Taglines: Evil Doesnt Die.
To cash in on all of the “real world” hype of the events in the first film, a man from Burkitsville, Maryland opens a “Blair Witch Hunt” tour, which shows patrons various locations from the original film. A bunch of college students decide to take the tour, and wind up in Rustin Parr’s house. There, they decide to camp for the evening, but in the morning, they realize they didn’t sleep and they don’t remember anything that happened the previous night. From there, they go back to town, and discover that something…or someone has come with them.
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (also known as Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows) is a 2000 American psychological horror film, directed and co-written by Joe Berlinger and starring Jeffrey Donovan, Kim Director, Tristine Skyler and Erica Leerhsen. It is a sequel to The 1999 film The Blair Witch Project, but is rather called a “movie within a movie”.
The film was immediately greenlit upon pitch due to the surprising success of its predecessor, the wildly successful 1999 film The Blair Witch Project. Stylistically different from the first film, the story revolves around a group of people fascinated by the mythology surrounding The Blair Witch Project movie and go into the Black Hills where the film was shot, and documents their subsequent psychological unraveling.
Originally conceived as a psychological thriller and meditation on mass hysteria, Artisan Entertainment re-cut Berlinger’s original film, altering the soundtrack as well as making editing changes and adding additional footage. The film was released in theaters in North America on October 27, 2000 to largely negative reviews from critics and audiences; it was, however, a financial success, grossing $47 million worldwide against its $15 million budget.
The majority of the film was shot in the spring of 2000 on location outside of Baltimore, Maryland. The exposition scenes featuring the characters camping were shot in Gwynns Falls Leakin Park, and the stone ruins of the Rustin Parr house were constructed out of styrofoam. The scene featuring Tristen in the hospital was shot at an abandoned sanitarium in Baltimore. Jeff’s loft house in the film is actually the Clipper Mill, located on the edge of Baltimore.
The hospital footage featuring Jeff was shot merely weeks before the film’s release at the request of Artisan Entertainment, and was shot on location at the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Randall’s Island in New York City. Additionally, the graphic footage of the main characters murdering the foreign tourists was shot last minute in director Joe Berlinger’s backyard.
About the Story
The film begins with Jeff Patterson, a patient at a mental hospital in Maryland, receiving drugs through a feeding tube. Moments later, he is in a padded room with a straitjacket on, throwing his body against the padded walls. Then, the film cuts to November 1999, when a group of young tourists—Stephen and his pregnant wife, Tristen, who are researching the Blair Witch for a book they are writing; Erica, a Wiccan; and Kim, a goth psychic—arrive in Burkittsville, Maryland, after seeing The Blair Witch Project. Jeff, a local man, is their tour guide and a paranormal investigator who says his equipment will capture any supernatural events that happen while they visit the Blair Witch site.
They camp for the night in the burned ruins of Rustin Parr’s house and Jeff places cameras around to capture evidence of the Blair Witch. As the group gets drunk around a campfire, another tour group arrives and claims to have jurisdiction over the ruins. Jeff and his group convince the others that they saw something horrifying at Coffin Rock earlier, and the other group leaves to investigate.
Jeff and his group wake the next morning with no memory of the previous night. Tristen and Stephen’s research documents are shredded and strewn about, and Jeff’s cameras are destroyed. However, Jeff’s tapes are found unharmed in the same spot the Blair Witch Project footage was discovered. Tristen notices that she is bleeding and has miscarried.
The group goes to the Burkittsville hospital, where Tristen’s miscarriage is confirmed. As she is about to be discharged, Tristen sees a pale young girl walking away backward. Jeff takes the group back to his home, an abandoned broom factory against a steep hill in the woods. It has an elaborate security system, surveillance cameras, and a front door alarm. That evening, the group reviews Jeff’s tapes and find hours of footage to be missing. Only one scene remains, which depicts a naked Erica holding onto a tree and swinging around it backward. Erica remembers no such event and runs off to pray, weeping as she does so.
Each of the members of the group now begins to have hallucinations of horrible things (like eating a dead owl, murdering someone, or being locked in an asylum). Kim borrows Jeff’s van to drive into town to pick up food and alcohol and has a heated argument with the convenience store cashier. The van she drives is attacked by locals as she leaves, and she crashes the vehicle into a telephone pole after swerving to avoid ghostly children walking along the road. Back at Jeff’s, she reaches into her shopping bag and pricks herself on a small, bloody nail file stuck among the bottles of beer she purchased.
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
Directed by: Joe Berlinger
Starring: Jeffrey Donovan, Stephen Barker Turner, Erica Leerhsen, Kurt Loder, Chuck Scarborough, Sara Phillips, Lynda Millard, Lanny Flaherty, Tristine Skyler, Kim Director
Screenplay by: Dick Beebe, Joe Berlinger
Production Design by: Vincent Peranio
Cinematography by: Nancy Schreiber
Film Editing by: Sarah Flack, Janice Hampton
Costume Design by: Melissa Toth
Set Decoration by: Steve George, Susan Kessel
Art Direction by: Justin Scoppa Jr., Rob Simons
Music by: Carter Burwell
MPAA Rating: R for violence, language, sexuality and drug use.
Distributed by: Artisan Entertainment
Release Date: October 27, 2000
Visits: 140
