Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is a 2000 American psychological horror film, directed and co-written by Joe Berlinger and starring Jeffrey Donovan, Stephen Barker Turner, Kim Director, Erica Leerhsen and Tristine Skyler. 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 plot revolves around a group of people fascinated by the mythology surrounding The Blair Witch Project film; they go into the Black Hills where the original film was shot, and experience supernatural phenomena and psychological unraveling.

Originally conceived by Berlinger and co-writer Dick Beebe as a psychological thriller and meditation on mass hysteria, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was significantly altered in post-production, which Berlinger would later claim compromised his original vision. Among the changes were a new soundtrack, additional editing, and the integration of entirely new sequences.

The film was released in theaters in North America and the United Kingdom 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.

Plot
In November 1999, tourists and fans of The Blair Witch Project descend on the small town of Burkittsville, Maryland, where the film is set. Local resident Jeff, a former psychiatric patient and obsessed fan, orchestrates a group tour of locations featured in the film. Among the group are graduate students Stephen and his pregnant girlfriend, Tristen, who are researching mythology and mass hysteria; Erica, the Wiccan daughter of an Episcopal minister; and Kim, a goth psychic. They camp for the night in the ruins of Rustin Parr's house, where Jeff has placed surveillance cameras, hoping to capture any supernatural occurrences. Jeff becomes unnerved when he notices a large tree located in the center of the house's foundation, claiming it was not there before. That night, another tour group arrives at the ruins claiming to have jurisdiction over the grounds; Jeff and Stephen mislead them to instead visit Coffin Rock, lying and saying they witnessed something horrifying there earlier. The other tour group believes them, and leaves for Coffin Rock.

After drinking and smoking marijuana all night, the group awaken in the morning to find Stephen and Tristen's research documents shredded and strewn through the woods, and Jeff's cameras destroyed. Kim has a psychic inclination that the tapes are buried under the foundation, the same place that The Blair Witch Project footage was allegedly discovered; when Jeff inspects the area, he finds his tapes. The group's debate over the night's events is interrupted when Tristen suffers a miscarriage, and they rush her to the Burkitsville hospital. In her hospital room, Tristen sees a pale young girl walking backward. After she is discharged, the group retreat to Jeff's home, an abandoned broom factory against a steep hill in the woods. While Tristen rests, the group review the footage recorded the night before, and find a visual anomaly of what appears to be a naked woman swinging around the tree in the center of the foundation; inexplicably, the tree appears in the footage as only a sapling. Jeff slows the footage down, revealing the woman to be Erica. Distraught, Erica claims she has no memory of such event, and goes to pray in another room. When Kim tries to console her, Erica reveals rash-like symbols covering her body, and proclaims the group has been marked for death.

Unnerved, Kim borrows Jeff's van to pick up coffee and alcohol in town. At the country store, she gets into a heated argument with the cashier. While driving away, she swerves to avoid hitting multiple children walking on the road, and crashes the van into a tree. While examining the busted fender, Kim notices the children have disappeared. Upon returning to Jeff's, she finds a bloody nail file stuck among the bottles of beer she purchased. The following morning, Jeff looks outside and sees the front end of his van entirely caved in, to the point that it is undriveable; Kim insists that she merely dented the fender. The group realize Erica is mysteriously absent, and begin searching for her. Kim finds her clothing on the floor, surrounded by lit candles. They attempt to call Erica's father at his office but are told by his secretary that he has no children.

Meanwhile, Tristen's disposition grows increasingly bizarre. The county sheriff calls Jeff, informing him the other tour group was found disembowled on Coffin Rock, and implies Jeff is involved. Shortly after, the four see Erica spinning around a tree outside. Stephen rushes to confront her, but the walkway connecting the building to the hill collapses under him. He calls for Tristen but she walks away without any regard while Jeff and Kim pull him to safety. Later while searching through a drawer, Kim finds a set of surveillance dossiers on herself and the others. She confronts Jeff, but he denies knowing the source of them. Shortly after, the group discovers Erica's corpse in a closet.

Tristen begins chanting about widdershins and speaking backwards; this leads Kim to suggest they play Jeff's damaged tapes in reverse. Upon doing so, they find the footage shows the group descending into a satantic ritual and frenzied orgy led by Tristen. When they attempt to confront Tristen, she alternately pleads and goads them; Jeff, convinced Tristen is possessed by the Blair Witch, begins filming the confrontation with a handheld camera, attempting to elicit a confession in Erica's death. Stephen accuses Tristen of killing their baby, and the four follow Tristen to the second floor, where she ties a rope around her neck and taunts Stephen, daring him to push her. In a fit of rage, he pushes her over the balcony, killing her by breaking her neck.

