that was shown last weekend. I've talked to people that have seen a longer 45 minute version of this promo reel, and word is very iffy still. I'm a big fan of Joe Berlinger, so I'm going to pray for greatness all the way up to the moment I'm in my seat this fall. Lazarus seems to offer hope that this might turn out to be a bigger and better version of the first one, but not without some reservation...
I was at the Fangoria convention this past weekend, which was good this year despite the smallish dealers room, and found out they were giving out tickets to see some footage of the Blair Witch Project sequel, Book of Shadows. The screening was after the convention at a theater near where the con was being held in lovely downtown Pasadena, California. Since they were giving out tickets in between presentations at the con, you knew that the people at the screening really wanted to be there. I like seeing horror movies with people who are into it. The lights went out and the film started out with real ET-type news footage of the Blair Witch movie phenomenon, with talking heads from TV shows as well as locals in Burkittsville, Maryland talking about what it was like to have their town invaded and basically taken over by freaks. I liked how they kept the self-awareness of the whole Blair Witch thing. They weren’t just continuing after the first film, but it was more real life stuff.
The next sections were scenes of the actual group this movie is about, which consists of a tour guide guy, who has started a low rent business taking people out into the Blair Woods, a couple that is obsessed with every detail of the Blair Witch legend, a witch or wicca who was a serious hottie (I don’t know her name), a goth girl who has some psychic abilities and … let’s see, I think that’s it. The acting was bad but based on the first Blair Witch movie (except for Mike), that is probably to be expected. Anyway, the group first goes out to the cabin where the last part of the first film took place, and although it was disjointed and a lot appeared to be left out, the idea was that they had lost some time and woke up to find all their stuff gone, but the psychic girl finds that their videotapes have been buried underneath the cabin. Creepy moment.
The next big section had the group going back to the tour guide guy’s own big, empty house, where they watch the tapes and strange things start happening. Weird shots of spectral figures are in certain frames of their footage. Their van gets trashed. A weird little girl shows up. I don’t know how they made this little girl, but it was very unsettling. She had an old face but a little girl’s body and voice. The witch starts trying to perform spells that will save them from whatever is keeping them at this house. Then lesions start appearing on the girls’ bodies. That’s pretty much where all hell breaks looks.
The best part of the footage for me came at the end. Using a haunting Courtney Love song, the director pieced together some footage of things to come. It wasn’t in any kind of linear order, but it was very scary and some things were kind of shocking, people actually dying, lots of nudity (especially of the wicca hottie), people losing control of themselves and doing things to each other. It gave me that feeling that only a few other movies have achieved where the bottom has kind of fallen out of the world and anything can happen. It ended with a shot of the Blair Woods during the day and what looked like the search party going out into it to find the kids. The middle part was kind of more like what you’d expect from a low budget horror movie, but this last part went beyond my expectations. I had chills when I left the theater, which is no small thing these days.
