everyday is halloween

book of shadows: blair witch 2 [2000] 

first off, i admit, this movie sucks.  it is a cash grab made by the studio, & the creators of the epochal blair witch project [1999].  i've written about my love & appreciation for that first found footage film.  that movie changed, for a while, the nature of indie cinema.  found footage movies became all the rage.  but more important is the use of the internet regarding the marketing & mythmaking of the blair witch.  

we forget how novel the internet was twenty years ago.  today, the internet is a necessity, like water & electricity.  the only time we notice them is when there is a disruption of service.  even more so is the importance & necessity of the internet, especially broadband internet, during the pandemic.  consider how fucked we would be if we couldn't work from home, order food, goods & services online.  but a little over twenty years ago you could still live your life free of the interwebs.  civilization was migrating online but many goods & services could operate & conduct business without having a website.  

that's the genius of the filmmakers of the first blair witch movie.  they knew the power of storytelling via fake documentary footage, banners, & signs.  they created a whole myth-kitty to support a movie about the disappearance of three young college filmmakers.  it worked.  when the first film was released in the summer of 1999 a great many believed in the created myth.  when you logged on to blair witch website [i'm amazed that it is still up & running] you fell into the rabbit hole of the occult &, to use the phrase of a fictive TV show used in the creation of the myth, mystic occurrences.

a year later & a new millennium the internet is still a relatively novel thing.  hard for me to think that this movie is 20 years old.  those 20 years have blinked by fast.  the principals of this flick either profit from the goings on of the first flick via selling goods & services on the internet, or have succumbed to the myth of the first film by way of its created mythos on the internet.  

what happens in this flick?  some fucked up shit.  & everything is recorded on tape.  which is key to the plot.  the movie is ably directed, photographed & edited.  the soundtrack is killer [turn of the millennium metal] & the actors are all game being fodder for an alleged witch that still makes mischief. 

i have a confession.  sometimes i prefer the inferior sequel.  all rules are out & the filmmakers can create a chaos of action.  i love love love the first film in this franchise but this sequel holds a special place in my blackened heart.  the movie is both earnest & a throw away.  commercial & anti-art.  not all sequels are made the same.  some just downright suck, of course.  but this movie.  hmmmm...call me goofy.  i can't recommend it at all.  & yet, for the serious movie masochist this pic might just be what the doctor ordered as a balm in our mad days.  

boo