Later, Jeff, Stephen, and Kim are arrested and interrogated by police over the deaths of Tristen, Erica, and the other tour group. Each claim to detectives that Tristen was possessed by the witch and was responsible. Their accounts are contradicted by various video footage: Security cameras captured Kim murdering the store cashier with her own nail file, while Jeff's home monitors show him, nude, hiding Erica's body in the closet; the DV footage Jeff filmed during Tristen's confrontation shows her pleading for her life as they accuse her of being a witch, ending in Stephen pushing her to her death. Each of the remaining members of the tour group freak out and claim that they did not do those things.

Cast

 * Jeffrey Donovan as Jeffrey Patterson
 * Erica Leerhsen as Erica Geerson
 * Stephen Barker Turner as Stephen Ryan Parker
 * Kim Director as Kim Diamond
 * Tristine Skyler as Tristen Ryler
 * Lanny Flaherty as Sheriff Ronald Cravens
 * Lauren Hulsey as Eileen Treacle
 * Raynor Scheine as Rustin Parr
 * Kennen Sisco as Peggy
 * Kevin Murray as Doctor

Note: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams and Joshua Leonard appear in archival footage as fictionalized versions of themselves. Additionally, Roger Ebert, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, and Andy Richter are shown in archival news and media footage pertaining to the release of original film.

Development
After the massive success of The Blair Witch Project, Artisan was eager to produce a sequel while the film's popularity was still at its peak. However, Haxan Films, who created the original film, was not ready to begin work on a follow-up, preferring to wait until the initial buzz had died down. In December 1999, Artisan decided to proceed without them, hiring Joe Berlinger, who had previously (and subsequently) only done true documentaries, to direct.

While developing the screenplay, Berlinger spent time in the real town of Burkittsville (the setting of The Blair Witch Project) undertaking research and interviewing locals on how the release of the film had impacted their lives. Many of the individuals Berlinger interviewed served as direct inspirations for the characters featured in the film. His core theme when composing the screenplay with Dick Beebe was that the evil attributed to the Blair Witch may "be human in origin as opposed to supernatural." According to Berlinger, the character of Erica represented an aspect of this, specifically the frustrations that the Wiccan community voiced after the release of The Blair Witch Project, which some felt misconstrued the tenets of Wicca and showed their religion in a negative light.

Berlinger was also inspired by the "lazy consumption of media" that led many to accept The Blair Witch Project as a true documentary; specifically, "how readily [the public is] willing to accept that something shot on video is real." He elaborated: "on one hand, Blair Witch 2 works as a standard horror movie...but it also is a meditation on violence in the media, and the nature of fanaticism and obsession...and the dangers of blurring the lines between reality and fiction." Additionally, Berlinger incorporated elements of real-life subjects and places featured in his 1996 true crime documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, as well as narrative components of the stage play Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello.

Casting
Berlinger based his casting decisions largely on group chemistry between the actors, as the film was anchored exclusively in their collective experience. The casting period, according to Berlinger, only lasted for six weeks, in New York City. Originally, Tristine Skyler auditioned for the role played by Erica Leerhsen, while Leerhsen auditioned for the role played by Kim Director. Upon casting Leerhsen, who in reality was a short-haired blonde, Berlinger fitted her with hair extensions and had her hair dyed red for the part. Jeffrey Donovan had also originally auditioned for the role played by Stephen Barker Turner, but Berlinger felt him a better fit for the leader of the group.

Filming
The majority of the film was shot over a period of 44 days 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 documentary footage that opens the film features interviews from real residents of Burkittsville, Maryland.

The hospital footage featuring Jeff was shot mere 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 Berlinger's backyard after principal photography.

Because the original film had been parodied so much since its release, Berlinger deliberately avoided using any shaky camerawork and "the [stylistic] clichés of bad documentary filmmaking," opting to maintain an aesthetic at odds with the documentary form.

Post-production
Stylistically, Book of Shadows was the direct opposite of its predecessor: though the film occasionally utilizes the point of view camcorder/pseudo-documentary format used in the first movie, Book of Shadows more closely resembles the glossy, big-budget special effects-laden horror films that Blair Witch was a counter to. Berlinger has stated that he originally made the film with more of an ambiguous tone that focused on the characters' psychological unraveling after their night spent in the Black Hills, but Artisan forced him to re-cut the film and re-shoot certain scenes to add more "traditional" horror movie elements, thus creating what they saw as a more "commercial" film. Namely, the footage of the main characters murdering the foreign tourists was shot weeks prior to the film's release date, and was incorporated in the film as flash cuts to add more visual violence. Berlinger later stated that he felt the gore sequences added in the film "fought against the ambiguity [he] tried to nurture."

Additionally, the interrogation sequences which are intercut throughout the film were, per Berlinger's director's cut, arranged as a single eight-minute-long sequence bookending the film. Instead, the studio requested Berlinger cut the sequence into isolated vignettes and intercut them throughout the film. This compromised Berlinger's original vision of a "linear" narrative that begins "as a lighthearted romp in the woods...almost as a spoof of the [Blair Witch] phenomenon" before descending into a "downward spiral."

