You're Wrong - Blair Witch 2 Is AMAZING
Let me take you back in history to 12-year-old Charlotte who was a budding goth and wiccan living in a very small town surrounded by forest. I had seen The Blair Witch Project for the first time only a year before, watching it alone in my basement bedroom in the middle of the night. I was so fucking scared, but I was also OBSESSED. Then a year later I’m at the gas station/video store and saw a VHS cover that stopped my 12-year-old heart. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. You see kids, in the old days, we had the internet but it wasn’t like it is today. And in a small town surrounded by trees….well, the internet was not reliable. I had NO idea there was a sequel, and yet there it sat on that gas station shelf. I immediately rented it, bought some 5-cent candy and a coke, and went home to watch it.
My little wiccan goth heart was so damn happy. You know why? Because this was the first time I discovered Marilyn Manson. I also got to have two female characters in a movie that I could obsess over – a goth psychic and a wiccan. I loved every moment of that insane movie.
Then I never watched it again. Cause ya see kids, back in those days….movies weren’t cheap. And if you think my parents were gonna shell out hard cash for a copy of Blair Witch 2, you’re wrong. Also in our tiny town – we didn’t actually have anywhere to buy movies. Only rent. So…ya know…
THEN – FLASH FORWARD TO 2020 and 31-year-old Charlotte discovers Amazon Prime has Blair Witch 2 streaming. And oh boy did I have a flashback. While I am no longer a practicing wiccan, and have introduced a minimal amount of color into my closet, I still fucking love everything about the Blair Witch. So….let’s dive in…
Blair Witch 2 premiered in 2000 and was directed and co-written by Joe Berlinger, his co-writer was Dick Beebe. It stars Jeffrey Donovan, Erica Leerhsen, Stephen Barker Turner, Kim Director, and Tristine Skyler.
“Get out of the woods and go home! There was no god damn Blair Witch!”
The Premise:
In 1999 fans of The Blair Witch Project flood to Burkittsville to see where the film was set. Some believe it was 100% real while some just wanted to visit the scene of their favorite movie. One local resident, Jeff, runs a tour group called Blair Witch Hunt and he’s got his first group of tourists. There’s Tristen and Stephen, a couple who are doing research on hysteria vs mythology, Kim who’s a goth psychic, and Erica, a young wiccan. All have their reasons for going on this tour.
Jeff takes the group to stay overnight in the ruins of Rustin Parr’s house, while there they run into another tour group called The Blair Witch Walk. The groups clash but eventually the Hunt group get to stay. They party all night and when they wake up in the morning they find all the cameras smashed, the research papers from Stephen and Tristen completely shredded, and no recollection of what happened.
The group find the missing tapes, thanks to psychic Kim, but then Tristen miscarries. They drive her to the hospital but soon they all leave and go back to Jeff’s house, an abandoned factory in the middle of the woods, to watch the tapes and figure out exactly what happened the night before.
What I loved (full spoilers):
The soundtrack. I mean….can it get any more 2000? Godhead, System of a Down, Nickelback, Marilyn Manson, P.O.D., Queens of the Stoneage, Rob Zombie. COME ON THAT’S AMAZING.
The whole vibe of this movie is madness – a group of people go into the woods and lose their minds, killing each other and blaming it on the Blair Witch. But it’s also possible that the Blair Witch really did posses Tristen and what we see is what really happened. It leaves it up to you really to decide who you believe. But it’s also this great commentary on the reception of the first movie. When The Blair Witch first landed a lot of folx believed that the movie was real. And it was so (and still is) ground-breaking. Berlinger actually went down to Burkittsville while writing the script and interviewed real people that lived there about the impact the movie had.
I think Berlinger did an incredible job on this, if you were like me you probably also read The Blair Witch book series that delved super deep into the lore. There were entire stories about Coffin Rock and Rustin Parr and the Blair Witch herself. Blair Witch 2 really celebrates that lore. There’s so many nods to the deep backstory of the original movie. Berlinger really paid attention to the culture around that first movie and invested it into this second flick. Even including the character of Erica, a wiccan that was annoyed by the violent portrayal of a witch in the first movie, which was a real vibe in the wiccan community during that time.
Putting this story into Berlinger’s hands was super smart, the downfalls of the movie itself were choices made by the studio, not him. A lot of the violence and gore was added in last minute to please the studio. In fact, the scene where the group murders the tourists at Coffin Rock was filmed in Berlinger’s backyard super last minute. Also, random fun fact, Berlinger directed the incredible documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hills which helped get those men released from jail. And is an INCREDIBLE true crime documentary if you haven’t seen it.
This movie gets a lot of flack and I don’t really get it. To me this is a total 2000 horror movie on every level and we should cherish that, it’s like a freakin’ time capsule. The story is insane, the acting is spot on, and there’s some pretty great twists. And don’t tell me you didn’t watch this and immediately want to put on black lipstick and go live in an abandoned factory in the woods.
“Something happened to us in the woods... something evil.”
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