Originally published at: Was "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2" good, actually? | Boing Boing
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Well, I will say that it was not shot with shaky, handheld footage that made me puke after, so there’s that…
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I’ve never seen it, but I think I would be hoping it wasn’t another re-hash of a familiar style of storytelling, a la campfires as the first one was.
If I’m remembering right, it was a stab (haha, get it!) at giving some back story in a more traditional film style…
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See, I never thought Alien 3 was that bad. I think they missed a bit in a couple of ways. I think the first bit was a misguided attempt to reproduce the slow burn of the first movie, and the second half was trying to hard to mimic the escape from the colony of the second film. But overall I liked it. Interesting world building, and they kind of started to flesh out the corporate attitudes to colonies that gave us the colony wars stuff in the expanded universe.
I’m still hoping for more xenomorph-free cyberpunk type fiction in that universe.
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And even. The universe of this series is very rich and just focusing on the long aliens is kind of a waste.
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I didn’t even make it through the entire movie before I had to run out of the theater to find a trash can. The motion sickness was so bad it even ruined regular non-shaky movies for me for a couple years.
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I never saw it. I was too traumatized by the first one. Not because I found it scary, but because it was a truly godawful movie and I’m still pissed that I paid money to go see it in the theater. It’s the only movie I’ve come close to walking out of, and I wish I had. So yeah, I had zero interest in watching the sequel. Maybe I should give it a shot.
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I actually don’t mind Blair Witch 2 at all. I’ve seen far worse horror films.
You know what horror film did not impress me at all… Terrifier. Just… not that interesting.
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I saw Blair Witch 2 in the theater and remember being very disappointed. I have not seen it since, forgot about it, and will be giving it another watch now.
I fell asleep.
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I, uh, liked them both OK…
…you know, a bit.
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The Exorcist still makes me unsettled. It is such a very fine horror movie, but when the exorcism begins it turns into a very boring experience. The exorcism scenes, the battle against this Pazuzu should be the paroxysm of horror. But I think that the suggestion of evil lurking around that house, harassing the family and the feelings of impotence in the face of the supernatural are what seem much scarier to me.
The films that I don’t mind watching are the Saw series and Midsommar. The nightly TV news already shows many people being killed in grotesque ways at the hands of petty evil people.
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Had I been watching it at home, I probably would have, too. Since I actually paid money to see it, I was too angry to fall asleep.
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The first movie was interesting - and possibly even good - solely within the context of the video materials that were made to promote the movie. They did a whole “documentary” about the supposed legend that was really required viewing before watching the movie, that gave it a vital depth and an interesting context. It turned it into a modern, video version of the “found documents” style horror of Dracula, most of Lovecraft’s work, etc., wherein a collection of documents and testimonies that perhaps are individually unremarkable but collectively reveal a disturbing truth.
That being the case, I never even thought about watching the “sequel” as its existence was so clearly motivated by cynical studio exploitation of the “property” that ignored everything that made the first one interesting, and was marketed as a totally generic horror movie. It never occurred to me that the writer/director might have even tried to do something interesting with it, given the studio’s intent. (I suppose I even sort of assumed they took a generic horror movie script and stamped “Blair Witch” on the title, threw in a couple references, and left it at that.)
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It reminds me of my time in 6th grade when we went on a class camping retreat. The teachers made up a campfire story of a murderer who had escaped from a local prison, and sent us kids out to find clues.
Suffice it to say, the teachers had recruited a couple of my friends to “get lost” during the escapade, but I was too much and they couldn’t disappear without me knowing.
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Wow, I thought I was going to be the only one.
By the time I saw BW1, I was working at an independent video store, and I already knew it was a gimmick, so my expectations were low a/f.
(As a mere marketing ploy for the more traditional type of horror film which was the sequel, Blair Witch 1 was kind of brilliant. Narratively speaking, it was sorely lacking.)
The idea that “the monster” has actually been yourself the whole time, without your knowledge is a truly scary trope…
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Its been over 20 years since I’ve seen either movie, and while I remember parts of 1, I remember nothing of 2, so there’s that.
I was a bit let down with 1, expecting it to be much scarier than it ended up being for me.
Then again, I have friend in PA who saw it and when they drove home they go through winding roads full of forests like in the movie, so I bet they had the added effect of atmosphere.