The original cut of the film also featured Frank Sinatra's "Witchcraft" during the opening credits, but was replaced by the studio with "Disposable Teens" by Marilyn Manson.

Musical score
Two soundtracks for Book of Shadows were released: the first was released through Posthuman Records on October 17, 2000. The second, released through Milan Records on October 24, 2000, consisted solely of Carter Burwell's instrumental score. The soundtrack was re-released in 2001 and bundled with the DVD+CD.

Track listing

 * 1) "The Reckoning" – Godhead
 * 2) "Lie Down" – P.O.D.
 * 3) "Goodbye Lament" – Tony Iommi/Dave Grohl
 * 4) "Dragula" – Rob Zombie
 * 5) "Mind" – System of a Down
 * 6) "Stick It Up" – Slaves on Dope
 * 7) "Suicide Is Painless" – Marilyn Manson
 * 8) "Soul Auctioneer" – Death in Vegas
 * 9) "PS" – Project 86
 * 10) "Old Enough" – Nickelback
 * 11) "Feel Alive" – U.P.O.
 * 12) "Tommy (Don't Die)" – Steaknife
 * 13) "Arcarsenal" – At the Drive-In
 * 14) "Human" – Elastica
 * 15) "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" – Queens of the Stone Age
 * 16)  "Streamlined" – Sunshine

Adapted from liner notes and ABC News article.

Marketing
Though Book of Shadows' marketing campaign made no attempt to present the film as a "true story", a promotional "dossier" for the film, compiled by D.A. Stern, was released, including fabricated police reports and interviews surrounding the events in the film as if they were fact (a similar "dossier", also by Stern, was released as a companion piece to the first film). Additionally, similar to the first movie, each of the main characters retain the first names of their respective actors, though their surnames are changed slightly.

On September 29, 2000, the film's teaser trailer was released on the internet, available for streaming exclusively on Yahoo!. The trailer shows a half-naked woman, Erica Geerson (portrayed by Erica Leerhsen) in the woods discovering the Book of Shadows, before she is attacked by an unknown man.

Beginning on October 18, 2000, a three-day online "Blair Witch Webfest" was launched, which included involvement from artist Marilyn Manson, whose music was featured on the film's soundtrack. The cyber-convention included a contest whose grand prize winner received tickets to the opening of Manson's tour in Minneapolis, as well as a private screening of Book of Shadows with Manson in attendance.

On October 22, 2000, the Sci-Fi Channel premiered Shadow of the Blair Witch, a pseudo-documentary following Book of Shadows's protagonist, Jeff (again portrayed by Jeffrey Donovan) and others who are transfixed by the Blair Witch phenomenon. The fictional documentary charts both the mythology of the Blair Witch alongside Jeff's criminal prosecution for the murders depicted in the film.

Box office
Book of Shadows had its world premiere at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on October 24, 2000. It was released theatrically in on 3,600 screens in six countries –including United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom –on October 27, 2000.

In the United States, the film debuted at number 2 at the box office, earning $13,000,000 during its opening weekend playing on 3,317 screens. After eight weeks, it finished with a total domestic gross of $26,421,314. Overall, internationally the film grossed $47,737,094.

Contemporaneous
Critical reaction to Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 upon release was generally unfavorable. The film holds a 14% approval rating on internet review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 106 reviews. Metacritic reported, based on 34 reviews, an average rating of 15 out of 100, indicating "overwhelming dislike". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "D-" on an A+ to F scale.

In a review published in The Guardian it was noted: "Everything—and I mean everything—that made The Blair Witch Project a little indie masterpiece has been falsified and trashed in this spectacularly bad sequel." Roger Ebert, who gave the first film four stars (out of four), gave Book of Shadows two stars, calling it "a muddled, sometimes-atmospheric effort that could have come from many filmmakers" and "not a very lucid piece of filmmaking". Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly awarded the film a C-, calling it "a flat heebie jeebies thriller." Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the film is "better made than the original, and its writing contains a subtlety and wit the original film lacked." Anwar Brett of the BBC rated the film three out of four stars, calling it "a chilling, highly effective journey made with intelligence and a handful of effective, goose-bump-inducing moments."

Shawn Levy of The Oregonian wrote: "There are moments of pleasure, humor, and [...] terror to be had here." Luke Y. Thompson of the Dallas Observer said the film "deserves points for creativity" but is "not entirely successful." Margaret McGurk of The Cincinnati Enquirer noted prominent documentary influences present in the film, comparing elements of the psychiatric hospital sequences to Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies, adding: "Even well-versed moviegoers may not catch some of the most interesting aspects of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. That's because they refer to, draw upon and mimic documentaries, which as a genre represent the least-seen movies in America. No surprise there." Chris Kaltenbach of The Baltimore Sun noted that the film "gets credit for avoiding the easy path. Too bad the path it chooses doesn't lead us anywhere we want to be taken." Jack Mathews of the New York Daily News commented that "the characters are boring, the violence generic, the suspense nonexistent". Wesley Morris of The San Francisco Examiner called the film "throwaway megaplex fodder," while Melody Moss of Seattle's The Stranger wrote: "This film is so bad, no amount of high-priced marketing tools--glitzy trailers, live webcasts, star-studded soundtrack CDs--can save it. And the motivation behind this dreck is all too clear: pure and simple greed."

Web reviewers such as Berge Garabedian of JoBlo.com gave the film a favorable review, calling it a "decent psychological mystery filled with paranoia and delusions, which messes with your head and demands that you keep thinking about it, even after you've left the theatre." Laura Clifford of Reeling Reviews also praised the film, writing: "It's a surprisingly intelligent and welcome addition to a genre that's usually a dumping ground for low budget efforts."

Retrospective
In Movies in American History: An Encyclopedia (2011), film scholar Phillip Dimare notes: "While the film's premise of self-consciously examining the concept of cult films in general is an interesting example of intertextual play, the sequel lack[s] the aesthetic minimalism of the first film; instead, it tried to make the Blair Witch more tangible and sensationalistic... the horror of Book of Shadows was just too imagistically present."

In a 2016 article published by Bloody Disgusting, Brendan Morrow defended the film, calling it "an excellent 'descent into madness film'," and noted the studio's intervention in post-production: "In Book of Shadows, Berlinger took his hatred of the first movie’s dishonesty and made an entire film out of it, commenting on the danger of blurring the line between fiction and reality. Had Artisan stayed out of the edit bay and let the man do his job, perhaps Book of Shadows could have been something truly special." Another retrospective published by Collider noted: "one can see interesting ideas about possession, filmmaking, and belief littered throughout, but the [film's] narrative is overworked to the point that no concept or storyline really gains much momentum."

Home media
Artisan Home Entertainment released Book of Shadows on VHS on February 20, 2001. On March 13, 2001, a double-sided DVD+CD package was released; the disc was marketed as being the "first ever DVD+CD." Side one (DVD) included the feature film along with audio commentaries, production notes, a live music video, and the "Secret of Esrever" featurette as bonus materials. Side 2 (CD) featured three tracks from the official soundtrack, as well as Carter Burwell's full musical score.

Additionally, Artisan released a media package called "The Blair Witch Experience," which included the original film on DVD, the Book of Shadows DVD+CD, the three-piece Blair Witch PC game series, and a necklace of the stickman figures featured in the films.

"The Secret of Esrever"
Much like the first Blair Witch, Book of Shadows also featured a marketing gimmick, although this one centered on the film's video release, fully exploiting video technology. Both the DVD and VHS releases came with a featurette detailing "The Secret of Esrever" ("Esrever" is the word reverse spelled backwards), a number of near-subliminal messages in the form of hidden words and images that were placed throughout the film. The featurette encouraged viewers to watch certain scenes in reverse and/or frame-by-frame in order to decode the "secret", and, through scrambled letters flashed throughout the program, offered five clues to where they could be found: "door", "water", "mirror", "rug" and "grave". These images were not included in the theatrical cut of the film, and were rather added specifically for the original home video releases. Subsequent releases, particularly in digital formats, did not have the clues.

An example of these messages can be seen in a scene early in the film where the main characters are in a graveyard, standing behind a tombstone inscribed with the word "Treacle". The shot briefly cuts away and then cuts back, though the same tombstone now reads "Further". This is seen for approximately one second until it cuts away again, and the tombstone once again reads "Treacle" for the remainder of the scene.

When all of the clues were identified, the hidden words, when put in the correct order, spelled out "seek me no further", plus an extra hidden word, "or". Viewers could then go to the official Blair Witch website and type the words into a special search box: typing "seek me no further" would play an extra scene from the movie, and typing "seek me no further or" would enable them to add their name to a list of people who had also decoded the message. As of 2008, this function is no longer available.

Sequel
On September 2, 2009, Ed Sánchez and Daniel Myrick announced their intent to produce Blair Witch 3. The film would be a direct sequel to the first film, would potentially contain the actors from the first film in some context, and would not reference any of the events from Book of Shadows, given the film's status as a film within a film. In 2011, Sánchez remarked that further development on a sequel depended on getting Lionsgate to approve the idea and for his and Myrick's schedule to match up. The film went into development hell.

In July 2016, it was revealed at the 2016 San Diego Comic Con that a film The Woods turned out to be the sequel to The Blair Witch Project, entitled Blair Witch.